Why is Russia not getting weak economically despite sanctions? Simple: because these sanctions are stupid

At least a certain number of people in the West, despite megatons of the cheapest and most vulgar propaganda from the States, its security services and the "democratic independent media", has gotten wise to the fact that Russian economy is none the worse for all these sanctions, that were presented by the aforementioned class of institutional liars as the "silver bullet" against Russia.

Yet I keep hearing from many of those people the same question: "How come these sanctions have been like water off the duck's back for Russia?".

The short answer is: because these sanctions are stupid - that simple. They are “spherically stupid” which means from whatever angle you might look at the substance of these sanctions they are predictably and self-parodically stupid, let alone self-destructively directed at the authors of the sanctions themselves more than anybody else, especially this is true in regards to Europe.

Russia is not only not getting weak but actually is and will be getting economically stronger because of this.
A longer answer is in general sanctions haven’t been effective very often in modern history. But even when they are, they may work only with a country/region that cannot be AUTARCHY - like Cuba for example (where sanctions definitely created a problem for the people equal to the crime against humanity and didn’t create any problems for the regime, but they technically worked in terms of impact on the economy).

In other words, you direct your sanctions against the countries which in principle cannot be self-sufficient in either A) FOOD or B) ENERGY or C) WATER.
Russia is a classic example of a natural autarky - they don’t have any problems with FOOD, ENERGY AND WATER. They sit on a 1/7th of all the dry land of God's green Earth and they have so much mineral resource and energy to feed its industry that they don’t even quite know how much and what they have.
It doesn’t mean they are a real autarky now, but being a "natural autarky" means that they have all the natural conditions to be an real autarky, which means they have lots of room for development. Needless to say, that Europe, who, to the mixture of surprised disbelief and gleeful pleasure of Russia, decided to implement these suicidal "auto-sanctions",  cannot boast the above conditions, at least as far as energy and mineral resources are concerned (part of the food condition - they have problems with fertilizers, and Russia provides almost for half of the world export of those).

Hence, already in a period of energy and food crisis, it was predictable even for a first grade college student of economics that these “sanctions” if I may call them so, will only enrich Russia, stimulate its development and propel its self-sufficient techno-industrial complex, and hit twice as hard against the super-talented authors of these sanctions, who decided to starve their own people to get back at Russia. The biggest sufferer is going to be, of course, Europe. And it feels this way right now (they have problems with energy, not Russia).

The sanctions on shipping and oil trade boosted the oil and gas price - absolutely predictably during the crisis period - to such levels that Russia had to reconsider its budget due to unexpected high volumes of revenues.

Russian government has always tried to invent new ways how to curb the drain of the foreign currency out of the country due to excessive buying of consumer goods and it has never succeeded. Well, the Western sanctions helped on this front - again as predictably as the fate of an egg thrown off the roof the Empire State Building. The partial SWIFT sanctions and problems with the private currency exchange did precisely that, instantaneously boosting the position and development of the domestic producers of the consumer goods to replace the foreign ones.

When the war started, because of fear, millions of people would have naturally drained their capital our of Russia into the Western Banks - that's exactly what one would want to hit Russia's financial system and economy. But the Western sanctions came to aid and helped Moscow like nobody could help: the restrictions on banking transactions stopped millions of Russians both inside and outside Russia from draining tens of billions of dollars out of Russia. The West told them: "NO! Let that money work for Kremlin!". Hard to imagine how Kremlin was thankful to the West for this help.

Russian State has never been able to curb the ability of the Russian oligarchs to drain money out of the country and economically blackmail the regime. Yes Putin's regime was able to curb the direct political power of the Russian oligarchs but never economic. Because of that over the past tens of years hundreds of billions of dollars drained from Russia and oligarchs themselves had always had that freedom to flee Russia. It tied Moscow's hands in very many respects in terms of managing the economy, taxes etc.

But here again, the West jumps to the assistance and starts to arrest without any due process or the rule of law the accounts and property of Russian oligarchs. That really drew STANDING OVATIONS in Russia among both - the population and the elites. After that Putin's government immediately said what everyone would expect them to say to the oligarchs "Oh, you've been frightening us for decades that you can leave Russia any moment and take all the capitals with you to the West - well, go ahead! But remember now nobody gives a damn rusty penny for your life in the West. Only Moscow can give you guarantees. Sooo, now, you sit in your f..ing dacha next to Moscow and produce oil, aluminum, copper, nickel and PAY TAXES - as much as I tell you to, and you will be participating and investing in the industrial development projects cos anyways you can't invest in any Chelsea clubs any more cos the West helped with that!". And guess what? That's exactly what those oligarchs are now going to do, because they don't have any choice, and NOT because of some magic powers of Putin but due to courtesy of the West. Putin have always dreamt about that but could never have been able to do that. But the Western sanctions have helped.

