Using the mass murdering butcher of 10000 Kronstadt sailors, practitioner of mass starvation war communism is problematic to say the least. But what can we expect from Leninist fossils who support the 21st century's Russian version of "you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you"?
Here's a quick list of exceptions to this alleged rule of history:
1. Authoritarian more economically developed Argentina and 1973-90 Pinochet's Chile vs more agricultural less developed post-1948 democratic Costa Rica that abolished its army.
2. Oil rich authoritarian Venezuela vs democratic Uruguay since the 1990s.
3. Dig it up cart it out commodity exporting full democracies Australia and Canada vs the flawed democracy USA.
The straw man of attributing development to culture is a caricature that breaks down under the slightest examination.
1. East vs West Germany.
2. North vs South Korea.
3. Mostly Chinese filthy rich Singapore and pre-Chinese repression Hong Kong vs middle income entrapped China. Same people, same culture different economic outcomes.
4. Hyper-inflationary 1970s and 1980s Israel vs Israel Startup Nation of the last 25 years since economic liberalization was introduced.
5. The high inflation, high unemployment Dutch disease oil rich Netherlands of the 1970s and 80s vs the Netherlands since 2000.
6. The equality in poverty USSR-occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania vs the current Silicon Valley with snow versions that gave us unicorn startups Skype, Printful, Printify and Vinted.
Why Nations Fail by James Robinson and Daron Acemoglu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsZDlBU36n0) tells you where to look for the sources of economic failure and success: the rule of law instead of the law of rulers, just enough state power rather than too much (Russia, North Korea, the USSR, Venezuela) or too little (Somalia, East Timor, Libya) and the bond market and fiscal military state the Dutch invented, the English copied and whose copy the Americans copied (called "Dutch finance" by Alexander Hamilton).
https://medium.com/illumination/how-the-dutch-invented-the-modern-world-895ae234fd44
Post-1868 Meiji Japan knew it had to copy one or more versions of the European empires it didn't want to be colonized by. Middle kingdom China didn't get it and was colonized by concession.
Culture and cultural fear can supersede economics, as it did in the 17th century Japan that shut itself off from the world for three centuries, with a Dutch exception on an island in Nagasaki harbor.
Before then Edo (Tokyo) was an East Asian Amsterdam-type boomtown of 900000. But its Dutch-type future was short-circuited by political choice and cultural fear--the law of rulers winning over the rule of law.
