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Russia's nukes are fine, their submarines are fine and their airforce is lightly attrited. Their army is still mostly intact, even if it has been greatly weakened.
The US military is the smallest, oldest and least trained it has been since before WWII. The US nuclear triad is absolutely ancient, submarines are old, the US doesn't even make cruisers any more, B52s are going through another upgrade cycle. The US military manufacturing sector was hit bad by the wars in the Middle East. The US has largely kept Reagan's military in order while fighting peasants in the middle east for the past 20 years. Apache and black hawk helicopters are old.
The US has now become the patron for the Ukrainian military, which is about the size of the US Army. The Ukrainians are rapidly expending the mountain of equipment left behind from the Soviet era and will need to be supplied with western gear. The Ukrainians barely have any bases left, minimal military infrastructure is left, they have an extreme shortage of officers. Training and equipping Ukraine is going to be massive black hole for decades to come. Ukraine has already drained vast quantities of ammunition, spare parts, training capacity and basic military equipment.
The US isn't competing with Russia, the US is trying to establish global hegemony. Borrowing money at 5% interest to try to keep the largest military in Europe outside of Russia in a high state of readiness is going to swallow tonnes of resources.
While the US is expending more ATGMs, artillery shells, short range air defences in a week than they manufacture in a month, China is producing at a level comparable to all of NATO. In the 50s the US had fighter jets while much of the world was in the 1800s. Today the world is catching up, and US exceptionalism is harder to defend. France outclassed Vietnam and Algeria, yet they defeated the French empire.
The US made a big mistake of not establishing Limes. The US hasn't gone for natural and easily defensible borders, instead it pushes to the end of the Earth. The US therefore gets stuck wasting trillions defending villages in Afghanistan, will soon be spending a hundred billion a year defending Taiwan and will have to finance 1.5 times the French military to defend Europe's worst backwater.
I think I see some "citation needed" here. Probably their subs aren't too affected by this conflict, though how active that fleet is would probably be pretty secret. The NATO sub fleets might have an idea, but I don't think they're talking. Not gonna bet either way on their nuke arsenal, though I will note that the maintenance quality evident on the high-tech weapons they've tried to bring to bear in Ukraine has not been too impressive.
"Where is the Russian Air Force?" has been the
millionbillion-ruble question in this whole war. Pre-war, every serious defense analyst I could find expected them to systematically dismantle Ukraine in something that looked like the US Gulf War 1. They had the assets on paper to do it. Instead, they've been missing in action. Given the efforts Russia has gone to so far, I somehow doubt they're all sitting in hangers somewhere in perfect condition, with skilled pilots standing by to run complex missions with them as soon as Putin gives the order. It's all speculation on exactly what is going on, but I bet that either their maintenance has been such shit that only a fraction are airworthy, or they are terrified of losing a substantial fraction of them to Ukrainian air defense or otherwise looking incompetent, possibly both.There is no great mystery here. Russian conventional army is very mediocre because they are spending enormous amounts of their military budget (which isn't even that high) keeping up with the latest nuclear capabilities and missile delivery systems.
Yeah but no, again there is no great mystery. Their air assets were definitely present early in the war when they expected a quick victory with a small force. But Russian Air Force is small, and is not really fit for fighting against capable air defense. That is what happens when you have a limited military budget and spend it on very expensive nuclear systems. None of this was unknown.
Because they expected an invasion with near full power of the Russian army rolling across the border. This is not the invasion that actually took place and so what is the point of taking attrition to your valuable air assets when it is not going to accomplish anything because the army is not suited for it?
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This comment says nothing. All this money is negligible compared to the size of the American economy. It “sounds big”, that’s all. And I think it’s important, now and again, for any great power to show the world who’s boss. Looking at historical imperial lifespans it’s likely the US still has at least fifty years on top.
The industrial capacity is the biggest bottleneck. It doesn't matter how much money the US spends, there won't be enough artillery shells. The US is emptying it stock of air defence on the border to Iran, which clearly strengthens Iran's ability to hit back with missiles. Ukraine had thousands of SAM before the war which now are largely expended. Replacing s300 missiles with 5 million dollar Patriot missiles isn't only expensive, it requires those missiles to be manufactured. Add on the 250 s300 launchers and there is both economic and supply chain woes. Meanwhile, China outpaces the US in SAM production. The resources to train troops is strained. This war is causing a major NATO-supply chain shock. After three decades of failed wars, the US can't simultaneously keep the war in Ukraine going, dominate the middle east and keep China back. Latin American countries and the middle east have clearly moved away from the American orbit, with the US tied down in Taiwan and Ukraine.
As for cost, the cost has been enormous. It isn't just the tens of billions spent on weapons so far, it is going to be tens of billions per year for decades. Add 5% interest on these loans and the cost is significant. The inflation, caused by this war combined with the raised interest rates to combat it, far surpasses the direct cost of the weapons.
While empires don't die quickly, the US is clearly in a latter phase as it is stuck continuously fighting wars on the periphery while not being able to expand. Empires tend to decline when problems that need to be dealt with outstrips the ability to handle them. The Russia situation piled more problems on the US.
US inflation was high before the war and it has fallen during the war: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=167K2
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This is nothing for the US.
The inflation was caused by money printing during COVID. The war has contributed very little to inflation, at least in the US.
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