Russia and economic war by the west #2

Tolstoy wrote:

JohninMK wrote:Think of India during the time of the British Raj, India was the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire, because it could both have its resources stripped and shipped back to London while also being a huge (and guaranteed, competitors need not apply) market for goods exported from Britain.

That was also the only time when they made any kind of economic or social progress. With the Brits gone the locals failed to govern the country effectively. Something that happened to the ex Soviet countries of Central Asia.

And it happened in Russia itself, when the aristocracy and Tsarist officials were all run out of town

Lay off the generalisations.

Engine was financed because, at the time, there was a company in Kazan called MVEN, which got liquidated few years ago under suspicious circumstances and workers and part of the production was picked up on the cheap by oligarch Gregoriev ( think UZGA among other things). They had a small plane project similar to US Air tractor ( I don't remember model name). Raikhlin is also from Kazan. At the time, there was a push to build an aviation cluster in Kazan with many start ups in the field. I guess he saw what happened to most of them and went to Germany. It is not excluded that even FINAM, financier of the project, backed him in the endeavor, but that's only me speculating.

08:00 04.11.2022 (updated: 08:12 04.11.2022)
The West is waiting for the collapse of Russia

Victoria Nikiforova

According to our Western partners, we are finished. Well, that is, formally, we are still giving some signs of life. But it is worth a little more patience, tightening your belts, skipping, as the British say, another meal - and here it is happiness: the recalcitrant Russian "regime" is finally collapsing.

"What could demolish Putin?" asks American political scientist Daniel Treisman, and scatters a whole assortment of disaster movie scenarios in front of Foreign Affairs readers. One, however, he has to step back from the threshold. There will be no military coup, "most likely". Thank you, you are our benefactor, and on this as well.

Nevertheless, Treisman is trying to convince himself and the public that Russia's "collapse" will happen after all. It is useful to read his scripts - who, if not a strategic adversary, will see our pain points best of all?

The main point on which the author presses is the so-called vertical of power. Centralized management, Treisman believes, may not withstand an avalanche of stresses. Here the author sketches a whole apocalypse for Russia with bold, broad strokes. At one point, the stars will converge in such a way that failures on the Ukrainian front will aggravate intra-elite conflicts, at the same time a number of failed economic decisions will be made, budget revenues will decrease, protests against mobilization will go, and in parallel - strikes and demonstrations of workers.

Then there will be a "cascade of errors" in the control system, and the authorities will lose control over the country. This is a bad prospect for us, of course.

But what kind of failures at the front can we talk about if Russia has already grown vast territories and millions of wonderful people? The mobilization was successful, its shortcomings will undoubtedly become an occasion for further improvements in the army, but today it has already been completed.

As for economic decisions: our economists, to be honest, have earned themselves several Nobel Prizes over the past eight months. Of course, there were budget losses, but now we can clearly see why the "safety cushion" has been accumulating all these years.

As for strikes and demonstrations: here the author just needs to go out into the street where he lives there, in Harvard? And watch how American workers of all skin tones buzz. He certainly did not mix up the country?

Treisman is forced to admit: "catastrophe (in Russia) is not inevitable." But if it happens - and here our writer again dives into painfully voluptuous dreams: defeats at the front, large-scale protests, the activity of criminal groups - the author pumps everything cooler, but suddenly dries up. This whole postap will lead, in his opinion, only to a fall in Putin's rating. The President will decide not to participate in the 2024 elections, will nominate his successor, this will lead to an aggravation of the intra-elite struggle. The outcome of the 2024 elections will become unpredictable, the author sums up.

But yes, baby, this is a democracy. The result of the elections should be unpredictable. And no, democracy is not when the US Democratic Party or its protege wins all elections. It's hard to believe this, I understand.

Starting on a high note - now I will describe the collapse of Russia - the author, by the logic of his narrative, comes only to the well-known fact that in 2024 presidential elections will be held in Russia. Thank you, we already knew that.

A more serious analysis of the situation - how can we still put the squeeze on Russia - is offered by Treisman's colleagues literally on the neighboring pages of Foreign Affairs. Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Michael Kofman inform us that "Russia will not leave without a fight."

Through their mouths, official Washington is trying to record its victories on the economic front and calculate how long it will take for the complete and final defeat of Russia.

