Posted on 10/30/2005 11:04:36 AM PST by Dundee
Mark Steyn: Russia is dying and Islamists will grab parts of the carcass
REMEMBER the months before 9/11? The new US President had his first meeting with the Russian President. "I looked the man in the eye and found him very straightforward and trustworthy," George W. Bush said after two hours with Vladimir Putin. "I was able to get a sense of his soul." I'm all for speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but that's way too soft.
Some experts started calling Vlad the most Westernised Russian strongman since Peter the Great and cooing about a Russo-American alliance that would be one of the cornerstones of the post-Cold War world.
It's not like that today.
From China to Central Asia to Ukraine, from its covert efforts to maintain Saddam in power to its more or less unashamed patronage of Iran's nuclear ambitions, Moscow has been at odds with Washington over every key geopolitical issue, and a few non-key ones, too, culminating in Putin's tirade to Bush that the US was flooding Russia with substandard chicken drumsticks and keeping the best ones for itself. It was a poultry complaint but indicative of a retreat into old-school Kremlin paranoia.
Russia's export of ideology was the decisive factor in the history of the 20th century. It seems to me entirely possible that the implosion of Russia could be the decisive factor in the 21st century.
As Iran's nuclear program suggests, in many of the geopolitical challenges to the US, there's usually a Russian component in the background.
In fairness to Putin, he's in a wretched position. Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century.
The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future, most Russian women are voting with their foetus: 70 per cent of pregnancies are aborted. A smaller population needn't necessarily be a problem but Russia is facing simultaneously a huge drain of wealth out of the system.
Add to that the unprecedented strains on a ramshackle public health system. Russia is the sick man of Europe, and would still look pretty sick if you moved him to Africa. It has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. By 2010, AIDS will be killing between 250,000 and 750,000 Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are parts of Russia that are exceptions to these malign trends. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a "Mu" and end with a "slim".
So the world's largest country is dying and the only question is how violent its death throes are. Yesterday's Russia was characterised by Winston Churchill as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Today's has come unwrapped: it's a crisis in a disaster inside a catastrophe. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has AIDS, the Middle East has Islamists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia's got the lot: an African-level AIDS crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet.
Of course, the nuclear materials are all in "secure" facilities: more secure, one hopes, than the supposedly secure public buildings in Nalchik that the Islamists took over with such ease two weeks ago. They also killed a big bunch of people.
Poor old Russia is awash with resources but fatally short of Russians and, in the end, warm bodies are the one indispensable resource.
What would you do if you were Putin? What have you got to keep your rotting corpse of a country as some kind of player?
You've got nuclear knowhow, which a lot of ayatollahs and dictators are interested in.
That's the danger for America: that most of what Russia has to trade is likely to be damaging to US interests. In its death throes, it could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China.
Russia's calculation is that sooner or later we'll be back in a bipolar world and that, in almost any scenario, there's more advantage in being part of the non-American pole.
In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact crumbling before his eyes, poor old Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: "The Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system."
In an odd way, that's what happened everywhere except in the Kremlin. As communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Afghanistan and Indonesia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, who would have been Marxist fantasists a generation or two back, are now Islamists: it's the ideology du jour. And, despite Gorbachev turning down the offer, it will be Russia's fate to have large chunks of its turf annexed by the Islamic world.
We are witnessing a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. The ideological vacuum was mostly filled with a nihilist fatalism. Churchill got it wrong: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss.
ping
There are 1 million HIV cases in Russia, and that's according to outside organizations. Secondly, alcoholism by who's standards (not to deny that there is a high real level of alcoholism) but the definition in America is now what? 3 drinks in a row, if I recall correctly, or was it 4? Well ain't that dandy. Go read up on how much the founding fathers drank and tell me by our modern standards that they aren't alcoholics.
we shall see...
I will see....
thank you"jb6"
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“This eto fore situation is much controversial; eto problem with new jobs; with new opportunity of young people; fore I can speak off is dim but not pessimistic. There is many work but few of young ones want to work. Russian youngster eto my country young ones me included know well what is going on; fore we have different approach of life. There has to be strong economic changes in our sphere of Eastern Europe. Stupidity of history and bad feelings cloud people understanding and opportunities that is in front of us. We Slavic people just can’t get in agreement of helping each other. Eto in uno pride and arrogance comes in way, Eastern Europe can be power eto fore ambitions and stupidity and hate blocks this. I can write so much you know well, eto fore we are where we have decided ino fore is nowhere. Absolute misunderstanding of facts and history, humanity will run its own way.”
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BRAVO!
Thank you
Steyn isn't making this stuff up. Steyn isn't making the predictions. He is citing figures that are 'out there' and have been out there for quite some time. Here's more info (from Rand):
Deaths among working-age males have contributed most to declining life expectancy. A 20-year-old male in Russia now has only a 1 in 2 chance of living to age 60, while one in the United States has a 9 in 10 chance. Russian male life expectancy is now 13 years less than that for Russian females-one of the largest differences by sex in the world. Male life expectancy in Russia is now below that in Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Mexico, Morocco, and the Philippines.
Deaths due to violence, injuries, and other nonnatural causes have contributed heavily to high working-age male mortality. Many of these deaths are alcohol related, and trends in Russian male mortality and alcohol consumption have paralleled each other throughout the past two decades.
Here's another. This one is from 1994.
Climb in Russia's death rate sets off population implosion
Snippet: The decline in Russia's population began in 1991, when deaths exceeded births by 207,000. That year, according to Labor Ministry statistics, fewer than 40 of the country's 79 regional districts registered more deaths than births. But in 1992 the figure was put at 44 districts, and by last year 68 districts were losing population. Today there are only 6 districts in Russia that continue to grow, all with historically high birth rates.
And he didn't 'ignore'--Steyn wrote this: True, there are parts of Russia that are exceptions to these malign trends. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a "Mu" and end with a "slim".
How do you figure Italy--where abortion is illegal & which has a lower fertility rate (1.2) than even Russia (1.4)?
The few figures that he does site are usually from the mid to early 90s. (his claim of an African HIV rate is ludicrous and a plain lie, 1 million HIV cases by outside agencies, that's less then 1% vs 30-40% in Africa...yup "real" numbers there)
Or they are called Moscow (10% of the population), St. Petersburg, Volgagrad, Vladikovkaz, Rostov, Krasnagar, Nizni Novgorad (where Intel and AT&T just openned huge R&D centers that they first closed here in America), Vladivostok, etc. Steyn is full of it.
"A decline in life expectancy this dramatic has never happened in the postwar world.
And yet, go check the out there info on CIA World Fact Book, the average life expectancy has been climbing for several years now.
Why would Siberia break away, and how would this make Russia better off? Would Siberia become its own country? Lastly, are there parts of Russia that are MAJORITY muslim? Thanks
The few figures that he does site are usually from the mid to early 90s.
Not true. October 21, 2005 article posted here at FR:
He didn't say that. Steyn said "an African-level AIDS crisis".
From 12/22/04:The HIV epidemic is rising faster in the Russian Federation than anywhere else in the world. New reported diagnoses have almost doubled annually since 1998...
And what exctly does that mean if not a level of AIDS like that of Africa...except its not.
The average life expectancy for women in Russia is 72.3 years, whereas the figure for men - 58.9 years - is significantly lower.
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