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He might be the most powerful in current soviet union that is CIS. However I fail to see how he can be the most powerful in the world given that USA surpasses

He might be the most powerful in current soviet union that is CIS. However I fail to see how he can be the most powerful in the world given that USA surpasses russia in both military and economic might (which are pretty much the same thing if you think about it). Russia has no answer to sanctions and those counter-sanctions are just a delusion. USA can make many other countries respect the sanctions due to dollar being universal currency. There's also China which is simply too populous to challenge for anyone.

namdnay 6y ago
The difference being that we suspect Putin has pretty much total control over his empire, whereas a US president for example operates with checks and balances
berdario 6y ago
I think that GP point might be about being able to direct the military and economic might. The US is surely ahead in terms of numbers... but even if they wanted to stop any military involvement in the middle east tomorrow, and pull back from NATO, there'd be a lot of push-back and it would heavily disappoint its allies. Compare with Russia: they have some involvement in Syria (and other places, I'm sure), but if they'd pull back from Syria, I'm not sure who else besides Assad would complain. From this point of view, their hands might not be as tied as the US' I agree that Russia counter-sanctions can be just a delusion, but I think that another interesting point is that sanctions aren't biting as hard as they could've in Russia, due to their massive reduction in public debt: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public-debt-falls-to-zero-a67238 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public... They had slow (or absent) growth, otoh.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
Putin is dangerous because he realised that in the Internet age, you can do incredible damage to a country with social media messaging, hacking, and bribery. The US has been using the media like this for decades, but it's always been considered a side game. Russia has made it a primary mode of attack - partly because it's vastly cheaper and more effective than spending extreme sums of money on super-weapons. So we know that Putin has been financing the subversion of social democracy and the promotion of far-right nationalist narratives in the US and the EU through a combination of direct funding, social media troll farming, and straightforward financially advantageous diplomacy - and possibly also direct election hacking, although so far that's been harder to prove. The UK has been almost destroyed by this. It's a shell of the country it was when the century started, and the poison of Brexit hasn't even worked its way fully through the system yet. I expect I'll get the usual downvotes for posting this out, but the downvoters might want to address the points made here before they waste their time on that: https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-backed-coup https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-b... There's much more detail about this in a book which is being released soon.
- lovelyviking 6y ago
  I do not understand why people downvote you if they are sincere to the truth. You points are correct and what West doesn't realise is that Putin is at war with West civilisation. He acts like it's a war and he thinks in terms of war. People do not realise, because it seems crazy to create war when there is no need for it, but this is exactly why they loose, because Putin uses it for his advantage. I just hope people would wake up and understand how serious threat is.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back. I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts. I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China. I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.
- deleted 6y ago
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- frockington1 6y ago
  70% of US debt is owned by American citizens. I do agree with the premise of nobody going to war because they can't afford it. The only caveat I would add would that America tends to do pretty well when armed conflicts happen as they supply the world with weapons Souce: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-2121-trillion-of-us-debt-2018-08-21 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-21...
NicoJuicy 6y ago
Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military. But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_military_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...
- konart 6y ago
  >But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. >Post link to aircrafts stats only While it is true that Russia is behind the other major players on modernisation - russian military does get new toys quite often these days on a stable basis. Same goes for upgrading old T-72 tanks for example. What's the point of building armada of Armata if modernised T-72 has basically the same capabilities as T-90 which is more than enough in most scenarios? T-72 Where used in Ukraine and Russia was able to get enough data from operations to do some improvements to the machines and even to upgrade the majority of them even before the 'hot' part of the conflict was over for them. Also how did you count the size of the economy exactly?
  - NicoJuicy 6y ago
    You can use wolfram alpha to get their GDP and re-calculate my statement. And considering Russia is marketing their Jets heavily to everyone, i think the aircraft stats are enough to make it obvious how ancient their army actually is ( majority is ~ 50 years old).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

namdnay 6y ago

The difference being that we suspect Putin has pretty much total control over his empire, whereas a US president for example operates with checks and balances

berdario 6y ago

I think that GP point might be about being able to direct the military and economic might. The US is surely ahead in terms of numbers... but even if they wanted to stop any military involvement in the middle east tomorrow, and pull back from NATO, there'd be a lot of push-back and it would heavily disappoint its allies. Compare with Russia: they have some involvement in Syria (and other places, I'm sure), but if they'd pull back from Syria, I'm not sure who else besides Assad would complain. From this point of view, their hands might not be as tied as the US' I agree that Russia counter-sanctions can be just a delusion, but I think that another interesting point is that sanctions aren't biting as hard as they could've in Russia, due to their massive reduction in public debt: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public-debt-falls-to-zero-a67238 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/09/11/russias-net-public... They had slow (or absent) growth, otoh.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

