Russian defense spending is much larger, and more sustainable than it seems
By: Michael Kofman   1 day ago
Russian troops stand next to a train with "Syrian turning point" exhibition items organized by the Russian Defence Ministry, as it waits to depart from Kazansky railway station in Moscow on Feb. 23, 2019. (Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images)
The United States has a basic problem: Devising a strategy toward great power adversaries necessitates having some reasonable estimate of their economic and military power. We do not do this especially well.
Ask yourself: Do we really know how much our adversaries spend on their military, and what they are getting for their money? Russia, for example, presents a glaring problem for academic and policy circles alike. Most comparisons are done in current U.S. dollars based on prevailing exchange rates, making Russia’s economy seem the size of South Korea’s. This approach is useless for comparing defense spending, or the country’s purchasing power. Yet, it is used frequently to argue that despite a large military modernization program, and a sizable conventional and nuclear deterrent, Moscow is a paper tiger. As a consequence, the debate on relative military power and expectations of the future military balance is terribly warped by a low-information environment.
https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/05/03/russian-defense-spending-is-much-larger-and-more-sustainable-than-it-seems/
