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Have you ever seen a freight train fly? That is the image that keeps coming into my head when I consider the situation Russia is in. Russia is weighed down by alcoholism, a lack of development, out-of-date infrastructure, an economy on the brink and a rapidly aging population. That was before the war. Today, with the exodus of the young professionals who had the sense to escape early on and the deaths of so many who did not, everything is worse. In exchange for a slice of Ukrainian territory, they have sacrificed even more of their future.
As a sort of twisted insight into this reality, a recent Wall Street Journal article highlighted the economic benefits poor regions have seen — due to cash payments for those who have been killed in battle. A 35-year-old man can be expected to earn more for his family, dead on the battlefield, than he would have over 25 years of working, assuming he had a full-time job. In reading the article, I detected a tone of near-celebration among the women left behind. They are buying apartments and cars — and commemorative plaques to the men who paid for it all with their lives. There's a problem with this zoomed-in economic perspective. On the battlefield that 35-year-old man added nothing to the Russian economy. Because of those losses, the net present value of the Russian state is plummeting.
They are like a train rushing along a track that heads straight into a mountain. They are getting heavier and heavier as they go. And they are hoping, somehow, to gain enough speed to take off.
It isn't going to happen.
None of this means Russia can't "win the war." Ukraine is also suffering. Ukraine has nowhere near the manpower and the Ukrainians, after the history of the early 1990s promises, can't trust any security guarantee offered by the United States or Europe. Of course, given the track record of Russia in Moldova, Georgia, Chechnya and elsewhere, the Ukrainians also have zero trust in any agreements signed by the Russian State. As Darth Putin puts it so succinctly: the Warsaw Pact is "the only modern mutual defense alliance in history to repeatedly attack itself."
Given all the above, what kind of off-ramp can there possibly be? Do these states keep throwing lives at each other until their respective trains crash headlong into the mountain? Does Russia expand its campaign of sabotage against the West, hoping to draw NATO troops in so they have the honor of at least losing to what they consider a peer? Do they start a nuclear conflict, unwilling to face the prospect that everything has truly and irredeemably gone sideways? Do they invite the Chinese into their war, capturing Ukraine but surrendering their own independence in the process?
None of these possibilities seem the least bit hopeful. As much as Trump has talked about phone calls bringing an end to the war, it seems tremendously unlikely. Russia won't surrender what they've captured, Ukraine won't trust Russia, and NATO soldiers won't stand at the front. What hope can there possibly be for a ceasefire, much less a lasting peace?
In reality, hope abounds so long as you know where to look for it.
Ukraine won't agree to a ceasefire because they can't trust Russia. But what if they don't need to trust Russia? What if a ceasefire, even one that leaves Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory and cedes conquered territory in Kursk, is actually a path to Ukrainian security and long-term independence?
It is critical to remember that a ceasefire is not a ceasewar. A ceasefire is simply an opportunity for both sides in a conflict to regroup and redouble their capacity to fight the next round of war. Israel and Hezbollah had a ceasefire in 2006. Until recently, it looked as if Hezbollah 'won the ceasefire' by building up what seemed to be an overwhelming rocket capacity in the south of Lebanon. In fact, much more quietly, Israel was the winner of that round of non-fighting. In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, if there is a ceasefire and Russia rebuilds its capacity faster than Ukraine does, then there will be another round of warfare within a year or two. Putin's legitimacy rests on it. The ceasefire will have served Russian purposes and extended their warfighting capacity. On the other hand, if there is a ceasefire and Ukraine outgrows and outbuilds Russia then the ceasefire will be continually extended until the present Russian government and foreign policies are abandoned.
It is this concept that serves as the key to enabling Ukrainian security under the Trump administration and beyond.
