Citat:[Citat:Russia's economy is the same size as Italy's, despite having three times the population. And they are only useful to the world economy for exporting raw materials, such as aluminium, oil and gas. The West could easily crush their small economy, should it choose to, without needing to fire a single shot.
Nonsense. It is of primary importance to note that despite Italy's economy being comparable to Russia, (1) Italy doesn't have the capability to make independent decisions on what foreign regimes to rescue, and (2) Italy wouldn't be able to rescue those said regimes even if it had the independent ability to choose to do so.
It is in light of this that Italy's overall power index is extremely low, despite its economy.
Russia on the other hand has not only the ability of foreign political and military power projection away from its borders, but it also has the ability to directly spar against the US in regard to any conflict which directly involves US interests. And you would be highly mistaken to assume that Russia is given this ability to oppose the US simply because the US is benevolent enough to allow it that privilege.
A country's power is not determined by economy. Economy is only, and only, a resource of power. (among such as geography, borders, resources, diplomacy, strategic significance and usefulness for other states, knowledge/experience, industry, etc.) And anyone's ability to crush Russia's economy would have to be determined by his ability to crush Russia's overall power index
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