Quote from: Hydrogen on Today at 03:24:00 AM

During World War II the world's major powers were bombed back to the stone age. With the exception of two nations. Russia and the united states. This set the stage for america and russia to emerge as the world's dominant superpowers leading into the cold war, korean war and vietnam war which followed.

Both the USSR and USA enjoyed the luxury of surviving World War II with their territories and economies largely intact. Profiting handsomely by loaning capital to other nations to rebuild. While the rest of the world toiled under debt and reconstruction efforts.

Looking at the current era a similar trend could emerge. America, the european union and china all carry large ratios of debt to GDP close to 100%. Russia's debt to GDP ratio is by far the smallest of any major power at around 20%. If a major recession hit global markets a case could be made for russia's government and economy being best structured to weather it. Russia is one of the most self sufficient nations in terms of raw materials, food and energy production. Russia also has many other world powers reliant and dependent on them for natural gas and other resources.

Long story short russia has many advantages over the USA, EU and china if an economic crisis hits.

If global markets are devastated by a crisis, russia is (in my opinion) the number #1 prospect to emerge as the next dominant superpower.

To avoid this, I think the united states would do well to keep its economy strong. As a hedge against russian encroachment. There isn't much alternative deterrent.

While russia's invasion of ukraine has stalled. Russia isn't trying very hard. They don't have to. They simply have to wait for the next big economic crisis when free money and support thrown at ukraine can no longer be funded. Then resistance may well crumble.

The best deterrent against invasion and war may be a strong economy with enough liquidity to make invasion too high priced too consider. Our current era with high deficits and weak economies could be interpreted as an open invitation for ambitious regimes like russia to invade us.

On the plus side if russia is the next dominant superpower they may be bitcoin friendly. At least that would be one positive thing we might look forward to in the horror show that could be the future.

Quite a few of the facts are wrong and quite a few of the conclusions:

- UK was not bombed to the stone age in any manner. Only Germany, Japan, part of Russia... not even France as the defeat was quick and swift.
- US profited from lending, the USSR simply kept the territories occupied against their will.

Russia's GDP is negligible. Seriously, is even lower than Italy's. The strategy from Russia is to pump and hype: great army, great technology, great resources, nuclear power... yet when they are faced with an obstacle all that fades away:

- Technology is reliant on western supplies and intellectual property.
- The army is mostly from the 90's and unsuited for modern operations.
- Their new status as invaders and a threat to any border country will damage their exporting capability.
- Their status as sanctioned country will prevent investment in CAPEX, critical to maintain production in the mid term.
- Re "Russia not trying hard" is wrong. It is trying to the limit of the resources that can spare. Russia has managed to make enemies of everyone around (even China is more afraid than friendly) and have to keep their best shots for self defence and to keep their puppets status - thus they have sent to Ukraine everything else.
- Russia's GDP is set to severely shrink. What you call and advantage is actually despotism: keeping the population silent about the economic impact. Russia is looking half good due to sky-high prices of commodities, but that is cyclical not permanent.

I do agree that US has to make sure this war does not pay, but Russia is gone as a superpower and may even not preserve the regional power status for more than a couple of decades as they are unable to sustain the technologic advances.