NATO countries, given rising global threats, need to raise their defense expenditures, possibly by as much as 1% of GDP. Due to their provision to Ukraine, NATO members have severe shortages of critical armaments. Among the items they do have, many are outdated in the context of 21st-century warfare (the best in European and American equipment barely made a dent in the great offensive of the summer of 2023). Some of the needed defense spending will go to top-line weapons systems like fighter jets and ships. However, significant spending is needed in more mundane areas: ballistic missiles, artillery shells, mortars, drones, body armor, armored vehicles, howitzers, etc...
For its part, Ukraine has historically been a major manufacturer of weapons. Since the 2022 re-invasion, they have re-upped their capacity and are continuing to expand it. They are, in some areas, producing among the most advanced and battle-tested war-fighting technology in the world.
The result is a match made on Earth.
In order to help address NATO's own issues, NATO members could commit to spending 0.1% of their GDP on purchasing Ukrainian arms. The combined GDP of NATO is 46 trillion dollars, so this is 46 billion dollars — or almost exactly 1/4 of the Ukrainian GDP. Just as the rest of the world can buy Ukrainian grain, vodka and software services, the Western world would be encouraged to buy Ukrainian arms.
NATO members could purchase whatever they want from whichever Ukrainian manufacturers they want, including low-cost drones, discount howitzers... Due to Western regulations, Western quality and purchasing requirements would apply, raising the quality of the Ukrainian industry as a whole. If Ukrainian companies are successful in the competition for these arms dollars, they could expect to sell ever more into NATO stockpiles.
The result would be a rearming of NATO, massive growth in the Ukrainian arms industry, a strengthened bulwark against Russian aggression and the underwriting of the rebirth of the Ukrainian economy — all without the corrupting influence of aid dollars or the need to trust security guarantees that never stand up in the face of Realpolitik.
Ukraine is often referred to as Europe's breadbasket. Perhaps it would benefit everybody (except Vladimir Putin himself) if Ukraine became the armory as well.
Discussion (133)
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Every assertion regarding Russia in the above paragraph, which serves as the foundational set of premises underlying this post, is as wrong as John McCain's famous charicaturization of it as merely a "gas station masquerading as a country".
Would you be kind enough to provide the source(s) upon which your above assertions rely, Mr. Cox? I'd like to compare them to the ones I've been relying on, which I would of course provide in response.
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I don't really understand certain Westerners willingness to close their ears and shout "LALALALALA" when it comes to Russia. We saw it with the Marxist/Socialists of the left until Stalin finally died and now we're seeing it with the Putin fanboys on the right. We saw it in the latter stages of the Czar's rule when folks pointed at their shiny army and said "look, Russia, world power." Everybody seems to do it so long as Russia can somehow represent what they don't like about their own society.
But through it all, Russian society has been deeply ill for as long as there has been Russian society.
You want current problems? Check out iWe's post quoting Russian business leaders.
You want prior problems?
rapidly aging population
Russia's fertility rate is 1.42 children/woman. It will fall because the child-bearing cohort is aging out. The average age of women is 43.5. Men are 37.6 (because they don't live as long). Life expectancy is 70 - before the war.
The US may not be smoking these figure (1.65 children/woman, average age 38.5, life expectancy 79.3). But they are doing far better in every category.
terrible economy
The GDP of Russia prior to the war was 1.84 trillion. That was $12,500 USD/person. Honest figures no longer exist. The energy sector was about 18% of the total economy. The US was about 6%. The UAE is 47%. So Russia has a poor society that is halfway to pure oil economy status. They aren't just a gas station. But consider that all of industry is just 26% of the economy. This means just 8% is industry other than oil and gas. Of that industrial production, 25% is mining, which is about 6%. This means 2%, 2%, is in other industry, like manufacturing. The US, by comparison, has 13.5% of its economy in industry other than oil and mining. Russia is a poor state with little industry outside of petrochemicals and raw materials extraction. So they are a gas station with a rock shop on the side.
alcoholism
In 2022, Russian purchased 2.2 billion liters of hard alcohol. That is 15 liters per living person per year. Let's fairly consider that children and women tend to consume far less than the 54 million Russian men aged 15 and up. Say they partake of 75% of those spirits. That's 20 liters per adult male. That's 440 shots a year. Excluding all other alcohol, of course. I dunno, that seems like a lot to me. And that's in the face of harsh anti-alcoholism laws.
