At the moment the Russian economy is equivalent to about 1/20 of the economy of NATO.
Answering aggression, threats, and building its military power on NATO expansion, Moscow will only reduce your problem with the Alliance. Such actions will cause even more concern among Russia’s neighbors, forcing them to improve their defenses and in parallel to appeal to NATO for additional military aid. And NATO is ready to go on maintenance and disincentives not only on its Eastern flank, but also in its “partner” countries – Sweden, Finland, Ukraine and Georgia.
Exactly the same conclusion, in my opinion, should be drawn from the Russian invasion in Syria. From a purely military point of view, the intervention was extremely successful – at least as of the moment. She also helped the Kremlin to achieve some of its goals in Syria and unambiguously worsened the problem of the European migration and security.
But this intervention did not help to reduce the tension in relations with Ukraine, to stabilize the Donbass, to convince the West to accept the annexation of Crimea or mitigate economic sanctions, and did not stop the strengthening of the Eastern flank of NATO. Rather, it had the opposite effect.
The Obama administration recently asked Congress to increase spending on the European programme for strengthening safeguards allies four times, NATO is going to announce additional guarantees and measures of containment; and the countries-NATO partners continue to increase defense spending and to deepen cooperation with the Alliance.
One of the reasons why the balance of power in Moscow and the West in the security sphere in the next few years is not best for the Kremlin, is obvious: the Russian economy is in trouble. These problems occurred even before the Ukrainian crisis, the collapse in oil prices and Western sanctions against Russia in response to annexation of Crimea and destabilization of the Donbas even more worsened the economic situation of the country.
It is also clear what impact the economic crisis will have on the situation in the security sphere. The Kremlin will be faced with increasingly difficult decisions: the leaders of the country have to cut back on social programs, to freeze pensions, to decide whether to grant financial assistance to regional authorities whether to cut defense spending and so on.
While the Kremlin made it clear that defense spending have priority, but the fiscal pressure continues to grow. In the current fiscal year, all state programs will be cut by 10% except for military spending, which will reduce by 5%. But it’s unclear how long the Kremlin can continue to choose cannon instead of bread.
At the moment the Russian economy is equivalent to about 1/20 of the economy of NATO, so that it will not be able to overtake the West in defense spending even under the best of circumstances. But the situation in Russia is aggravated by the fact that its actions in Ukraine, as well as the security threats faced by Europe because of the situation in the middle East, contribute to a significant increase of costs of the Alliance on defense – both in absolute terms and as a share of GDP.
Edward Walker, Eurasian Geopolitics (translation is “modern times”)
