https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-10-20-it-is-remarkable-how-badly-putin-has-screwed-up-in-russia
Sometimes I look at the U.S. government under President Biden, and I think that it couldn’t be possible to be more incompetent than this. But take a look at any of the U.S.’s main geopolitical adversaries — besides Russia there’s China, and Iran, and perhaps you might throw in a Venezuela or a North Korea — and you quickly realize that all of them have far, far more incompetent government policy than the U.S. on its very worst day.
For today I’m going to focus on Russia. As recently as five or ten years ago, I was willing to grudgingly concede to Vladimir Putin some decent successes, particularly on the international stage. Starting with a relatively bad hand, I thought he was playing it cleverly in world affairs. But by 2018 I had come to the view that no amount of foreign policy cleverness could overcome Russia’s growing weaknesses, from a stagnant crony-capitalist economy to declining population. In a piece on March 4, 2018 titled “How Are Things Going In Russia?” I went through a litany of negative indicators, from a 40% decline in GDP since 2014 (mostly due to then-declining energy prices), to declining population, to military spending badly constrained by the small economy.
And now comes the invasion of Ukraine. It would be fair to say that the invasion and its consequences have taken Russia from a major player on the world stage to a much less important player. Here are some of the many indicators:
Loss of the fear factor. The biggest benefit of a large army is not actually being able to win a war, but rather being able to intimidate your adversaries into doing your bidding without having to resort to hostilities. When the invasion began in February, everybody assumed that the Russian tanks would roll through Ukraine in a matter of days if not hours. Now, eight months later, Russia is steadily losing back to Ukrainian counter-offenses significant parts of the small amounts of territory it had captured. If little Ukraine can stand up to the Russians so handily, it gives spirit to every one of Putin’s neighbors.