Russo-Ukrainian War 2014-23 and Invasion

[Josquius]

I bet there were people in like the mid-80s, talking how the Eastern Bloc economies weren't that bad, just look at the stats they are producing.

Indeed there were. IIRC there were stats saying the East German Economy was one of the top 20 in the world or something. LOL.

Being the top 20 in the world in 1985 wasn't saying much.  And I don't think anyone in the West was saying that wasn't that bad, despite the experience Brain had as a young person of unknown age.

I don't remember exactly where it ranked but it was somewhere in there. And I certainly remember the West Germans seeing what the state of East Germany was really like and were appalled by how bad it was compared to what was generally understood by the numbers we had been looking at previously.

Wasn't this something that developed however?
As I understand it in the 70s it wasn't so bad but in the 80s things unravelled fast.

[Zanza]

The East German economy was terrible when it came to competing within a united Germany. The extreme economic shock of joining West Germany with zero trade barriers or anything else giving them time to adjust made a lot of economic activity uncompetitive immediately.

That said, in say 1985, the GDR certainly had significant economic output. The figures on Wiki (from the CIA Factbook) suggest that its aggregate output was sufficient for a top twenty ranking. Could be. By then a lot of the "third world" was really poor.

[Valmy]

Wasn't this something that developed however?
As I understand it in the 70s it wasn't so bad but in the 80s things unravelled fast.

Perhaps. The West might just not have realized how fast things were unraveling.

Russia is a massive country with tons of resources, for it to continually economically fail takes some real effort.

[Sheilbh]

That said, in say 1985, the GDR certainly had significant economic output. The figures on Wiki (from the CIA Factbook) suggest that its aggregate output was sufficient for a top twenty ranking. Could be. By then a lot of the "third world" was really poor.

Still are. Top ten world economies are US, China, Germany, Japan, India, UK, France, Brazil, Italy and Canada. The next 10 has Mexico and Indonesia as the only arguably "developing" countries.

The German economy, for example, is still about 3 times the size of Nigeria's.

An awful, awful lot of those stats showing capitalist success in the last 35 years are real - but also to a huge extent explained by China and India.

[Zanza]

Yes, but by 1985, even countries like Spain, South Korea or Taiwan were still rather poor.

[Tamas]

All I am saying is that I am getting Erdogan the liberal liberator of religious folks vibes from you guys on this, from many years ago.

Putin going hat in hand for 1950s level artillery ammunition to North Korea, alone, should confirm it to you that they are NOT doing well.

I remember a couple of months ago there was a thing when Putin himself commented on the lack of chicken in stores, blaming the miscalculation of imports or some such.

Sure they will probably manage a slow slide down, but you are foolish to draw conclusions based on data coming out of that place.

[Sheilbh]

For sure - and I think things have improved a lot for the very poorest states.

[The Minsky Moment]

I wonder if the example of the Russian economy is another data point to challenge the notion that free trade is automatically the superior economic choice.  There is an obvious first-order advantage to free trade, but I wonder if people are downplaying the second-order disadvantages (such as deindustrialization, increasing income inequality, and increased brittleness of supply chains). 

Russia is a bad example for making that point because its manufacturing industry is crap. It's a raw material exporter that imports most industrial goods and machine tools.  On semiconductors specifically, it has no domestic production worthy of the name.  But it has been able to procure what it needs through gray market imports, smuggling, and dissembling imported consumer products.  It's possible to operate this way but no one would do it deliberately.

I would also make a distinction between trade policy on the one hand, and policies for preserving a defense industrial base.  As Otto indicated above, during the Cold War, the US pursued both and that has basically been the Biden-Sullivan plan.

[crazy canuck]

I bet there were people in like the mid-80s, talking how the Eastern Bloc economies weren't that bad, just look at the stats they are producing.

Indeed there were. IIRC there were stats saying the East German Economy was one of the top 20 in the world or something. LOL.

Being the top 20 in the world in 1985 wasn't saying much.  And I don't think anyone in the West was saying that wasn't that bad, despite the experience Brain had as a young person of unknown age.

I don't remember exactly where it ranked but it was somewhere in there. And I certainly remember the West Germans seeing what the state of East Germany was really like and were appalled by how bad it was compared to what was generally understood by the numbers we had been looking at previously.

Yeah, there was a reason the Berlin wall came down in 89.  And that reason had nothing to do with people saying things were not that bad in East Germany.

[DGuller]

But even outside of defense considerations, there is something to be said that competitive advantage doesn't always materialize naturally.  Sometimes it exists because of dynamics that feed on themselves (skilled labors wants to work in places where there is skilled labor, like in Silicon Valley).  The way these dynamics get seeded before they start feeding on themselves is often an accident of history, but maybe there is a better way than just hoping that these accidents happen in your favor.

[crazy canuck]

All I am saying is that I am getting Erdogan the liberal liberator of religious folks vibes from you guys on this, from many years ago.

Putin going hat in hand for 1950s level artillery ammunition to North Korea, alone, should confirm it to you that they are NOT doing well.

I remember a couple of months ago there was a thing when Putin himself commented on the lack of chicken in stores, blaming the miscalculation of imports or some such.

Sure they will probably manage a slow slide down, but you are foolish to draw conclusions based on data coming out of that place.

But the conclusion is that they are managing to ramp up their war time economy at the price have suffering a slide down from where they could have been if there had been no war.

What is it you are disagreeing with?

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the simplest take is: Russia has not found "one simple trick" to have a winning economy despite doing everything wrong. They've simply proven that a vast country with vast natural resources and 75% of the world more than happy to trade with them can keep on keeping on as a crappy country. They also proved that back during the Soviet era.

There's few points in the history of the Soviet Union where anyone would think their economy was something to emulate, but there's a difference between "robust, winning economy" and "complete collapse." The Russians have always existed somewhere in between those two things, rarely at the extremes.

[Tamas]

All I am saying is that I am getting Erdogan the liberal liberator of religious folks vibes from you guys on this, from many years ago.

Putin going hat in hand for 1950s level artillery ammunition to North Korea, alone, should confirm it to you that they are NOT doing well.

I remember a couple of months ago there was a thing when Putin himself commented on the lack of chicken in stores, blaming the miscalculation of imports or some such.

Sure they will probably manage a slow slide down, but you are foolish to draw conclusions based on data coming out of that place.

But the conclusion is that they are managing to ramp up their war time economy at the price have suffering a slide down from where they could have been if there had been no war.

What is it you are disagreeing with?

I disagree with the sentiment that Russia is doing alright.

And their war economy has been ramping up like hell since April and all I have seen evidence of that is terror bombing using Iranian drones, and ww1 level advance of the front using Chinese buggies and North Korean ammo.

[crazy canuck]

This is a bit like the observation that someone said the Eastern bloc was doing alright in the 80s. Nobody said that, except maybe someone where Brain grew up, but the Warsaw Pact was seen as a threat.  Those are two very different things.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

And apparently gerasimov is out.
Just not out of a window... yet