It was so much easier to be the aggressor in the days of the Five Year Plan.
Those foreign excursions can be expensive...
Like it was in the 1930’s, the depression is world-wide.
And the effects are exacerbated for the same reasons now as they were then. The various governments have been attempting to “fix” the economic problems, rather than letting the normal market corrections take place, and the load of regulations and favoritism to particular entities and constituencies has a multiplier effect far beyond its first appearance.
The increasing strains on the international relationships is much like the build-up of pressures on tectonic plates, with no way to relieve them, short of vast displacements and eruptions.
The Second World War put an end to the first Great Depression, at a fearful cost of lives and productivity, and the aftershocks continued for decades in places great and small, until the principles of relatively free enterprise and less intrusive government were introduced.
But then the older ideas of a “managed” economy reasserted themselves, with the imagined capability that “this time, we can do it right”.
And the stresses built up all over again, this time coming to a much greater maximum, with no means to bleed off the excesses before the inevitable outburst.
This would be a precursor to war.
Would love to see riots in the streets, Putin and Russian army troopers running around screaming in flames after being hit by civilian-tossed Molotov cocktails.
And this explains the military actions, war is always good for the economy!