Putin's War Will Turn On Macroeconomics

Wars are fundamentally material affairs

Grok AI

Wars are fundamentally macroeconomic affairs. Soldiers are labor, conscription is a form of taxation, production and demand set prices. Men with guns and gold win wars. The larger macroeconomic alliance will have the advantages of greater collective GDP, and will therefore most likely win.

Over the long run of military history this is the most predictive equation for victory, a golden rule of thumb: the winner will be the side with the larger macroeconomic alliance, not the larger army or the larger country or the larger gods.

North Korea provides Putin with men and ammunition stocks. China and India buy his oil; China sells him golf carts and dirt bikes for meatwave assaults. Iran gave Putin a Shahed drone factory. That’s it. That’s the macroeconomic alliance that Putin has put together in Year Four of the war that, let’s be honest, really should bear his name.