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Maybe… Something to keep in mind is that land-locked countries experience slower economic growth and have lower GDPs than countries with access to ports. Russi

Maybe… Something to keep in mind is that land-locked countries experience slower economic growth and have lower GDPs than countries with access to ports. Russia is mostly restricted to their Black Sea ports but they still have something. Break Russia up and you’ll be condemning a lot of people to a lower standard of living long-term.

adventured 5y ago
> Break Russia up and you’ll be condemning a lot of people to a lower standard of living long-term. That's of course not necessarily true. You haven't factored in the retardation of economic outcome that the present union is causing because it can only exist through the extreme and persistent application of force (which is very substantially regressive for human development). The reason they keep getting authoritarians century after century is because Russia as it presently stands should not exist, they can only hold it together with force. That comprehensive application of force destroys liberty, creativity, free expression, economic growth, investment, and so on. You can simultaneously have economic negatives from the lack of a port, in a landlocked Russia spin-off state scenario, and be better off being out from under the forever strangulating authoritarian umbrella of big Russia. That is to say, that's just how horrific and dampening of human potential it is to be under the boot of authoritarian Russia. There's a good reason so many nations that were formerly dominated by Russia are now exceeding them in GDP per capita.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  There's a good reason so many nations that were formerly dominated by Russia are now exceeding them in GDP per capita. “Isn’t ruled by Vladimir Putin” is highly predictive of GDP, but “has a warm-water port” is far more predictive. Who is doing well? Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. Who isn’t doing well? Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Tajikistan… There are other variables. “Who has oil”, for example. But “who has unencumbered access to world trade through the sea” is the best.
- nevermindiguess 5y ago
  It would be interesting to hear why you think Russia is an authoritarian state. Have you lived there? Have you studied it deeply? Do you have reliable sources to substantiate your claim? You certainly repeat what the western media says, but they are hardly an independent or unbiased source (speaking of authoritarian regimes). To me it looks like you may be making a lot of assumptions without having first hand experience or professional knowledge on the subject.
  - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
    It's a preposterous notion to doubt that assertion (Russia is authoritarian). I have to believe that is a post by a Russian bot of some kind. {edit:disambiguate}
    - alex-ant 5y ago
      It is because I'm Russian, and I can confirm that it's an authoritarian state.
      - ghostwriter 5y ago
        how exactly are you confirming this? Please provide the benchmark.
      - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
        I'm in complete agreement. Sorry if I was ambiguous.
fulafel 5y ago
Russia has the #4 longest coastline of any country with access to many seas. "The coastline of Russia is shared with the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Sea of Azov to the southwest."
- alex-ant 5y ago
  The majority of this coastline spreads across the Arctics, so only Icebreakers can navigate there, the rest of its access to the ocean crosses other countries' territorial waters (Turkey and Japan for example) and can easily be blocked. Which is why Russia has never been a naval power.
  - rurban 5y ago
    The icebreaker story is not really relevant anymore. Old news die slow. Nowadays the Arctic routes are shippable through most of the year without icebreakers.
- duped 5y ago
  Disclaimer, I'm an armchair international relations guy Access to warm water ports has been a major driver in Russian foreign policy for centuries. Today they have access through Sevestapol and Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and Mediterranean port access to Tartus in Syria. In the east the major port is Vladivostok which is kept open with ice breakers. The security and economic consequences of lack of ports is a big problem. One of the major reasons they annexed Crimea was to guarantee access to the port without requiring a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv, but Sevestapol is now on the edge of a warzone with Ukrainian military just dozens of miles away and the administration not backing away from reclaiming their 2014 borders. Access to the Mediterranean requires bypassing Ukrainian security forces and the Bosporus controlled by Turkey, which is not allowing Russian ships through as a result of the war. To get goods or materiel through to Tartus they need to ship by rail through Georgia, Turkey, and northern Syria - again, major security problems. So the only major port for Russia is Vladivostok which is across Siberia and ices over in the winter. That makes using it as a major shipping and naval hub prohibitive. These issues have been around since Peter the Great expanded Russia into a global power, and even the Soviets struggled with naval power projection. Russia even more so today, and they're making their lives worse by invading Ukraine.
alex-ant 5y ago
What about Switzerland?
- adventured 5y ago
  Austria is also quite potent economically (ahead of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan in GDP per capita). Czechia and Slovakia are seeing their affluence rise, they've escaped the middle income trap and are heading into the lower end of the affluent group. Czechia is about as landlocked as it gets and yet their economy has increasingly prospered over the past few decades (they'll probably catch up to Spain in GDP per capita in the coming decade; and they're already roughly 3x that of Russia). Obviously helps a lot to have many excellent regional trading partners that are affluent.
  - CountSessine 5y ago
    All of these countries save Switzerland are within the EU customs union. Being land-locked is a disadvantage precisely because you have a limited number of countries to negotiate trade with and not much leverage. Countries with a port can have trade relationships with the entire world. Switzerland has always been able to/had to find a niche like banking or secrecy or regulatory arbitrage to prosper. But in theory they suffer from the same problem - limited trading partners and limited leverage.
electrondood 5y ago
If you look at the geographic economic distribution in Russia, this is already exactly the case. St. Petersburg and Moscow are wealthy. The entire rest of the landmass is quite poor.
journey_16162 5y ago
Not always. Czech Republic has a higher GDP per person than Poland. Poland is much bigger and has sea access. Both countries had a similar starting point after USSR collapse.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  Czeckia is in the EU customs union and therefore for the purposes of land-locked or not land-locked, Czeckia has ports at its disposal. In fact Czeckia can use Gdańsk without penalty. The reason landlocked countries have lower GDP is that they have to negotiate trade agreements at a disadvantage with small numbers of neighbours rather than just shipping goods to the whole world over the seas.

