https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/11/npau-m11.html

“In a conflict with NATO, Russia is neither the more powerful nor the more aggressive side. The yearly Gross Domestic Product of the NATO countries is around $40 trillion. Russia’s is $1.7 trillion. NATO’s population is about 900 million with 3.3 million under arms, compared to Russia’s 144 million with one million active-duty troops. It is the NATO countries’ banks that are seizing Russia’s export earnings, not the other way around.”

We can compare these calculations to WWI based on this chart:

The Central Powers included only the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, for a total of about $13.5 billion GDP. The Entente Powers included the US, the UK, the Republic of China, the Russian Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, for a total of $82.5 billion GDP. India had an economy similar in size to China’s, meaning the real total should be $91.5 billion. Another $20 billion should be added to the Entente powers, who controlled Africa and South America, for a total of about $111.5 billion. The Entente Powers had more than 8 times the economy of the Central Powers.

Who started the war, however? Austria-Hungria started the war when it invaded Serbia. They led in aggression despite having a weaker economy. The relative weakness or strength has nothing to do with aggressiveness, which has to do with changes in position over time. As Austria saw its relative strength decline over time, and as Germany found itself excluded from the colonization of Westward Expansion and the Scramble for Africa afforded to other imperial powers, they realized they needed to act sooner rather than later. Furthermore, the assassination of Austria-Hungary’s heir to the throne in Serbia resulted from imperialist support for Serbian nationalism as a means of controlling Austria-Hungary’s expansion through the annexation of Slavic countries. The assassination had proved that regardless of Austria-Hungary’s actions, imperialists banks and corporations had already decided to divide up the country by force. They could at least resist this outcome with a final destructive war before their collapse. This destructive war would also help capitalism raise its rate of profit, the main underlying economic motive for the war, through higher prices and military-political oppression of the rising international working class.

In the present situation, we have Russia’s $1.7 trillion against NATO’s $40 trillion. This leaves out, however, that China and Germany have broken from the UK, US, and NATO on the issue of sanctions. Germany will continue to rely heavily on Russian natural gas and China will expand its purchase of Russian exports, ignoring the sanctions. China has bought Russian oil at $25 a barrel, when the market price stood at over $100 a barrel. Subtracting Germany’s $4 trillion and adding it to Russia, and adding China’s $18 trillion, we arrive at a new total of $24 trillion for Russia, China, and Germany, as compared to NATO minus Germany’s $36 trillion. This makes the world more evenly divided than during WWI. So far, NATO has not contributed airplanes or a no-fly zone to the Ukraine, making their loss virtually assured, probably within a month of the date of invasion.

Still, China can turn on Russia, leaving Russia and Germany with $6 trillion to the NATO-China alliance of $60 trillion, a 10 to 1 ratio similar to that of WWI. At this point, constant attacks against Russia from smaller nations on their border, as with Austria-Hungary, including biological weapons attacks by smaller groups like the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian Black Hand, would eventually force them to fight to defend their borders and also their oligarchy, their Austrian-Hungarian Hapsburgs, the Stalinist bureaucrats who enriched themselves through the parasitic privatization of the property of the working class. A destructive war would ruin Russia but allow them to transfer their assets abroad and live in luxury, while their country dies for their privileges. The outcome would benefit the banks and corporations, who could raise prices and lower wages with a combination of supply shortages, martial law lock-downs, and accusations of sedition and treason for strike activity.

The only way to save the Ukraine and Russia is through the establishment of workers’ states throughout the region. An imperialist war will lead to intolerable if not genocidal conditions for millions of people, making the overthrow of capitalist governments a direct necessity for workers in those countries and throughout the world. If this occurs, the rest of the world’s workers will unite behind the new workers’ states and fight their own imperialist governments to end the nuclear barbarism that reigned over the world for the past 75 years.