WHY RUSSIAN WEAKNESS MATTERS
This perfect storm of demographic change, religious transformation, and external pressure will determine Russia’s internal political climate, its place in the world, and its future strategic priorities.
Russia’s revival will cause short-term tactical problems for the United States and its allies in the West. But further into the future, the strategic challenge posed by Russia will be even more profound. If the twentieth century was defined in large part by the rise of Russia (in the form of the Soviet Union), the twenty-first will be shaped in great measure by its unraveling.
This book is about that decline and its logical end product: the end of Russia itself. To be sure, the Russian Federation might not cease to exist altogether. In fact, it may yet linger on for some time to come. But the economic and social indicators are unmistakable: the Russia of tomorrow will look radically different from that of today. And when it does happen, Russia’s implosion will threaten the United States and American interests in new and grave ways.
Policymakers in Washington would be wise not only to understand this reality, but also to begin planning for it.
CHAPTER TWO
THE NEW SICK MAN OF EUROPE
A century ago, the Ottoman Empire was known as the “sick man of Europe.” At the height of its power in the seventeenth century, its territory and influence stretched from Africa to Asia and encompassed thirty-nine million people in more than thirty nations—nearly a tenth of the world’s population at the time. But by the early twentieth century, Ottoman rule was in terminal decline, riven by conflicts along its periphery and torn apart by internal political strife. Its death throes contributed to the outbreak of the First World War and helped redraw the geopolitical map of the West.
Today, Russia has assumed the mantle of Europe’s “sick man.” The causes of Russia’s illness include low birth rates, meager life expectancy, a culture of abortion, the collapse of the Russian family, and an escalating AIDS epidemic. The results are nothing short of catastrophic; at its current rate of decline, the population of the Russian Federation could plummet to just over one hundred million souls by the middle of this century. 1
RUSSIA’S DEPOPULATION BOMB
Demography, it is often said, is destiny. How a population changes over time can determine whether a nation succeeds or fails. Yet few students of international affairs pay much attention to demographics, preferring to focus on subjects such as military history and strategic culture. Fewer still appreciate the profound impact that demography has on the course of global geopolitics.
So it is with Russia. For years, a handful of scholars have sounded the alarm over Russia’s unfolding demographic disaster and its dire strategic implications for Russia and the West. In the main, however, Russia’s demographic collapse is still poorly understood and under-appreciated among both policymakers in Washington and the American public at large.
The math behind Russia’s decline is complex, and stark. Countries require an average of 2.1 live births per woman to maintain a stable population. That formula is known as the “total fertility rate,” or TFR. Today, the countries of Africa have the highest TFRs in the world, ranging from the prolific (Niger: 7.61) to the merely robust (Zimbabwe: 3.61). 2In other words, in much of Africa societal continuity is not in question (even though a host of other issues—from economic prosperity to political stability—are).
Other countries, such as Turkey, Nicaragua, and Turkmenistan, generally have stable populations, with fertility at right around the rate necessary for replenishment. 3The United States is among them: America’s TFR is more or less stable at 2.06, thanks in part to high levels of immigration (mostly from Latin American countries).
Other countries are dying, with fertility rates far below replacement levels. Canada’s is 1.59; Japan’s just 1.39. 4The TFRs of most European countries are lower still, with a median of just 1.38. This has led columnist Mark Steyn to wryly observe that, “Unless it corrects course within the next five to ten years, Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: the grand buildings will be standing but the people who built them will be gone.” 5
In this grim calculus, Russia ranks close to the bottom. According to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, in the years between 2000 and 2008, Russia’s average annual fertility rate was 1.34, far below the 2.1 necessary to maintain a population at its current size. 6
Today, the situation is a bit better. According to U.S. government estimates, Russia now ranks 178th in the world, with a TFR of 1.61. 7And in 2012, for the first time since the fall of the USSR, live births outnumbered deaths in Russia. They did so modestly (the country’s population grew by just over two hundred thousand between January and September 2012), but it was enough for Kremlin officials to proclaim that their country’s demographic fortunes had been reversed. 8
Experts are less optimistic. Some have cautioned that Russia’s demographic reversal is fragile and temporary. In 2010, one of Russia’s leading demographers, Anatoly Vishnevsky of the Moscow Institute of Demography, warned, “In five years, Russia will again begin dying out.” Vishnevsky noted that the “youth bulge” (and corresponding spike in fertility), which had slowed Russia’s demographic decline, was close to being exhausted, and that as a result “the country is approaching the edge of a demographic abyss.” 9Recent studies have come to the same conclusion. A 2012 survey by Aton, a Moscow-based investment bank, concluded that Russia’s current demographic upswing is only temporary and that the country “will soon face another protracted demographic decline.” 10
In truth, Russia’s demographic descent is not a new or surprising phenomenon. Early signs of a population downturn began to appear as long ago as the 1960s, and by the 1970s total fertility had dropped to less than two children per woman in almost all of the Soviet Union’s European republics. 11
But these facts did not comport with the Soviet Union’s view of itself as a great and growing power. Thus in early 1991, just months before the USSR’s collapse, the Institute for Scientific Information, a research center of the prestigious Soviet Academy of Sciences, issued a rosy outlook on Soviet demography. Internal population growth within the Soviet Union was strong, the study declared, and the number of ethnic Russians within the USSR would grow by as much as two million over the following half decade. By 2015, the report predicted, ethnic Russians would number 158 million. 12
The reality has proven to be very different. Russia’s most recent national census found that the population of Russia shrank by nearly 3 percent in the eight years between 2002 and 2010 and now stands at 142.9 million. 13If current trends continue, by 2050 official Kremlin estimates project that Russia’s population will dwindle to just 107 million. 14
THE DRIVERS OF DECLINE
Russia’s demographic decline is a consequence of societal dysfunctions that took root during the decades of repressive Communist rule. Here is a brief description of just a few of those drivers.
SKY-HIGH MORTALITY
The years that followed the breakup of the USSR were economically and politically tumultuous for the countries of the former Soviet Union. The human cost of Russia’s transition was particularly severe, with many post-Soviet countries seeing dramatic drops in life expectancy.