One of the well known Achilles heels of Russia that has continued to undermine its development for the last 30 years has been corruption. But the Western sanctions are structured and fulfilled in such a way that they just make corruption pointless in the sense that the corruption beneficiaries can't evacuate their money, nor can they themselves feel safe in the West - the possibility to safely hold money in the West and live in the West was the one mega condition - absolutely critical - that made the corruption in Russia so pervasive in the highest echelons of administrative power, and so efficient in blocking any serious industrial and technological development.
But the Western sanctions came to the aid again, basically eliminating the must fundamental condition that supported all that mega-corruption in Russia, no matter how many uncorrupted people in power tried to fight it. 

Needless to say, that for the same reason a tremendous amount of money that would naturally have fled Russia due to oligarchs, safely stayed in Russia thanks to the Western sanctions.

The list goes on. These sanctions were so self-caricaturistic and self-mutulating that it is not totally unreasonable to say that the authors of these sanctions have been the biggest supporters of Putin and his regime and, indeed, by the same token, the biggest betrayers of the West (let alone Ukraine).

Another role of the sanctions is to delegitimize a govt in a country against which they are aimed. But these sanctions were outright structured and declared in such a way that it was obvious without any propaganda explanations that they were directed against large swaths of the Russian population - against the people. Thus, of course, they did the complete opposite: legitimized and justified the government and rallied the nation around the government and nationalism.

As I said at the beginning, these sanctions are SPHERICALLY stupid because no matter from which angle you look at them, they are equally self-damaging for the authors and helpful to the Russian economy and the present regime.  

On other topics about the true motives behind the US role in Russia/Ukraine war and Taiwan/China see My little politics: The US Doesn't Want a Hot War With China, It Wants Cold War II: the US provokes wars between China and Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine for same reason (dr-world.blogspot.com)

Is Russia likely to disintegrate like the Soviet Union? Emphatically No

It's not the first time that I encounter this question actively asked by various people in the West on the public discussion platforms as well as in usual discussions related to Russia: "Is Russia likely to disintegrate like the Soviet Union?"

It seems more than a few people want an answer to the question of stability of Russia in the 21st century, asking if disintegration of Russia is possible.

The short answer is emphatically no*.
Not only is such disintegration unlikely, but it’s practically impossible, and to put it into relative perspective, the likelihood of such a development - disintegration of Russia - is probably orders of magnitude lower than disintegration of the EU, the UK and even the US (which is by no means to say that the disintegration of the US is likely in absolute terms).

Yet this is not a senseless question, though, despite the fact that very often such kind of questions are asked under the influence of the geo-political & ideological confrontations/wars in an attempt to find some reasonable hope or confirmation for an expected result, not in search of certain scientific and historic truth.

Sometimes, I’d imagine, some people in the collective West, especially in the Anglo-West, irritated by the reality of Russia owning 1/7 of the dry land of the planet and the greatest chunk of Eurasia with all its infinite resources, try to extrapolate the disintegration of the USSR to the future and self-placatingly imagine that the collapse of the Soviet Union was just a point in the general trajectory that’s making Russia weaker and weaker, and this chunk of Eurasia more and more liable to the ownership by the West.

Yet other people ask this people in a very straightforward quest for historical truth and understanding. In short, the answer is Russia is as stable as stable can be, and the question about the stability of Belgium, the UK, even Spain and Italy, let alone the EU as a supranational block, could be reasonably asked much ahead of Russia in terms of topicality.

Why is Russia pretty darn stable? Well, if the Western academics in the 21st century hadn’t cowardly and "politically correctly" shrugged under the carpet studies of the phenomenon and forces of nationalism to the point of nihilism and infantilized "ostrich behavior", probably this question wouldn’t have popped up at all.

1. Russia is a natural autarky - probably the brightest text book example thereof. It doesn’t mean that Russia is an actual autarky, it means that it can be actual autarky if need be: it has unlimited resources of A) WATER B) ENERGY C) FOOD (this also explains why sanctions against Russia hit Europe much more than Russia, and actually stimulates Russian economic development even in the directions that were previously unreachable for the Russian State to stimulate).

