GDP does not consider how and for what purpose the money is spent; its blind to that!. For example when we have massive bush fires the rebuild/recovery spend lifts our GDP....GDP does not factor-in the lost wealth.
And so it is with war materials .
That said. the Vietnam war loaded the US Government with debt and it has never really recovered (nudged on by its GFC)
So, IMO, the metric to watch is Russian debt which, at the start of the war, was about 18% of GDP...one of the lowest in the G20.
IMO had Russia not invaded Georgia and later the Ukraine , it would have massive reserves now but at the expense of its perceived national security.
But of course. any country (including Aus during the anti-China Huawei /BRI debacle) will put national security before economic wellbeing.....its seen as an existential issue.
imagine if a future PNG Government had plans to allow Chinese WMDs siloed on PNG (for benefits) aimed at Aus population centres, what would we do?
IMO we'd knock over that China-friendly PNG Government before pen would hit paper and "engineer" an Aus friendly one even though China might stun our economy with comprehensive economic sanctions (our economy is over 30% reliant on China)
I mention this because when it comes to our participation in Geopolitics ...Aus self-interest should always be paramount regardless of economic short term costs. An economic deficit is much easy to recover than a sovereign deficit.
The general geopolitical rule is that strengthening one's national security ought not diminish that of a neighbour's , particuluarly if that neighbour is more powerful than one's self ...
There is a lot of discussion on this thread re the morality (personal) of this Ukrainian war but from Australia's point of view it should not be the 'right or wrong" of this war. but instead international precedent it may set to impact Aus later & I refer specifically to the PNG/China example above .
