U.S. Strategy and the Real Lessons of the War in Ukraine: From Cooperation with Russia and China to Lasting Confrontation
March 14, 2022
No one can yet predict just how much of a human tragedy the Russian invasion of Ukraine will create. What the U.S. and its strategic partners can predict, however, is that Russia will be a lasting threat as long as Putin or anyone like him remains in power. What is also equally clear is that while China may be less openly provocative and threatening, its competition with the United States presents a steadily growing threat, and China is moving from cooperation and civil competition to the possibility of a major military confrontation as well. If anything, President Xi has already proved that China can create a far more effective threat than Russia over the coming decade, and President Xi already controls a far a larger economy than President Putin.
China already sharply outspends Russia in building up its military forces. The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) estimates that Russia officially spent only $62.2 billion in FY 2021, although this is a high estimate based on comparative purchasing power – and it could be as high as $178 billion. Russia’s military spending is sharply limited by its weak economy, and it cannot credibly do anything in the face of continued sanctions that will allow it to compete with the IISS estimate of $754 billion for the United States and over $300 billion for NATO European countries.
The World Bank does estimate that Russia did partly recover from the breakup of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) from a gross national product (GNP) of only $667 billion in 1998 to $1,416 billion in 2020 (measured in constant 2015 dollars), but this compares to $19,435 billion for the U.S. in 2020 (14 times larger) and $13,886 for the European Union (9.8 times larger).
https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-strategy-and-real-lessons-war-ukraine-cooperation-russia-and-china-lasting-confrontation
