UKRAINE: How Does The West Compare To Russia Economically?
The GDP of opposing forces in the war in Ukraine compared.
As you know, the war in Ukraine is a battle between two opposing forces, Russia on one side, and Ukraine and it’s Western allies on the other. As the conflict evolves in to a grinding war of attrition, the question increasingly becomes that of which side has the resources to stay in the fight the longest.
While there are many factors at play in such calculations, a place to start is to put the basic economic facts on the table. Which side in this fight has the most economic power?
Please be clear that I’m definitely not an expert on any of this, but here’s what I’ve learned from some very basic research.
The size of national economies is often measured by gross domestic product (GDP) which the website Investopedia describes this way:
"Gross domestic product (GDP) is an estimate of the total value of finished goods and services produced within a country’s borders during a specified period, usually a year. GDP is popularly used to estimate the size of a country’s economy."
So using GDP as our metric, let’s compare the economies of the opposing forces in the war in Ukraine.
RUSSIA: The GDP of Russia appears to be roughly $1.5 trillion dollars per year.
THE WEST: The GDP breakdown for the Western nations who are financially supporting Ukraine looks something like this:
$23 trillion - United States
$3 trillion - United Kingdom
$2 trillion - Canada
$15 trillion - European Union
Total GDP of Western Alliance: Approximately $43 trillion dollars per year
The Bottom Line
If the numbers above are generally correct, than it appears that the economic bottom line in the war in Ukraine is that the Western powers supporting Ukraine, when taken together, have economic power roughly 28 times larger than that of Russia.
Why Does This Matter?
As the war in Ukraine drags on we may start to hear some voices across the West which claim that our support for Ukraine is too expensive. They might say that we can’t afford to maintain our support. They might say that Russia is a big county with many weapons and we just can’t keep up. They may say that we should dial back our support of Ukraine, or withdraw from the fight altogether, because we just can’t afford to match Russia’s investment in weapons.
Should you hear such voices and wish to debate them, feel free to remind such folks that the Western allies supporting Ukraine are, as a group, roughly 28 times richer than Russia.
28 times richer than Russia.
When great nations collide it’s often their economic power which decides the winner in the end. Who can afford to supply the battlefield with more weapons than their opponent?
In this case, that would be us, the free people of the West.