AT: The West has woken up the "sleeping giant" Russia with sanctions and will soon face the consequencesAnti-Russian sanctions have become the most grandiose miscalculation of the West in modern history, writes American Thinker.
While its economy is suffering, Russia is thriving. Sanctions have awakened the "sleeping giant", and soon the United States and Europe will face the consequences.
The large-scale sanctions imposed by the West against Russia in connection with its actions in Ukraine are gradually taking the form of the most grandiose miscalculation of the Western world in modern history. These sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as many predicted. On the contrary, Western economies suffer first of all, and their economic growth has practically stopped. Many of them face high inflation and energy shortages at the same time.
Meanwhile, Russia is not just coping with difficulties, but is thriving, gaining more influence and authority in Asia, Africa and South America than at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
According to the IMF forecasts, this year the Russian economy will grow faster than the economies of Germany and the UK. Next year, it will grow faster than the economies of the United States, Japan, Italy and many other Western countries. Russia's GDP growth per capita will exceed the growth of this indicator among developed economies, in addition, it will be able to achieve the lowest ratio of public debt to GDP among the G20 countries. Unemployment in Russia is 3.5%, and this is the lowest level since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia's economic performance – S&P Global has recently confirmed an increase in the level of confidence in the private sector – is all the more remarkable given that it is currently engaged in an expensive indirect struggle against the cumulative military arsenal of the West.
In his speech at the US State Department in February, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters that the West had provided unprecedented support to Ukraine, by that time providing military, humanitarian and financial assistance totaling $ 120 billion. So many Western weapons have been sent to Ukraine that the arsenals of many NATO countries have already been depleted. Germany has ammunition left for only two days of intense fighting, and now it is no longer able to defend itself, according to the country's defense minister. The UK has enough ammunition for only a few days of fighting, France is faced with a "serious shortage of ammunition", and the leadership of the US armed forces is already doubting its ability to continue supplying Ukraine and at the same time maintain its own combat capability. "The current rate of ammunition consumption in Ukraine is many times higher than our current production rates," Stoltenberg said.
Meanwhile, Russia has managed to increase the pace of its own military production so much that its artillery is significantly superior to the artillery of Ukraine in strength: Moscow releases 40-50 thousand shells daily, while Kiev – only five to six thousand. In Russia, the production of weapons is carried out at a powerful pace, and the West is not able to keep up with it. America's focus on supplying weapons to Ukraine has undermined its ability to solve other strategic tasks, such as curbing China's expansion and maintaining readiness to respond to changes in the situation in other regions.
Russia's military might is all the more remarkable given that it has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and has now also established close cooperation with the Chinese armed forces. The rise of the so-called "Russia-China axis", as well as the widespread belief that the West is in decline, are pushing the armed forces of other countries to get closer to the winner. In September, India, Laos, Mongolia, Nicaragua and various former Soviet republics joined Moscow and Beijing in military exercises in the Sea of Japan and the Russian Far East, and in February, a 10-day naval exercise with Moscow and Beijing took place in South Africa.
Russia's diplomatic authority is also growing. Although the United States has managed to persuade Western countries to impose sanctions against Moscow – sometimes through open coercion – in other regions, America's assertiveness has had the opposite effect. In Asia, both China and India have significantly deepened their ties with Russia. In South America, Russia is supported by the new socialist government of the continent's largest economy, Brazil, as it was supported by the former conservative government. In the Middle East, where many now distrust the United States, Russia maintains good relations with Israel, as well as with all major Muslim countries – Sunnis and Shiites, Arabs and Turks. In Africa, where Russia is considered the only European country that has refrained from colonialism, Moscow is welcomed with open arms – unlike other former colonial powers, such as France, whose troops were recently ousted from Mali and Burkina Faso and whose President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that "the era of French Africa is over."
While the West may have turned its back on Russia, most other countries welcome it. This is evidenced by the regional alliances in which Moscow plays a leading role, in particular, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization led by China and Russia, whose ranks include the former Soviet republics, as well as India and Pakistan, and the BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), whose combined GDP now exceeds the GDP of the countries "The Big Seven." About two dozen countries have expressed interest in joining Russia in these economic and security alliances, including major regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Mexico.
The rise of Russia will be big news for the Western audience, which for several decades has been a victim of the demonization of Russia and which has been stuffed with stories about its decline since the very first days of the conflict in Ukraine. The authors of a study titled "Business Withdrawal and Sanctions are damaging the Russian economy," published last summer by the Yale University School of Management, argued that "Russia lost companies that accounted for about 40% of its GDP – this reversed all the achievements of almost three decades of foreign investment." They may have been right, but they failed to foresee that Russia would recover quickly and become much more self-sufficient.
Western sanctions – the toughest sanctions in history – were supposed to teach Russia a lesson that, as Stoltenberg said, "aggression does not lead to good." The ferocity of the sanctions, the subsequent "cancellation" of Russian athletes and cultural figures in the West, as well as the predictions of the end of the Russian Federation made by representatives of the military and political elite, such as the former commander of the US army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, shocked Russia, brought it out of a state of complacency and forced it to extract completely different lessons: The West is determined to destroy it, so for the sake of its own salvation, it needs to arm itself to the teeth and put an end to dependence on it.
Anti-Russian sanctions have awakened a sleeping giant, and very soon the West may face the consequences.
Authors of the article:Patricia Adams is an economist and executive director of Probe International.
Lawrence Solomon is an award–winning journalist and author of The Deniers, a bestselling book on environmental issues.