On top of that, Russia not only doesn’t have any geo-trading problems, but have the best “match made in heaven” with countries like China and India, who are stumbling upon each other in their race to woo Russia for its resources/food and give Russia the fruits of their own manufacturing and technology.
This was also true of the USSR, but USSR collapsed not because of this condition, but for the other two below.

2. Russia is by and large ethnically cohesive country it is a Nation-State, with one Nation.

Yes, this is true that within the territory of Russia there are many various nationalities/ethnic communities, and that the streams of immigration from Central Asia into Russia are relatively high. However, by and large, this 1/7th of the planet's dry land is dominated by far mostly by Russian ethnical identity, Russian language and mainstream Russian culture.

Not only that, most of the minority ethnic groups/territories that exist in Russia, have been living within Russia for a very long time, and most of them and ethnic Russians have accumulated centuries of experience of living together, and a “semi-assimilation” or “quasi-assimilation" (including linguistic assimilation) has taken place pretty successfully in the majority of cases.

To put it short, Russia knows these ethnic groups and these ethnic groups know Russia and co-own Russia, and they have had centuries of experience of learning to live with each other and culturally intertwine with each other and include each other partially in the body of their respective cultural identities. Actually there’s more than meets the eye for the West to learn from Russia in terms of multiethnicity and successful co-existence of different religious and ethnic groups.
Yes, Russia has inside its body nationalities different from that of Russians, but NOT NATIONS, and there is a big difference between these two. By and large, Russia is culturally cohesive and monolithic enough (not totally, but sufficiently), so is its national identity.

This WAS NOT the case in the USSR. USSR was a classic EMPIRE, that included different nations of their own, with their history and with their separate histories and identities vastly different from the national identity of Russia proper. It’s important to remember that the USSR has cracked up and fell apart mostly along the national borders and fault lines within the USSR itself (formally, the final nail into the coffin of the USSR was driven by the split of Ukraine, that is definitely a different nation).

Our Western narratives mostly don’t pay to much attention to this fact - that USSR collapsed along the geographical fault lines between different nations within its territory - as if it had been just an accidental corollary and hadn't had anything to do with the cause of the USSR instability. But in fact it had everything to do with the critical instability of USSR, just like it had everything to do with the collapse of so many other empires before, including, not least, the Roman Empire.

3. Russia is a market economy, it is capitalism and in many ways it’s more of capitalism than the US (for those who want to compare, check Russian taxes, including taxes on gains the property market, income taxes, their business regulations and the proportion of the State budget expenses to the total volume of the Russian economy - GDP - it’s pretty self-explanatory, nowadays the US in many ways is much more “socialistic” than Russia). This is a BIG difference from the USSR, because apart from the previous item, this was another fundamental cause that made possible the collapse of the USSR - the total absence of market economy. That’s far from being the case in the modern Russia. On top of that it’s worthy of note that not only is Russia a market economy, but it’s pretty much integrated in the system of market type of relations globally with other regions, blocks and countries. This has nothing to do with sanctions (that, as I mentioned, create the greatest damage to their authors, but it’s about Russia knowing how to use and using the market relations with other economies.

4. The external military force. Russia is more than well protected by its nuclear shield and conventional weapons against any forces that would have liked to lay claim to this huge chunk of the planet and Eurasia if Russia hadn’t taken care of protecting itself. And there is reasonable confidence that there wouldn't be any lack of such forces and attempts had Russia not had its military shield.

To recap, now Russia ain’t going anywhere, whether we like it or not in the West, and seeing as Russia is not a neighbor of the US, but it is the neighbor of Europe, the latter should learn how to live with and build sustainable and secure relationship with Russia. It's not Washington that should do it for Europe. This is especially so taking into account, that, unlike Russia, Europe is not a “natural autarky” in the sense that it has long lacked natural mineral and energy resources to feed its economy, and, on the other hand, Russia has all of these in unlimited plenty.

*All the expressed statements, conclusions represent the views of the author, except, of course, those statements that reflect what is common knowledge at this point of time.
See also:

The US Doesn't Want a Hot War With China, It Wants Cold War II: the US provokes wars between China and Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine for same reason https://dr-world.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-us-doesnt-want-hot-war-with-china.html 

THE GOAL OF RUSSIAN-UKRAINIAN WAR FOR THE US: IT IS ALL ABOUT EUROPE! https://dr-world.blogspot.com/2022/05/goal-of-russian-ukrainian-war-for-us-it.html

The US Doesn't Want a Hot War With China, It Wants Cold War II: the US provokes wars between China and Taiwan, Russia and Ukraine for same reason

In my previous post The war between Russia & Ukraine: It's all about Europe & the US effort to impose its Cold War II agenda on it I wrote about the main motivations, that, in my view, drove the US to create the conditions for and make possible the war between Ukraine and Russia.

