I’m of the opinion, right or wrong, that this is why Russia is a rising nation
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The Russian economy now as in 1980—like the Saudi economy now and in 1980 — is entirely driven by oil. Kill the price of oil and the Russians do down.
The way Reagan defeated the Russians was to convince the Saudis in 1980 to overproduce oil and thereby drive its price down to the point where the russians could no longer pay their bills.
The saudis could do that at the time because their production costs were almost nothing and they had immense surplus capacity.
neither of those is the case anymore.
This chart comparing Russia to traditional one-trick-pony petrocracies proves you wrong. BTW, in terms of real PPP GDP, add another $600 billion to a Russian numbers, and cut $100-200 billion from Norway and Saudis. It would make an idea of Russia as a 'gas station pretending to ne a country' even more ridiculous.