Vladimir Putin at the youth festival.
Photo. Scanpix/EPA/ALEXANDER KAZAKOV / SPUTNIK
19:30, 7 February 2024
Even if the US were to withdraw from arming Ukraine, Putin would be crazy to start something more against Europe and Ukraine. At the moment there is a lot of talk about the fact that we have to prepare for war with Russia, that there could be mobilization. The press writes that in case of war, parts of our industrial base could be converted into military production. This topic has been expanded upon by Andrew Liliko The Telegraph.
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Russia’s economy is quite small, only about 85% of Italy’s, for example. Its population is around 140 million, which is smaller than Germany and France combined. It has not been able to defeat Ukraine, a country with a population of 53 million at the time of the Russian invasion.
Even if the US were to lose all interest in protecting Europe, is there really any fear that Russia could defeat the EU’s combined forces enough to reach Britain? The British publication seeks answers to these rhetorical questions.
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The relationship between national military strength and economic growth is complex and bidirectional.
While much has been made of the fact that a stronger military can promote long-term economic growth, the focus here should be on the other side: to what extent higher GDP does or does not mean being militarily stronger, and what that means for the Russian threat and the Russian economy.
Resources available to the military consist of those already mobilized as military forces and those that could be mobilized quickly – personnel numbers, equipment, balance of forces – air/sea/land.
Comparison. One has a larger population; the other has a higher GDP.
In order to build an adequate military in terms of personnel and equipment, a country with a larger population must contribute a smaller proportion of its population to the military, but must give it a larger proportion of its GDP.
Instead, let’s say that both countries allocated equal shares of personnel and GDP, and thus the country with the larger population had more soldiers, but they were less well equipped, so each soldier is less effective.
In that case, as the publication writes, we can get an insight into the ingenious military mathematics developed already during the First World War – the “square law”.
This indicates that if one military force is larger than the other but less effective, then to win, the smaller military force’s efficiency advantage ratio must be greater than the square of its numerical value coefficient. Or – it means – that,
if you have 10% fewer soldiers, your troops need to be over 21% more effective to win the war.
The proportion of the population that different countries can mobilize to fight can vary. An authoritarian state might be able to conscript more citizens to fight.
But an authoritarian state can also have a problem known as “morale,” where its forces can become incapable or unwilling to fight back.
than opposing forces fighting for what they see as a nobler cause.
The author applies these insights when considering Russia’s medium-term threat to the EU. The Russian economy accounts for approximately 10% of the EU economy. The EU spends about 1.3% of GDP on military needs, but the Russians have recently increased their spending to about 6%. EU military spending will be about twice that of Russia.
If we assume that spending more leads to greater troop effectiveness, then according to the “square law,”
to compensate for half the spending, Russia would have to mobilize more than 40% more troops than the EU.
There are approximately 1.4 million soldiers in the EU’s combined military forces. So Russia should have about 2 million soldiers. If we assume that Russia were to attack, and apply the classical rule that an attacking force needs a 1.5:1 advantage, Russia would need about three million troops. Russia currently has about 1.2 million soldiers, and conditionally about 2 million reservists.
According to the publication, if the above analysis is correct, then in the medium term, even leaving aside any “moral matters”, to
the Russians would stand a chance against a combined EU force, Russia would have to either double or triple its current military forces,
same with military spending relative to GDP. Doubling its spending relative to GDP would put it in the 12-15% range of late Soviet Union levels.
The Russian economy is still subject to Western sanctions. The oil embargo alone is costing it hundreds of billions of dollars. Doubling or tripling military spending would bankrupt it within a few years.
Russia can say and threaten, or even invade its poor neighbors, but the author of the article believes that
mathematics shows one thing – the West must continue to believe enough in its goals.
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2024-02-07 17:38:58
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