Here I'd only like to add to the above post the Taiwan/China aspect, so that the effort of the US State to trigger a war between China and Taiwan shouldn't be seen as a separate development, but just another facet of the same agenda: the US effort to design and realize its imperative project of a new Cold War - Cold War II.

In order to clarify that the US provocation of China/Taiwan military conflict is the other side of the same coin as its design and provocation of Ukraine/Russia war, here I give my recent letter addressed to a friend of mine where I touch upon this subject:

This is a political question, and not a simple one. Very often the reactions are based on the assumption that the US somehow wants and NEEDS Ukraine to win (or at least not totally to lose). But this premise in itself is not closed to debate at all - what the US wants or doesn't want.
One (and probably most common) view among those few honest observers who try to dissect what's going on in Ukraine and motives behind it posit that the US of course knows that the biblical tale about David vs Goliath isn't going to work in reality, and that the US wanted just to wear out Russia, hoping that the economic toll in conjunction with the sanctions (for which this war was programmed to be a surefire excuse) would wear out Russia economically and weaken it, together with the regime in the long term.

I myself am not jumping even to this conclusion. In my view the US is interested in a new Cold War, in which Europe should be maximally de-coupled and set against both Russia and China, and where the US can again become a supreme protector of the old granny Europe who, in its turn, would become as politically dependent on the US as it was in 1970s (the question why, in my view, the US needs a new Cold war is a separate very deep topic - see my post https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3040887270479783144/1881800849427537371).

From this point of view, we can easily imagine that Washington does expect and, more importantly, might have expected from the get-go that Russia will win, that Ukraine may be tragically destroyed in the process and even cease to exist in the form and shape it's been known, and that Russia MAY NOT even suffer economically because of that.

But if that happens what would the the played-out "lesson"  - the demonstration - to the rest of Europe? Well, quite possibly it will demonstrate to Europe (the EU in particular) that they should fear Russia ALL THE MORE because of that, feel their own weakness and helplessness even more because of that, and rely on Uncle Sam and do what he says even more.

The situation we see in Taiwan. The US has no desire to wage a kinetic war with China, nor does it likely believe that Taiwan stands a cat in hell's chance of winning China or retaining its independence. No is the US too worried that China may not suffer any serious economic or human price from taking over Taiwan - this is something that's completely missed even by what few are left independent observers and analysts.

The US, creating a military action in the region, wants to strike fear in the Asian neighbors of China, distrust to China, more alienation from China, and more reliance on and obedience to the United States, so that they all can be reliable subservient allies in the Cold War II with China. And the Cold War, unlike the hot one, is an economic war, with economic methods, waged by economic means and for economic ends. The US wants to disrupt the development of China.

And on the other hand, the Chinese possible military action towards Taiwan, provoked by the US, will also impact Europe - on top of what the Russian/Ukrainian war did. So that Europe, who under usual circumstance would have been extremely reluctant to be the US partner in an economic war against China, would have little choice but obediently side with the US, even though it will cost it its own economic development on top of the huge burden Europe is already paying for its support of the American policy on Russia.

The US doesn't want and isn't going to pay anything - it is Europe and its Asian allies who are going to pay for this US project - the World War II, which is the only chance, however small but still the only one, for the US to preserve itself in the form of neo-Empire a bit longer.

By the way, economic weakening of Europe in this process may not necessarily be considered as something negative by Washington either, to whom economically Europe may present much more of a competitor than an ally in the 21st century. That is to say, if as a result of the Cold War II not only China will suffer an economic breakdown/setback, but also the American ally Europe  - so much the better it might be in the American calculus!

As I said many times, this whole story about Ukraine and Russia, in my view, has very little to do directly with Ukraine and Russia, and has everything to do with EUROPE and what the US wants Europe to be and to do...
The Uncle Sam, in my view, is fucking Europe w/o any foreplay, and, by the way, I should say it's been doing it for quite a while starting with Iraq war and continuing non-stop throughout the first two decades of the 21st century. Who is the stupidest party in all this story? It's not the US, it is EUROPE!