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'NATO-Russia Rapprochement'

Flanker said:
Does it mean that you have no objections to the numbers I posted?
Had you spent a moment to ponder the words posted, you would have noticed the objection; it was even underlined.
Since that was apparently lost on you, I'll repeat it again for your benefit:
Critiquing a two-year old post with unattributed statistics provides absolutely no value to this site

Flanker said:
Not very respectful post to the WWII veterans, which were your allies by the way.
I am surprised to see such an attitude at the army forum.
Feel free to Google "sanctimonious" while looking up "unattributed statistics."  ::)



As you might notice during your "skimming" that is my first visit since 2009
As amazing as it may sound, your absence went completely unnoticed.


 
Journeyman said:
Critiquing a two-year old post with unattributed statistics provides absolutely no value to this site

The numbers of are pretty of common knowledge. At least their order and trends.

Some sources:

Debt:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/08/04/us-debt-reaches-100-percent-countrys-gdp/
http://oregoncatalyst.com/10928-stop-posturing-fix-problem.html


GDP growth

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576475811201857064.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/05/26/50861401.html

Now I hope you will stop personal attacks and will pronounce your objections (if any).


 
Easy to have a massive GDP growth when your GDP previously was non-existent.
 
PuckChaser said:
Easy to have a massive GDP growth when your GDP previously was non-existent.

They are part of the "BRIC"...

Many economist believe these countries to be the future leader's of the world economy. I also wouldn't call Russia's 11th largest economy in the world "non existent".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC - BRIC I know.. wikiepedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) - GDP's
 
In 2001 they were recognized as a "newly developed advanced economy". That to me says that after the cold war ended, it took them till 2001 to start actually increasing their GDP to recognizable levels.
 
canada94 said:
They are part of the "BRIC"...

Many economist believe these countries to be the future leader's of the world economy. I also wouldn't call Russia's 11th largest economy in the world "non existent".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRIC - BRIC I know.. wikiepedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) - GDP's


The BRIC is an entertaining Goldman-Sachs creation that is very useful shorthand for "advanced developing economies," but the BRIC members are each sui generis ~ none more so than Russia which has, consistently, displayed an incredible capacity to squander its (acknowledged) great natural and human wealth. Brasil is not quite Russia but experience should tell us to hedge our bets.
 
E.R. Campbell said:
The BRIC is an entertaining Goldman-Sachs creation that is very useful shorthand for "advanced developing economies," but the BRIC members are each sui generis ~ none more so than Russia which has, consistently, displayed an incredible capacity to squander its (acknowledged) great natural and human wealth. Brasil is not quite Russia but experience should tell us to hedge our bets.

Squander its natural resources made me think of the US and OIL.. the US peaked in 1970.. all that said you are right Russia has peaked in OIL as well, it was simply 5 years ago. I am sure no one can paint a perfect picture of what the world will look like.. however I can't see Russia or China for say out of the picture as top contenders.
 
CDN Aviator said:
Accurate or not, Flanker responded to something almost 2 years old with "you might want to refresh your numbers...."

Because we all know, international situations never change.........certainly not in 2 years.

So, yeah, an intelligent and timely response.
Well, I'm sure you would have had no problem with the post if he started a whole new thread about it ... ;)
 
Nauticus said:
Well, I'm sure you would have had no problem with the post if he started a whole new thread about it ... ;)

If he had worded his post something like "as of xxxxx date, the Russian GDP compares to the US like this........." instead of quoting something from 2 years ago and essentialy saying "OH YEAH.......well heres some numbers from now to show you you were wrong 2 years ago !!!!!" i'm sure it would have gone over much better.
 
Flanker said:
Some sources....
There, now was that so difficult?
Merely providing credible sources changes your post from soap-box pontification into one of somewhat more informed opinion.


Oh, and if you seriously believe that anything I posted amounted to a "personal attack," you are free to use the 'Report to Moderator' button in accordance with the site's guidelines.



Edit: Typo. Now that's scandalous!

 
PuckChaser said:
In 2001 they were recognized as a "newly developed advanced economy". That to me says that after the cold war ended, it took them till 2001 to start actually increasing their GDP to recognizable levels.

...or it took them until 2001 to start releasing what they regard as classified information.  Not quite the same thing.
 
Okay, fun's over.

Flanker, you got a rough ride because of how you posted your information. Unqualified, that is. We have a rule regarding that and we also have another stating that you are responsible for what you post and how it is interpereted. Derailing the htread by claiming you were attacked does not take away from the fact that you could have avoided this by being more clear and backing up your "facts"

I also see the fly shit being picked from pepper about "how" responses are formulated here. We do not need another in the long annals of how to post on Army.ca so you offend no one. Nor do we need any more crusading, on either side of the game, from anyone. Use the report to mod feature if you are feeling outraged at how someone is treated here.

Scott
Staff
 
Russia has less than 1/4 the GDP per captia and less than 1/2 the population of the US.  Lot of ground to make up if they are to surpass the US. There are a lot of challenges that will need to be met along the way.

I don't trust extrapolating trends except to get some estimation of the challenges ahead. You just get meaningless results as trends usually don't continue.

extrapolating.png

XKCD Cartoon
 
Haligonian said:
I'm skeptical of any rapprochement with Russia. Historically their interests have not aligned with those of the west.  This is not to say that there are not area of agreement, however, in general I think it is very optimistic to believe that Russia will move within the western/US sphere of influence in the future within the near to mid term. Additionally, Russia is a great power and has no interest in being led by another power and desires the return of their satellite countries to their sphere of influence, as seen with the invasion of Georgia.


