3 Comments

Thank you Aaron,

You make two statements in the body, which led to a bit of confusion as to your main point:

"The Russian military spending AND military productive capacity in Dollar terms is equal to the U.S. or will be at some point" ... the first being calculated at R-MS: $963 billion the second being R-MPC: $427 billion. US-MS: $801 billion US-MPC: ? , C-MS: $293 billion C-MPC ?.

then

"We can also see that Russia's military industrial base ( R-MPC) as some point in early 2023 exceeded China's entire military estimated budget" ( C-MS)

Don't get me wrong, both can be true but it seems less important to compare Russia with China which can be additive not subtractive. Actually, your argument supports that the vast dual-use or non-military productive capacity of China (literally fueled by Russia) is much more important to a sanctioned Russia...and China would probably enjoy to have some real hypersonics soon.

One hopes that the better part of valor prevails, although sadly this is harder to imagine more than escalation.

Indeed, it would be interesting to read how you think a NATO capitulation would be allowed to play out.

Kudos to you. You are tackling a difficult subject.

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"We can also see that Russia's military industrial base at some point in early 2023 exceeded China's entire military estimated budget."

Assume there is a typo and "exceeded China" should be "exceeded the United States?"

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Thanks for engaging and checking the work. Not a typo. The military-industrial base (manufactured items) exceeds China's estimated budget (operations, procurement, pensions, etc).

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