Financial? Perhaps. Demographically, however, I believe Russia and Europe have entered a terminal demographic decline, only accelerated in Russia’s case by the war.
Due to immense migration, demographic change is a thing of the past now. France, Germany and other western European countries no longer face this problem. On the other side it comes with new problems, as failed integration has become a huge problem.
And considering Russia, the country has one big ass infantry. And in the Ukraine war, Russia has yet to call for total mobilisation. And the west, even with the help of the US did not yet manage to deliver enough ammunition and weaponry to push back the Russian forces. For me that’s an indicator that Russia is more capable of actual war than the West.
Especially the US had many military missions in the past decades and most of them failed. Afghanistan is just one of the many failed attempts of military control. The US military has shown not to be capable to win wars, but only maintain them.
America, on the other hand, has not lost any soldiers or any significant resources and has increased the industrial capacity of the military-industrial complex.
Well and so did the Russians. The west has more specialised and modern weapons, it these have now proven to be too complicate to be produced in sufficient masses. Russia using old tech with easier produced weaponry has shown to be much more resilient than expected. Making use of the oldschool Propeller for bombs instead of high tech laser measured ignition timers, has proven to be just as effective. The US military has been scammed in many ways by weapon manufacturers into buying over complicated tech for simple applications.
Strategically, from a cold, hard, pragmatic point of view, that counts as a win for my superiors, in the long term.
If your superiors were involved in the last decades military operations of the US, then their word shouldn’t be taken too serious. Afghanistan is just the latest failure of along series of failures. And currently it seems, like the US will fail in Ukraine as well, even before sending troops.
Financial ups and downs are temporary and manageable.
Financial ups and downs can cripple a country’s economy so immensely, that they change a country’s direction for years later.
There is no military without tax payers. And in a broken economy, there are not many willing tax payers.
Demographic collapses are not.
It can be corrected with migration, even though migration poses its own new problems.