adventured 5y ago

> Break Russia up and you’ll be condemning a lot of people to a lower standard of living long-term. That's of course not necessarily true. You haven't factored in the retardation of economic outcome that the present union is causing because it can only exist through the extreme and persistent application of force (which is very substantially regressive for human development). The reason they keep getting authoritarians century after century is because Russia as it presently stands should not exist, they can only hold it together with force. That comprehensive application of force destroys liberty, creativity, free expression, economic growth, investment, and so on. You can simultaneously have economic negatives from the lack of a port, in a landlocked Russia spin-off state scenario, and be better off being out from under the forever strangulating authoritarian umbrella of big Russia. That is to say, that's just how horrific and dampening of human potential it is to be under the boot of authoritarian Russia. There's a good reason so many nations that were formerly dominated by Russia are now exceeding them in GDP per capita.

CountSessine 5y ago
There's a good reason so many nations that were formerly dominated by Russia are now exceeding them in GDP per capita. “Isn’t ruled by Vladimir Putin” is highly predictive of GDP, but “has a warm-water port” is far more predictive. Who is doing well? Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Georgia, Azerbaijan. Who isn’t doing well? Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Tajikistan… There are other variables. “Who has oil”, for example. But “who has unencumbered access to world trade through the sea” is the best.
nevermindiguess 5y ago
It would be interesting to hear why you think Russia is an authoritarian state. Have you lived there? Have you studied it deeply? Do you have reliable sources to substantiate your claim? You certainly repeat what the western media says, but they are hardly an independent or unbiased source (speaking of authoritarian regimes). To me it looks like you may be making a lot of assumptions without having first hand experience or professional knowledge on the subject.
- JoeAltmaier 5y ago
  It's a preposterous notion to doubt that assertion (Russia is authoritarian). I have to believe that is a post by a Russian bot of some kind. {edit:disambiguate}
  - alex-ant 5y ago
    It is because I'm Russian, and I can confirm that it's an authoritarian state.
    - ghostwriter 5y ago
      how exactly are you confirming this? Please provide the benchmark.
    - JoeAltmaier 5y ago
      I'm in complete agreement. Sorry if I was ambiguous.

fulafel 5y ago

Russia has the #4 longest coastline of any country with access to many seas. "The coastline of Russia is shared with the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caspian Sea, and Sea of Azov to the southwest."

alex-ant 5y ago
The majority of this coastline spreads across the Arctics, so only Icebreakers can navigate there, the rest of its access to the ocean crosses other countries' territorial waters (Turkey and Japan for example) and can easily be blocked. Which is why Russia has never been a naval power.
- rurban 5y ago
  The icebreaker story is not really relevant anymore. Old news die slow. Nowadays the Arctic routes are shippable through most of the year without icebreakers.
duped 5y ago
Disclaimer, I'm an armchair international relations guy Access to warm water ports has been a major driver in Russian foreign policy for centuries. Today they have access through Sevestapol and Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and Mediterranean port access to Tartus in Syria. In the east the major port is Vladivostok which is kept open with ice breakers. The security and economic consequences of lack of ports is a big problem. One of the major reasons they annexed Crimea was to guarantee access to the port without requiring a pro-Russian regime in Kyiv, but Sevestapol is now on the edge of a warzone with Ukrainian military just dozens of miles away and the administration not backing away from reclaiming their 2014 borders. Access to the Mediterranean requires bypassing Ukrainian security forces and the Bosporus controlled by Turkey, which is not allowing Russian ships through as a result of the war. To get goods or materiel through to Tartus they need to ship by rail through Georgia, Turkey, and northern Syria - again, major security problems. So the only major port for Russia is Vladivostok which is across Siberia and ices over in the winter. That makes using it as a major shipping and naval hub prohibitive. These issues have been around since Peter the Great expanded Russia into a global power, and even the Soviets struggled with naval power projection. Russia even more so today, and they're making their lives worse by invading Ukraine.

alex-ant 5y ago

What about Switzerland?

adventured 5y ago
Austria is also quite potent economically (ahead of Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Japan in GDP per capita). Czechia and Slovakia are seeing their affluence rise, they've escaped the middle income trap and are heading into the lower end of the affluent group. Czechia is about as landlocked as it gets and yet their economy has increasingly prospered over the past few decades (they'll probably catch up to Spain in GDP per capita in the coming decade; and they're already roughly 3x that of Russia). Obviously helps a lot to have many excellent regional trading partners that are affluent.
- CountSessine 5y ago
  All of these countries save Switzerland are within the EU customs union. Being land-locked is a disadvantage precisely because you have a limited number of countries to negotiate trade with and not much leverage. Countries with a port can have trade relationships with the entire world. Switzerland has always been able to/had to find a niche like banking or secrecy or regulatory arbitrage to prosper. But in theory they suffer from the same problem - limited trading partners and limited leverage.

electrondood 5y ago

If you look at the geographic economic distribution in Russia, this is already exactly the case. St. Petersburg and Moscow are wealthy. The entire rest of the landmass is quite poor.

journey_16162 5y ago

Not always. Czech Republic has a higher GDP per person than Poland. Poland is much bigger and has sea access. Both countries had a similar starting point after USSR collapse.

CountSessine 5y ago
Czeckia is in the EU customs union and therefore for the purposes of land-locked or not land-locked, Czeckia has ports at its disposal. In fact Czeckia can use Gdańsk without penalty. The reason landlocked countries have lower GDP is that they have to negotiate trade agreements at a disadvantage with small numbers of neighbours rather than just shipping goods to the whole world over the seas.