The population benefits from the fact that, all other things being equal, the larger the group, the stronger the effect of the division of labor, and as a result, the higher the standard of living.
Simply put, if you are thrown into the jungle alone, you will not survive. If there are two or three of you, your chances will be better, but not by much. A group of 100 people is quite capable of building a settlement from scratch and providing for themselves. If there are 10,000 people, life will be quite good. And 1 million people will build modern infrastructure there.
I agree, but the economies of scale also have their limits. Too large a population is just as bad as too small a population. It becomes more difficult to manage, and efficiency decreases dramatically.
In the case of the EU and the United States, this principle does not work because they view their sphere of influence as colonies - territories from which they need to extract as many resources as possible, and invest as little as possible, and protect from external encroachments as little as possible. That is, they improve the metropolis at the expense of resources from the colonies. And then they promote this as achievements of democracy, human rights, and so on - all these benefits are only for the inhabitants of the metropolis, and the colonies pay for the feast.
100 years ago, this scheme was exactly as described in the previous paragraph, now it is more veiled, but the essence is the same.
And the colonial policy of Russia, both under the tsars and under the general secretaries, was the opposite - they lifted the periphery both economically and infrastructurally, protected it from external aggression, and did not particularly humiliate the local elite, but integrated it into the existing power hierarchy. Even in Afghanistan, during the war, they built so many infrastructure facilities that the Afghans still remember how well they lived under the Soviet "occupation." And they compare it with the Americans, who only shoot and support the production of drugs.
Independence is needed when an external force is robbing you or forcing you to work for it. That is, when the losses exceed the profits. The example of the interaction between Russia and Belarus shows that this is clearly not the case.
The cases of the United States and the EU only show that they have learned to manage large masses of people in large territories, and this has been achieved over centuries. We, the Slavs, do not know how to do this, and we do not know when we will learn. We can only speculate. Even Grandfather Lenin speculated that the future lies with transnational corporations, but we are still just speculating, while they are implementing this very effect of scale.
Added 3 minutes ago
And where did you get that from? Did you serve, launch, see how they rust, or maybe even handed over a couple of missiles for scrap metal? Stop talking nonsense in a topic about which you have zero knowledge... Your words about 48 hours are just laughable...
Argue, tell me how it will be in reality? Well, if you really know.
At least one plausible scenario.
For example, a missile flew from the coast of Syria under the Russian flag, where it should be according to the ambitions of the Russian people. How will events unfold?