And, according to this article, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, you are right to be skeptical:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/europe/with-putin-as-president-russias-experiment-with-democracy-comes-to-an-end/article2179374/
With Putin as president, Russia’s experiment with democracy comes to an end

MARK MACKINNON
Globe and Mail Update

Published Sunday, Sep. 25, 2011

Saturday afternoon, at a political rally in Moscow’s Luzhniki Sports Palace, Russia’s two-decade experiment with democracy came to an end. A different, more authoritarian, system with only a mirage of choice, is now firmly in place.

Russia’s new political model is often called Putinism, after the man who built it and who will soon return as its unequivocal head. Elections are still to be held, and Putinism is far freer in most aspects than the totalitarianism that Russians lived under for most of the Soviet era. But it is a one-man show, completely dominated by Vladimir Putin, the man who served as Russia’s president from 2000 to 2008, and who is now primed to return to the Kremlin after a token four years as prime minister.

Dmitry Medvedev, a longtime Putin aide who was drafted into the presidency in 2008 (when Mr. Putin stepped aside in deference to an annoying clause in the post-Soviet constitution that limits presidents to a maximum of two consecutive terms) told a gathering of the dominant United Russia party on Saturday that Mr. Putin should be their nominee in the presidential election scheduled for next March.

“I think it would be correct for the congress to support the candidacy of the party chairman, Vladimir Putin, to the post of president of the country,” a stoic Mr. Medvedev said. Mr. Putin quickly accepted, and said it would be “a great honour” to take his old job back.

The announcement brought an end to hopes that Mr. Medvedev, who had shown a slightly more liberal side than Mr. Putin and who had occasionally flashed a willingness to challenge his former boss, would stand against Mr. Putin next spring and give Russians a real choice. In recent months, Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin had both fed speculation about a head-to-head race by refusing to answer questions about which of them would run for the presidency.

Instead, Mr. Medvedev – at Mr. Putin’s suggestion – agreed to lead United Russia into December’s parliamentary election, putting him on track to switch jobs with Mr. Putin and become prime minister. Mr. Putin told the party congress that the decision had been made “a long time ago, several years back.”

The game of musical chairs will only affirm what most Russians believed about Medvedev’s time in the Kremlin: the real power remained with Mr. Putin throughout, even while in the nominal No. 2 job.

(A key part of Mr. Medvedev’s legacy is a constitutional change extending presidential terms from four to six years, starting with the 2012 election. The change makes it possible for Mr. Putin, 58, to remain Russia’s president until he’s 70.)

Other parties will contest the Duma elections in December and the Kremlin will ensure that other candidates will be found to run against Mr. Putin in the spring. The appearance of choice is an important facet of Putinism, or “managed democracy,” as the system’s creators prefer to call it.

But those other parties and candidates will face a host of obstacles – ranging from the Kremlin’s near-complete control of the media to physical intimidation and ballot-stuffing – that will make an electoral upset close to impossible. As the cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch now serving his seventh year in a Siberian prison, and Anna Politkovskaya, the Kremlin critic who was murdered for her investigative journalism in 2006, have made all too clear, there’s no tolerance for genuine threats to the system.

Ten days ago, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov – one of the last figures who could have made Russia’s election season somewhat interesting – bowed out in disgust, withdrawing as a candidate for a Kremlin-backed opposition group (another unique feature of Putinism). “We have a puppeteer in the country, who long ago privatized the political system,” Mr. Prokhorov said, in remarks taken to refer to Vladislav Surkov, a political strategist who remained a key figure in both the Putin and Medvedev presidencies.

Few Russians seem to mind. Aided by national media he hammered into submission after coming to office, Mr. Putin – who has been shown on state television fighting forest fires, tracking tigers and flying fighter jets – is easily the country's most popular politician, credited with stabilizing the country's economy (which remains heavily reliant on energy exports) and restoring its international prestige, in part via the 2008 war against neighbouring Georgia, a former vassal.

Western-style democracy, which the country briefly experienced in the 1990s, when Boris Yeltsin was president, is associated with corruption, lawlessness and economic collapse.

The man who oversaw the end of the Soviet Union has warned that Russia is headed for disaster if Mr. Putin and his coterie insisted on clinging to power.

“The unwillingness to start reform or the desire to have partial change is often explained by the fear of losing power and the desire to prevent a new collapse of Russia,” Mikhail Gorbachev wrote in an article carried this week by two Russian newspapers. “But it is the very absence of change which threatens to provoke instability and put the future of the country in question.”


The Russians, the leadership, must think that Russia is in worse shape than we understand; they know (ought to know, anyway) that returning to oligarchy will lower productivity and stifle investment. That they are (willingly?) doing so suggests, to me, that Russia's domestic socio-economic situation is worse that we can see.

But, of course, the Americans and Europeans will ignore this because they are, incorrectly, in my view, impressed with Russia's military/political power and/or its economic potential or maybe just its oil or nukes, if they still work. They ought not to be - it is time to kick the Russians out of the G8 and G20 and let China deal with them.
 
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