David Frum has attracted a lot of attention for his heretical views on domestic policy and his willingness to admit previous error. And that’s admirable: I don’t think I can name another movement conservative figure who has been more publicly contrite and honest about conservatism’s failures. However as a recent article he wrote for CNN makes clear, his is still prone to radically inflating foreign threats. Here’s what he had to say about the ongoing drama in Ukraine:
One step to that reconstitution of the Soviet Union was absolutely indispensable: Reasserting Moscow’s power over Ukraine…Ukrainian independence liberated not only the Ukrainian people, but all Europe. Russia without the nearly 46 million people and vast natural resources of the Ukraine is a large and powerful country, but it is no superpower.
Frum’s formulation, and the implication that Russia with Ukraine is a superpower, is a subtle reworking of the old cliche that “Russia without Ukraine is a country, Russia with Ukraine is an empire” that I’ve seen making the rounds over Twitter. Based on past experience, a super-powered Russia would obviously be bad news for Europe and the United States.
But Ukraine is not a state of mind or some existential source of international influence: it’s a mid-sized country in Eastern Europe with an economy and population we can measure to some degree of exactitude. What would Russia look like if it absorbed Ukraine?* Well based on data from the World Bank, it wouldn’t be much of a superpower at all