Putin is dangerous because he realised that in the Internet age, you can do incredible damage to a country with social media messaging, hacking, and bribery. The US has been using the media like this for decades, but it's always been considered a side game. Russia has made it a primary mode of attack - partly because it's vastly cheaper and more effective than spending extreme sums of money on super-weapons. So we know that Putin has been financing the subversion of social democracy and the promotion of far-right nationalist narratives in the US and the EU through a combination of direct funding, social media troll farming, and straightforward financially advantageous diplomacy - and possibly also direct election hacking, although so far that's been harder to prove. The UK has been almost destroyed by this. It's a shell of the country it was when the century started, and the poison of Brexit hasn't even worked its way fully through the system yet. I expect I'll get the usual downvotes for posting this out, but the downvoters might want to address the points made here before they waste their time on that: https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-backed-coup https://www.newlawjournal.co.uk/content/is-brexit-a-russia-b... There's much more detail about this in a book which is being released soon.

lovelyviking 6y ago
I do not understand why people downvote you if they are sincere to the truth. You points are correct and what West doesn't realise is that Putin is at war with West civilisation. He acts like it's a war and he thinks in terms of war. People do not realise, because it seems crazy to create war when there is no need for it, but this is exactly why they loose, because Putin uses it for his advantage. I just hope people would wake up and understand how serious threat is.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Disclaimer: I'm no politician or economist, but while I do believe the US has military superiority still, they won't be able to wage a large scale war at the moment; they simply cannot afford it. They would have to take out even more loans, and right now the US' money lenders are the UAE and China; given that they are both close to Russia, they may opt to not lend money to fund the US' wars. And even without the threat, they may opt to not lend the money because the US will never be able to pay it back. I suspect WW3 is kept at bay not because of MAD anymore, but because of financial interests. If a country decides "fuck it, we'll forfeit this debt", we'll likely see more armed conflicts. I don't see Russia opting for a conflict though, they too cannot afford it. Not unless they're backed by a well-to-do country like China. I don't believe China would become a direct aggressor either, if they would, then their economy would quickly grind to a halt due to sanctions and import stops from the US and Europe. They'd probably a proxy like North Korea.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
frockington1 6y ago
70% of US debt is owned by American citizens. I do agree with the premise of nobody going to war because they can't afford it. The only caveat I would add would that America tends to do pretty well when armed conflicts happen as they supply the world with weapons Souce: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-2121-trillion-of-us-debt-2018-08-21 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-owns-a-record-21...

NicoJuicy 6y ago

Russia's economy is the sum of 3 countries in Europe ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands would do) and they redirect an insane amount of their GDP % to military. But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_military_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_Russian_militar...

konart 6y ago
>But even then their army is ancient and mostly predates the fall of Soviet Union. >Post link to aircrafts stats only While it is true that Russia is behind the other major players on modernisation - russian military does get new toys quite often these days on a stable basis. Same goes for upgrading old T-72 tanks for example. What's the point of building armada of Armata if modernised T-72 has basically the same capabilities as T-90 which is more than enough in most scenarios? T-72 Where used in Ukraine and Russia was able to get enough data from operations to do some improvements to the machines and even to upgrade the majority of them even before the 'hot' part of the conflict was over for them. Also how did you count the size of the economy exactly?
- NicoJuicy 6y ago
  You can use wolfram alpha to get their GDP and re-calculate my statement. And considering Russia is marketing their Jets heavily to everyone, i think the aircraft stats are enough to make it obvious how ancient their army actually is ( majority is ~ 50 years old).
deleted 6y ago
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