A Good Treaty: In His Own Words…

Before answering any questions, let me take a second to thank Anatoly Karlin of Sublime Oblivion for taking the time to draft some very challenging questions that were very fun to (try to) answer. I tried to invent responses that were equally thought-provoking, and while I may have failed in that enterprise, I do hope to explain a little bit about the way I approach this work, which occupies a startling amount of my time.

Why did you start blogging about Russia?

I’ve been studying and working on Russia for about nine years now. Russia = bizarre, alluring, etc. I figure anyone reading my blog shares my interest in the Motherland.

I don’t expect this blog to have any impact on public policy or academic debate, but I do personally benefit a great deal from having a forum through which I can better synthesize my own ideas and listen to the responses of others.

The specific angle of AGT (the whole ‘realist’ POV) was a conscious decision I made after working in Washington for about a year. Democracy promotion, I soon discovered, has really supplanted all other approaches to foreign policy. Speaking outside this framework is the easiest way to get oneself painted as un-American and pro-dictatorship. This is largely a sham, since the United States has hardly stopped cooperating with nasty foreign states, but the dialog carried out in DC makes it very difficult for anyone to acknowledge this. Basically, I set out to avoid the old, tired normative analysis.

What were your best and worst blogging experiences so far?

The most fun I’ve had so far is writing direct responses to articles that appear in the press. Doing this, I’ve managed to gain the attention of other bloggers and journalists, which has produced some stimulating private email exchanges and led InoSMI to translate a few of my posts (three, so far) into Russian.

The worst thing about blogging is an inverse of one of its best aspects: I’m regularly reminded how many talented, bright people there are out there with my exact specialty, who are regularly producing fascinating original work, and living abroad in Moscow, which I think of as a sort of bittersweet adventure.

What are the best blogs about Russia and the Eurasian space? What are the worst?

Some of my favorite Russia blogs (in no particular order): Julia Ioffe’s Moscow Diaries, Mark Adomanis’ On Russia, Sean’s Russia Blog, poemless (RIP — just kidding), this blog — Sublime Oblivion, The Russia Monitor, and Scraps of Moscow. I’ve recently started following Democratist, Dividing My Time, The Kremlin Stooge, and Neeka’s Backlog (which posts the loveliest photographs of Eastern Europe). In Russian, Maxim Kononenko at Idiot.fm and Oleg Kashin’s LiveJournal provide regular amusement. Evgeny Gontmakher, Medvedev’s “man on the outside,” has some amusing op-eds on his ‘blog’ at Ekho Moskvy. For military affairs, I regularly turn to the following three blogs: Russian Defense Policy, Russian Military Reform (Dmitry Gorenburg), and Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (Pavel Podvig).

The Russia blogs with which I torture myself by reading are some of the following: the LJ blogs of Vladimir Milov, Vasily Yakemenko, and Andrey Illarionov. Catherine Fitzpatrick’s Minding Russia reliably produces some of the longest, most rambling posts you’ll find online. Oleg Kozlovsky’s blogs (WordPress for English and LJ for Russian) are both as boring as they are terrible. Since Oleg decided to integrate his Tweets with his LJ account, there has been five times as much garbage. Ilya Yashin’s LJ blog, modestly titled in Spanish “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (A People United Will Never Be Defeated), is full of the same D-list self-promotion, but he sometimes includes photography and multimedia that makes reading his PR slightly more fun. (Also, he volunteered sordid details about an alleged threesome sex scandal that never got any corroboration beyond his own ranting. So, it can be entertaining on occasion, without a doubt.) And finally, Vladimir Kara-Murza’s blog, Spotlight on Russia, is another publication I love to hate for its unwavering commitment to recycling the most vapid, useless tropes about the ills of Russia.

I don’t even bother reading La Russophobe, which seems to just scrape the bottom of the Window on Eurasia barrel — another blog I skim but lack the stomach to honestly read. I think LR is too much opinion without enough style. Mark Adomanis (On Russia) and Mark Chapman (The Kremlin Stooge) are also very opionated and often openly insulting, but I’m able to enjoy their stuff mainly because (a) I don’t find their opinions to be so crazy (sorry, what can I say — I love to affirm my biases), and (b) their writing is immensely better.

What is your favourite place in Russia? Is there anywhere you haven’t been yet, but would love to visit?

I haven’t traveled Russia nearly enough. The farthest east I’ve been was a brief visit to Kazan’, which I thought was fascinating and beautiful. The local Kremlin there, which hosts both an Orthodox church and a mosque, has a marvelous statue out front dedicated to the world’s proletariat. Though I’m not a Marxist, the monument is awesome. Imagine Atlas breaking Ghostrider’s fire-chain in slow motion, and perhaps then you’ll understand how cool this thing is. Hell, just look at it here.

I’d love to see just about anywhere else in Russia I haven’t already been, which is most places.

If you could recommend one book about Russia, what would it be?

I wouldn’t trouble anyone with a whole book. To understand Russia’s transitional conundrum, one should begin by reading Yuri Slezkine’s 1994 article “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism“.

