Russia-Russia-Russia problems, real and imagined

From SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), World military expenditure grows to $1.8 trillion in 2018 04/29/2019:

Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 per cent from 2017, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). The five biggest spenders in 2018 were the United States, China, Saudi Arabia, India and France, which together accounted for 60 per cent of global military spending. Military spending by the USA increased for the first time since 2010, while spending by China grew for the 24th consecutive year. ...

At $61.4 billion, Russian military spending was the sixth highest in the world in 2018. Its spending decreased by 3.5 per cent compared with 2017. [my emphasis]

From the World Population Review, GDP Ranked by Country 2019 (accessed 05/08/2019):

Here is a list of the top ten countries with the highest GDP [$000]:

1. United States (GDP: $21,410,230)
2. China (GDP: $15,543,710)
3. Japan (GDP: $5,362,220)
4. Germany (GDP: $4,416,800)
5. India (GDP: $3,155,230)
6. France (GDP: $3,060,070)
7. United Kingdom (GDP: $3,022,580)
8. Italy (GDP: $2,261,460)
9. Brazil (GDP: $2,256,850)
10. Canada (GDP: $1,908,530)

There are more than one ways to calculate GDP. The same article provides the IMF's nominal GDP rankings, which include the same top ten countries, but with India, France, and the UK in a different order.

By the same measure in the numbered ranking table above, Russia with a GDP of under $1.8 trillion ranks 12th in size behind South Korea.

Three of the top ten countries above (China, India, and Brazil) have a per capita GDP lower than Russia's.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, as of May 2019 the ranking of nuclear-armed nations by the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads "deployed on intercontinental missiles and at heavy bomber bases" was:

1. US (1,600)
2. Russia (1,600)
3. France (280)
4. UK (120)

The total inventory, which includes warheads "retired, but still intact, warheads in the queue for dismantlement" gives the following ranking:

1. Russia (6,500)
2. US (6,185)
3. France (300)
4. China (290)
5. UK (215)
6. Israel (80)
7. Pakistan (140-150)
8. India (130-140)
9. North Korea (20-30)

Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda report on Russian nuclear forces, 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75:2 (2019). They write:

Russia’s nuclear modernization program is motivated in part by Moscow’s strong desire to maintain overall parity with the United States, but also by the Russian leadership’s apparent conviction that the US ballistic missile defense system constitutes a real future risk to the credibility of Russia’s retaliatory capability. Policy and strategy aside, the development of multiple weapon systems also indicates the strong influence of the military industrial complex on Russia’s nuclear posture planning.

The same authors also have prepared an overview of United States nuclear forces, 2019 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 75:3 (2019):

The US Navy used to have a nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile (the TLAM/N) but retired it in 2011 because it was redundant and no longer needed. All other nonstrategic nuclear weapons – with the exception of gravity bombs for fighter-bombers – have also been retired because there is no longer any military need for them, despite Russia’s larger nonstrategic nuclear weapons arsenal.

Russia's nuclear forces, in other words, give it a level of military firepower far out of proportion to their ranking in GDP and total military spending. But those forces are concentrated in maintaining the nuclear equilibrium of deterrence by mutual destruction which has been in place for decades. That means that their nuclear arsenal has limited effectiveness in swinging even neighboring countries to their purposes.

Nothing about the nuclear armaments state of the world should make anyone complacent. The world needs to move as fast as possible to reduce nuclear armaments and establish a more effeective nuclear nonproliferation program.

But the above considerations - military budgets, economic strength, nuclear firepower - are important to keep Russia's position in the world in decent perspective. Russia has an economy smaller than Italy's, and one dependent heavily on the energy industry. As a petrostate, it has the blessings and the curses that come with that status. And its ability to project conventional military power is decidedly limited in comparison to the two leading economic powers, the US and China.

Given all that, here are some bullet-points on relations with Russia, particularly US and European.

• Russian election interference is a real problem for countries like the US targeted by it. Defending election infrastructures is the most critical element of technical defense against that. The fact that the Trump Administration and the Republican Senate refuse to take the relatively inexpensive measures to do that right now is stunningly irresponsible. But there reluctance to do so probably has less to do with hoping for Russian election support - though they are pretty obviously counting on that for 2018 - than with the fact that the measures that would accomplish that include things like auditable paper trails for voting machines and honest voter-registration practices would also interfere with Republicans voter-suppression efforts directed against black and Latino citizens.
• Responses to improper interference, electoral or otherwise, should be proportional not only to the provocation but to the real power relations. Blowback is a real phenomenon. So American policymakers shouldn't be dumb in overreacting to provocations by a far weaker power like Russia.
• Oligarchies are corrupt. Petrostates have chronic tendencies toward corruption. The very fact that Russia has much more limited capacity for using military power and foreign aid compared to what the USSR deployed makes it more likely that they will make use of old-fashioned methods like corruption and blackmail to achieve the foreign policy objectives.
• Yes, Virginia, there is a military-industrial complex with enormous lobbying clout because it involves a torrent of public funds going to private businesses for often over-priced prducts and services. Arms industry lobbyists will always be tempted to encourage risky behavior by the US abroad - e.g., a war with Iran - because it looks good for business.
• As Kristensen and Korda note in their article on Russian nuclear forces, Russia also has a military-industrial complex whose effects can be just as baleful as the American version, though on a much smaller scale.
• The current state of the world power-balancing game is that Russia and China have relatively good relations, in contrast to China's relationship with the old Soviet Union. This gives Russia the ability to concentrate more of its foreign policy and military resources on the West, where it seeks to weaken the NATO military alliance and the EU.
• Support of some Russian policy or a generally pro-Russian foreign policy stance is not evidence of being in the Kremlin's pocket. China's and Russia's current relatively amiable relations do not mean that the regime in Beijing is controlled by Russia any more than was true with China and the USSR in 1960.
• Russia's disruptive goals in the US and Europe are not primarily ideological nor aimed mainly at installing governments with Russia-friendly policies. Their pragmatic policy goals are to enhance their relative power and freedom of action by reducing the ability of Western powers in particular to block them. The Trump Administration incompetence and the bitterly divisive white supremacist politics it pursues internally can be just as useful for Vladimir Putin's goals as installing active policy supporters or targets of blackmail into power.
• At the same time, US and NATO regime change operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya have been various degrees of disastrous. This year's regime change effort in Venezuela has been more a pitiful, embarrassing farce. US policymakers should take a hint from those experiences. So should Russian ones. So should Americans inclined to think that Russia's regime change efforts or other policy adventures are somehow super-villain levels of efficient. Even Russia's military efforts in Georgia and Ukraine have been a heavy lift. And neither of those countries are in that top ten GDP or military-power lists. Nor do they have nuclear weapons, although surely some Ukrainians regret having given theirs up in the 1990s.
• The US and Russia have both competing and common interests. Both sides need to use good sense in managing them. Notably, whatever relative advantage one country might get over the other by blowing up the planet or letting catastrophic climate change proceed unchecked are far outweighed by the disadvantages.
• As "realist" foreign policy theorists like Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have been explaining for years, China is the world's rising power. Adjusting to that reality will be a central elements of US, Russian, and European foreign policies for decades. Trying to stage a Cold War II between the US and Russia will not make that process easier on either country.
• The Obama Administration's supposed foreign policy mantra, Don't Do Stupid Stuff (polite version), may not have been one they applied intensively enough. But it's still a good guideline for, you know, not doing stupid stuff.