“When he was first running for President, back in 2000, he made much of the fact that Russia’s pcGDP was far under Portugal’s. (IMS he also pledged to fix that. Which is why he hasn’t talked about it for a while now.)”

Complicating things still further, Russian pcGDP is two-thirds that of the Estonia-Portugal-Slovakia club in the $20-22K band but a quarter above pcGDP in Turkey, Chile, Argentina, and Mexico and one half higher than
Brazil. Against this, Wikipedia suggests that income inequality in the lower-middle post-Communist EU group, Russia, and Turkey is substantially less than that in Latin America (surprise?).

If we’re talking about aggregate national strength, then Russia is bracketed by Russia, Brazil, Mexico, India, South Korea, and Canada. (Medvedev better watch out about the Lomonosov ridge …) India and South Korea have their own interests, I know next to nothing about Mexican foreign policy, and at least from my perspective there’s something going on with Brazil, but well. Russia’s only one member of a club, I mean to say, not all that prominent.

Hmm. Going by Wikipedia’s lists of countries sorted by PPP-adjusted

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

and nominal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita

GDP per capita, Portugal clusters together with Estonia and Slovenia in the $20-22K range, a bit below South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Russia’s figures on both metrics are 50% below the level of the three EU countries. Russia’s GDP per capita on both metrics, in turn, is perhaps 20-25% than those of Argentina, Chile, Turkey, and Mexico, 50% higher than Brazil’s, and three times larger than China’s. How that translates into living standards insofar as income inequality gets into the picture, I don’t pretend to know, although if this list

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

is at all accurate the post-Communist countries and Turkey are doing substantially better than the rest.

But. If we’re doing lazy geopolitical-stargazing, we sould be looking not so much at per capita figures as aggregate figures. Luxembourg’s well-off but is it a world power?
Looking at things in that respect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

Russia turns out to be wedged between Canada and Brazil at the higher end of the scale and India and South Korea at the lower end. China, Spain and the other G8 countries are above Russia, but Turkey and especially Mexico (along with Australia and the Netherlands).

What does all this mean? Um. Mainly that Russia’s a large and relatively wealthy country, but that it isn’t all that large or all that wealthy in the wider scheme fo things. That’s all.

Doug:

“Brazil doesn’t have Great Power pretentions.”

Not classical great power pretensions, but it seems to be definitely interestign in doing something. Brazil managing to get its variant of Portuguese accepted as the standardversion of that language, trade deals with Angola, something going on in South America … Russia’s counterpower?

The comparison is Putin’s, not mine. When he was first running for President, back in 2000, he made much of the fact that Russia’s pcGDP was far under Portugal’s. (IMS he also pledged to fix that. Which is why he hasn’t talked about it for a while now.)

Brazil doesn’t have Great Power pretentions. China does, but then it has ten times Russia’s population — and the Chinese are a lot more circumspect about their sphere of influence. (Though they certainly do have one.)

Doug M.

Also, Medvedev has already proposed a permanent OSCE mission to South Ossetia.

I have no doubt that the reports from the havoc in Gori and elsewhere are broadly accurate. It’s sad, of course, but then again, it’s not much different from the general chaos that briefly reigned in Bagdad after the American conquest. These things are what one would expect to happen even in a conventional war; it’s still not on the same level as the events in Yugoslavia or Chechnya.

The statements on “unknown armed men” and “unmarked military vehicles” would suggest that the people involved in the looting are mostly local militias, and probably not regular soldiers of the Russian forces.

I’m fairly certain that the Russian soldiers have played it rough during the campaign, but I sort of doubt that they’d be grabbing toilet seats as souvenirs. That pattern fits more with local Ossets attempting to update their own dwellings with Georgian furniture and plumbing.

Cheers,

J. J.

Just as a small aside, but I don’t know why you keep making the comparisons between Russia and Portugal (of all places). Portugal’s GDP per capita is quite significantly higher than Russia (around $22,000 vs $15,000), but I don’t see how this is a meaningful comparison.

Portugal is an advanced, high-income economy; I don’t see how having a lower GDP per capita than Portugal is a sign of economic weakness. (Incidentally, Russia’s GDP per capita is lower than any EU member state save for Romania and Bulgaria).

Also note that Russia’s GDP per capita is more than three times that of China and almost twice that of Brazil.

I don’t think Russia actually cares about European condemnation, as it happens. It’s not like we’re going to stop buying their fossil fuels.

Until now the Russia’s were doing ok in the propaganda war but as of today they !@#$ed things up.