IF there are unprecedentedly wide sanctions imposed on Russia
BUT Russia is able to increase its production of cruise missiles
THEN the implementation and especially targeting of sanctions are wrong. Like actually, wrong
Military production base is not targeted
@mentions@McFaul you are doing it wrong. Your focus is wrong. You are not alone in doing it wrong, but it does not make your work any less wrong
To do it in a correct way, you must be targeting the production base. Not only the components, but the production processes themselves. Disincentivizing the U.S. allies-based companies to supply the metal-cutting, especially machining equipment would be a good start
Also preaching does not work. There should be significant and widely-enforced monetary disincentives for supplying the machining equipment to Russia
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Very good thread, I actually mostly agree with what is said here. Still, I will outline my own perspective on it:
First, it is of crucial importance to understand that the "popular uprising", generally speaking, is not a category of politics. It is a category of *theology* 🧵
We often see the debates on whether this or that upheaval constituts an "uprising" or a "coup". But the truth is that a successful uprising usually has at least an element of a military coup in it. If the military/paramilitary stands united for the regime, the regime will stand
In the popular perception a revolution is a miracle, a magic, when the impossible happens: the people defeat the regime. Hence, its theological significance. Credo quia absurdum
The element of absurdity is very important. If it is not absurd, it won't make a miracle
You unironically have some logical reasoning capabilities. Yes, that is exactly what happened. If in the 1960s the USSR still tried to compete, by the 1970s it essentially gave up. Consequently, Western imports comprised the ever increasing share of its high end consumption
By the 1970s Soviets could machine precise parts -> produce sophisticated weaponry either:
a) conventionally = essentially manually
b) on imported NC/CNC tools
That's it basically
And "manually" is not nearly as sexy as it sounds. First, supply of machinists that can do precision machining manually is highly inelastic. There's simply no way to train more in the short term perspective. At any given moment their quantity is given and you can't increase it
Retrospectively, the greatest crime of the Western European governments was not cutting the supplies of the metal-cutting, specifically machining equipment, machine parts and expendables into the Russian Federation. Would this happen, the war would not have lasted that long
It's kinda ironic that the war impoverishing Europe is critically dependent upon the Western European (German, Austrian, Swiss, Italian, etc.) supplies to continue
But first and foremost German. Contrary to the popular opinion, the Russian military manufacturing base was not formed by the mainland Chinese import as China was unable to satisfy the demand of the Russian military on the high end equipment
To be fair, USSR was also famous for its scorched earth tactics. In August 1941, Soviets blown up the Dnieper Dam, aiming to halt the German advance. Tends of thousands civilians & Soviet soldiers were killed as a result
Btw this is the Colonel Hugh Lincoln Cooper, of the US Army Corps of Engineers who supervised construction of the dam. Soviet industrialisation was not just planned by the American industrialists: it was managed and supervised directly
More on the American role in the Soviet industrialisation:
Russia and China are too similar in too many important respects. They share too many chokepoints (though to a different degree). They're kinda the same
If Russia was looking for alternatives to Western Europe, it would look at Japan - the old industrial power. If Japan was politically problematic (as it is), it would look at Taiwan and South Korea, new industrial powers on the very advanced stages of their learning process
The USSR was never "self-sufficient". The initial Stalinist industrialisation was planned and managed by Americans, and based on the import of American + to the lesser extent German equipment.
1920-1930s - US + Germany
WIth the start of the Cold War, America semi-excluded itself from the Soviet market. So it was monopolised by the Western Europe. E.g. in the 1970s Western Europe counted for like 90% of Soviet imports, Western Germany alone counting for 45%