I don't know enough about Russia
, suffice to say, fuel them up with Vodka and they're happy!
Russia include more than 100 Ethnicities. To have an idea of the problem there is a TV in Russia airing programs in about 54 different languages[1]. Most are tribal groups but several of them play important roles in the borders security.
You can stop right there, because anything else you will say in the rest of the sentence will be wrong. The USA has (famously) more than one government. And they are remarkably independent of each other. Most people in the US are governed by 4 governments: Federal, state, county, and city; some by only 3 (those that live in a part of a county that is not organized into a city or town). The equivalent of "county" in Germany is the Landkreis or Kreis, in Brasil there are separate comarcas and municipios. (We are in a funny situation: while we are not in a city, in theory we are only in 3 political subdivisions. But because our house is only a few hundred m from the dividing line between two counties, and 90% of our life takes place in the county that we don't live in, we are regulated by two different counties: one for building our house, taxation and such, and the other for shopping, working, and traffic.)
...
Yes, I know that, but the economy (tax != economy) and defense is controlled by the Federal government in both USA and Brazil.
In Brasil in particular the real power of the states and municipalities are minimal since theoretically (by the Constitution) Brazil is a Federation but in practice a Federal Republic. The majority of the taxes are collected by the states and municipalities but the gross of it is then handed to the Federal Government which later redistribute in the way they want.
In practice São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná and a couple of more states collect by far (I would need to have a look into the current numbers) the larger part of the taxes and receive almost nothing back, about 75% goes to the Northeast states (and nobody knows what they do with that money). In short, the richest states pay the mess they do in the Northeast while live almost only of ICMS, and the municipalities of some minor specifics taxes[2].
I'm old. I've heard that the US will go bankrupt since the mid-60s (when I was a little kid), when my parent's friends were saying that the expense of the Vietnam war was going to bankrupt the US. Every 5 or 10 years someone discovers a different reason for that to happen. For some odd reason, it hasn't gone bankrupt in the past 50 years yet, and has actually not even come anywhere close. The closest any signifcant part of the US ever got to that was the city of New York in the 70s, but even then, it was always clear that they would be bailed out. There are some smaller cities in the US that have declared bankruptcy (Detroit is the only large one, both Stockton and San Bernadino are relative near me), but in all these cases, all debts were paid after some delay. In the meantime, many other countries have had to revalue or destroy their currency, stop paying debt, or be shored up by donors (all I need to say is PIIGS). The probability that the US will "call" its debt seems to be zero, if the past is any guide.
I don't know how the people got on that conclusion on that time, but the main two reasons USA kept/keep doing fine with international crisis are well known:
- US Dollar is the standard foreign trade currency;
- currencies are by default dollar-backed.
With this situation wherever economic problem USA have they can (for instance) print money like crazy, like they did in 2008, and spread their misery around the whole world. The change is these both two points are not completelly true anymore and are changing in a reasonable fast peace, and the USA have a debit which is almost the double of the GDP (and growing fast).
Since some time, but specially after 2008, several countries[3] have being switching back to gold-backed plus a mix of currencies. China, Russia, India, Poland, and many others have been buying gold like crazy for that in the last ten years. Russia in particular spent the last decade buying dozens of tons of gold every year. If you ask people who deal with currency exchange, specially in the asset protection market, you will discover the Russian Ruble is today considered near as safe as the Swiss Franc.
Also, completely on the contrary of what the media tell, the Russian economy is among of the most stable in the world, to the point of being stagnated. This is not a problem because that was made on purpose in this way. The idea was/is to sit in a huge amount of cash and then re-shape the country and the economy with ease. Russia is sitting in about US$ 580 billion of reserves, plus an equivalent of 7% of its GDP in a fund ready to be spent with wherever they want, plus the gold, and they have little to no debt.
In this right moment the Duma (Russian parliament) has several groups (different economic ideals) working on several projects to re-shape the Russian economy and make it grow faster and sustainable. At the same time there are several (called) 'National Projects' begin prepared with in depth details to attack its major problems, like health system (which also link with programs to reduce road accidents etc.). If they will succeed or not is another story but Russia already is a VERY different country of what it was 20 years ago, when Duma was not able to became with anything and when they came that was impossible to implement...
A lot of that stuff is very dumb, I agree. But on the grand scale of things, many other political efforts are dumber and more expensive, even within the US. But less visible. Contrariwise, the US military (even if bloated, inefficient, too expensive) is still a rather dangerous and powerful machine, which most other countries either fear or try to emulate, often with similar stupidities.
IIRC the DoD budget for this year will be close to 800 billion, and there is no way to make this number too lower in the future because of the Defense Doctrine the USA follow, which is
expeditionary.
If you pay attention you will almost always see the US Navy sailing with a Carrier (main vessel), and a fleet composed of a destroyer and some frigates. While Russia, China, India, etc. (basically everyone else, with minor changes) use a destroyer as capital ship, and they often sail alone. Russia in particular have its defense strategies based on submarines. Those are the most important vessels for them, and they are very effective with them, the only carrier they have are likely to be scrambled soon ever before they decide to build the new project - they have little use to it.
The reason is the USA doctrine impose them to be prepared anywhere in the world at anytime, and so they need to carry everything everywhere, including maintaining a ton of bases everywhere. I will not get into of what I think in regards of the effectiveness of this doctrine because this would be a long story.
The others doctrines, but specially the Russian one[4], is based on keep the equipment they need to control/repel any attack against them or their allies[5], and if that fail they can bring the nuclear weapons into the game to dissuade their opponents.
In practice, the USA doctrine is useless against its true opponents because they (USA) will never actually attack any of them except if they have absolutely no choice (and would need a lot of more than what they have in cache around its opponents). We can't really say anything about China and India but this is very clear Russia would not blef if they need to actually launch a nuclear weapon - and everybody knows that.
A change may partially happen in the USA doctrine but incidentally. Philippines, a former USA colony btw, just expelled their base in there (and that is the most important one in the region because is the one facing China) and at least a partial cascade effect is expected in the region. China have some quite more effective method to expand its influence:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9E0NVroum0
Side note: I really like Singapore, specially how they actually
designed (IMO this is the right term) the country and still manage to properly re-design it every time they need/want. Not bad for a country that was expelled form Malaysia[5] and managed start from a backwards fishing country to one of they key players in Asia (and worldwide), in one generation.
[1] there is a video about it but I fail to record where.
[2] this is one of the good reasons of why the Brazilian South region still have some separatist mind.
[3] not ever getting into how the € affected and affect the situation.
[4] the Chinese and Indian are based on the Russian. In fact 'Admiral Gorshkov' is the hero of the Indian Navy...
[5] likely the only country which became independent against its will.
