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When talking about war, the only measure more useless and irrelevant than GDP and economic strength is toenail length.

Afghanistan is sitting at around $500/capita. Russia and the US have completely failed there despite four decades of conflict. Vietnam was about $60-70 during the tail end of the Vietnam War[1]. We know how that ended.

I'd say that maybe you could win if you abandoned traditional war tactics and just bombed indiscriminately and avoided suffering too many casualties, but, well, that was tried and failed in those wars. You also wouldn't want to try it against a country that can and will fire back.

[1] https://countryeconomy.com/gdp/vietnam?year=2008



So you are comparing Afghanistan and Russia, my point actually




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