Out-of-date infrastructure
The iWe post makes this pretty clear. As does the lack of productive industry outside of oil and gas.
summary
Of course, the clearest sign is Russia's struggles against Ukraine. Ukraine is also a messed up country. It's per-capita GDP was only $5,000 when Russia invaded. It has only 37 million people vs. 143 million. And yet Russia couldn't conquer it. And I don't mean couldn't like 'couldn't deal with the guerilla warfare afterwards.' I mean couldn't as in 'couldn't even manage to initially capture the territory.'
Sure, NATO provided weapons - but not men. And if Russian technology and industry were decent, those weapons shouldn't have been a serious counterpoint considering how overwhelmingly Ukraine was outnumbered. Heck, Ukraine didn't have a navy and basically doesn't have an air force and yet they've managed (often through their own innovations) to hold Russia back, sink quite a few Russian ships and limit Russian overflights of their territory.
Again, Ukraine is deeply messed up. Russia's problems in dealing with them are by themselves a condemnation of Russian society, industry and government.
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China and much of Asia (I'm looking at you S. Korea and Japan) is in steep demographic decline. It begs the question; what will happen to these once major (and nuclear armed) powers? Do Russian and China go out loudly, or quietly?
In fact, the world is experiencing demographic decline. We agonize about immigration now, but soon enough all the developed world will realize that there are no more immigrants to supplant their declining, domestic populations.
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Yup. Each one is different though. South Korea has a shrinking and aging population and manufacturing of 377 billion USD. Japan has 820 billion. China has 4.6 trillion. Russia has 250B. Short of nuclear weapons, China's going out loudly can be a whole lot louder than anybody else's. Heck, South Korea could go out far more loudly than Russia.
The world's greatest resource is people. People can take a country without natural resources (e.g. Japan) and make it into a world power. As these populations age and they just lack the capability to feed their own elderly there will be a resetting of population. If productivity doesn't increase exponentially a whole lot of fizzling should be expected.
Russia is trying to go boom, but really it is fizzling. It is spending able-bodied men by the hundreds of thousands trying to overwhelm a tiny and poor foe and it is failing. All it is doing is accelerating the fizz - like taking the cap off a bottle of soda that's already going flat. Without going nuclear, there won't be a big bang.
China is another story. They have the same demographic problems but have truly massive scale. Also, they can make things. Can you imagine a war kicked off with Chinese electric cars becoming mobile bombs? There must be a very very real interest in helping China fizzle and the increasingly obvious social problems within the country might just do the trick.
Immigration is great - so long as you pick the immigrants :) And, yes, even then there are problems.
There is one exception to your rule, albeit a little one. Israel is well above replacement rate and is a developed country.
If AI were better, it might be able to do things like run logistics, factories, cafes and mow lawns - but it isn't there and probably won't be in time. The lack of practical energy infrastructure development makes that more likely, not less. The US debt, with future unbalanced Social Security and Medicare payments factored in, is something well north of 150 trillion. That represents future production needs that won't be met. I like to describe as history's greatest free rider problem - birth control and social security meant you could have all the fun and depend on somebody else's kids to produce the stuff you'd need when you got older.
But nobody else had kids.
It is going to get very very nasty.
Russia is just getting there sooner and in far worse shape.
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I think the analogy of a train hitting a mountain is wrong. It is more like a train that transition from the plains to the foothills and is heading up the mountain where the incline is getting steeper. Does the engine (oil) have enough power to continue up the hill or does the train grind to a halt? If Trump has his way, oil prices should drop by 50% over the next 18 months. That's gonna hurt. China and India have a limitless demand for energy, so that will help.
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