First, sanctions. Yes, until they gave the effect they were designed for. However, here we must look to the future and continue to put pressure. Russia will feel the real damage from them later (we have already heard this somewhere). For now, it is necessary to continue blocking the export of technology to the country, seeking the collapse of its automotive, aircraft manufacturing and defense industries.

Secondly, Europe's rejection of Russian energy carriers, a ban on Russian tanker insurance, and an oil price ceiling would significantly reduce budget revenues from energy sales and limit Moscow's ability to bargain with India and China.

And finally, the outflow of programmers and techies from Russia will limit the country's competitiveness for years to come.

“There will most likely not be a total collapse,” the authors argue. “However, Russia will plunge into decline, autarky and isolation from the world economy for many years. The Kremlin will become desperate and will ... violate the rules by which global trade operates.”

If we translate this into human language, it turns out that Moscow will, of course, bypass Western sanctions, build and develop its commercial alliances and partnerships around the world. Along with economic influence comes political influence. By the very force of things, this will violate those notorious "rules" that Washington so insists on, because they allow him to plunder the whole world in one person.

American authors call this the decline of Russia. To any open-minded reader, this appears to be building up an alternative center of power.

As for the "delayed effect" of the sanctions. Yes, this should not be taken lightly. Deficiencies in high-tech industries are real and dangerous. Of course, it is impossible to replace imports in general. However, the magic schemes of parallel imports can help a lot here.

Technical runners will, for the most part, be back. In the countries where they fled, to put it mildly, it is not very good with work, and remote work has become less and less popular lately. Together we will raise the country, circumvent sanctions, develop our high technologies.

It is also comforting that we have heard all these mantras about the decline of Russia many times before. In 2015, Mr. Obama told the city, so to speak, and the world that "Russia's economy is in tatters." Today, this can be said more about the US economy. Let's just keep silent about the European economy - it's either good or nothing about the dead.

The further you read your American colleagues, the more clearly you hear a purely Ukrainian question behind all their beautiful words: when is Russia already done? Well, just about, well, yesterday it should have collapsed, collapsed, decentralized, come to insignificance. But no, the stone flower does not come out.

Americans should look at the experience of their Ukrainian brothers. For many years - in fact, it all started 30 years ago - they console themselves with the hope that Russia is about to collapse and fall apart. Under these spells, more than one generation of people living in extreme poverty has grown up. Every year they live worse and worse. Today it is simply a failed state, where the only hope for survival is the Russian humanitarian aid.

Russia in parallel did nothing but grow rich and develop. The dogs barked - the caravan moved on.

Now exactly the same story is happening at the global level. The masses of the former golden billion are impoverished faster than during the Great Depression. The English skip meals. The Swiss buy firewood at crazy prices. The government teaches the Estonians to save on food - for some reason, the memory is especially etched "the best drink to quench your thirst is plain water."

All the seemingly ridiculous Davos predictions about showers once a week, 100 grams of chicken and "I have nothing, but I've never been so happy" come true with frightening speed. And even America, which is trying to prolong its prosperity at the expense of Europeans, is already being overwhelmed by a tsunami of poverty and depression.

Traditionally, when people get poorer in the States, they vote for the Democrats - they unfasten some benefits, keep the lower classes of society afloat. Today, the US economy is so bad that people go to vote for the Republicans - in the hope that at least they will fix something.

A fresh fact from the criminal chronicle well illustrates the scale of the economic problems of Americans. The other day, a married couple from Oklahoma committed suicide after shooting six of their children - from one to 13 years old. Relatives say that the main problem of a large family was loans - debts accumulated for 130 thousand dollars, there was no way to pay them back.

In general, the trend is clearly visible. The worse the country lives, the louder it promises Russia decline and collapse. This applies not only to Ukraine, but also to its Western partners. At some point, they go headlong into these mriyas, just not to see what is happening in their own countries.

In the meantime, the main economic problem in Russia, judging by the discussions in social networks, has become the question: should we spend millions of rubles on multi-day New Year's entertainment in megacities, or is it still slightly reduced?

In this regard, it seems very wise to work out the possibility of visa-free entry into Russia for foreigners. It would be great if people could shake the propaganda noodles out of their ears for at least a few days, come to us and look at our "decline" with their own eyes.

"Don't rush to bury us," I would like to say to our strategic partners. Not even an hour while you wait for the collapse of Russia, it will cover your own countries. What will you hope for then, for the Russian humanitarian aid? We will help, of course, not the first time. Delicious buckwheat is cooked in our field kitchens.