Do you think the average Russian lives better today than in 1988? 1980? 2000? Are they richer, freer or happier than before?

My impressions from talking to Russians is that life is better now that it’s been before. It’s still pretty lousy for most people, though. (I don’t think Russia is alone in this.) Whatever the benefits of modern living, Soviet nostalgia (for geopolitical status, for scientific respect, for athletic greatness, etc.) is also a patently real political force. Material realities are important, but it’s public perceptions that ultimately make the world.

How would you classify Russia’s political system? Is it a liberal democracy, an authoritarian regime, or a hybrid crossroads? Which current or historical political economies does it most resemble, if any?

Every polity is at a crossroads all the time. Every society in every nation in history is also a hybrid of various trends and persuasions. Russian politicians tend to have a more statist leaning in their way of conducting affairs, but this isn’t to say Western officials aren’t entangled in comparable webs of intervention, assistance, and power brokering. I honestly find very little to be gained by pursuing any classifications like those you suggest. If we call Russia ‘authoritarian,’ there are a thousand examples of information freedom and public debate to debunk this label. On the other hand, there are countless instances of repression to suggest that the Kremlin is indeed an authoritarian menace. Take your pick, but please leave me out of this errand.

On balance, do you think Putinism was good or bad for Russia? (Try not to sit on the fence here).

First of all, I don’t like the term “Putinism.” I think it gives too much ideological credit to the Putin administration, which has never bothered much with a real intellectual architecture for either the Power Vertical or United Russia. (Sorry, Surkov, but I’m just not seeing the big picture when you tell the Nashi kids to ‘innovate’ the way to tomorrowland.) Putin consolidated power during a time of political and economic anarchy. Was that a good thing? Of course it was. Russians were deeply unhappy with Boris Yeltsin’s second term (which they were scared into granting thanks to the a spectacular PR scheme by the oligarchs), and Putin brought more than just stability to the country — he managed a period of genuine prosperity that, at the very least, benefited enough of the country’s elites that they ceased open, internecine warfare.

The new focus on modernization and innovation under Dmitri Medvedev, whom I believe to be a political ally and proponent of “Putinism,” is just the next phase of a process begun ten years ago. Perhaps it’s thanks to Putin’s flexible non-ideology, but I believe that he’s capable of adapting tactics to the needs of the moment. If his financial team is telling him that foreign investment is a must, it’s no shock that the Kremlin is now pursuing FDI with all its might.

It’s not all roses with the Putin years. In 2001, Russia was 79th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Last year it was tied for 146th. (Hint: higher is worse.) While we shouldn’t attach apocalyptic significance to the designation of a number by a single NGO, the general consensus is definitely that corruption has been on the rise. This is a serious problem — it’s the serious problem. An optimistic take might be that, as the Kremlin begins to crack down on bribes and dodgy deals, the wrongdoers are trying to exact maximum rents as long-term insurance.

Or maybe Putin’s own web of rent distribution is the backbone of the ‘legal nihilism’ behind Russia’s Africa-level corruption. If that’s the case, then perhaps that way of doing business is no longer optimal. Recent overtures from Medvedev (presumably acting in agreement with Putin) suggest that the authorities are, at the very least, considering new priorities. It’s Russian politics in action.

If you could advise the Russian government to do one thing it isn’t already doing, what would it be?

Harassing the liberal opposition by denying them rally sites with fake counterprotests (for example, blood drives, and so on) seems to me to be a completely pointless exercise. It’s exactly this negative publicity that the opposition needs to survive, and the authorities continue to feed them this sustanance. Putin’s response, delivered to Shevchuk at the infamous luncheon exchange, was that these decisions aren’t up to him, but lie with local officials. Very well, Vladimir Vladimirovich, but why the hell don’t you get off your ass and exercise a little of that characteristic paternalism to steer your ship to calmer shores? I can only guess that the Kremlin is either unconcerned or desperately afraid — either of which seems like a stupid mindset for the leaders of the Russian Federation.

Additionally, I don’t see the point in squashing mayoral elections in cities across Russia. A few opposition victories by the communists or the SRs in buttfucknowhere cities is desirable! When Kondrashov won the Irkutsk spot recently, I thought ‘Wonderful!’ A few more such incidents will not even dent United Russia’s juggernaut, and it both injects some alternative voices into national politics and serves as excellent PR for Moscow to use in the faces of people who moan about attacks on democracy. And then I heard about Kondrashov switching affiliations to register with the ruling party. And then it turned out that the regional duma was seeking to abolish mayoral elections altogether in favor of an opaque ‘city manager’ appointment system. Again, the Kremlin and the authorities demonstrate an entirely unnecessary panic about the threat of opposition parties. If I had Putin’s or Medvedev’s ear, I’d scream into it that they need to display a bit more confidence — even if it’s in their own puppet political theater.

HARD Talk with A Good Treaty

ANATOLY KARLIN: As I understand, you are not the biggest fan of the Russian liberal opposition. You believe their leaders kowtow to the West and couldn’t care less about the everyday concerns of ordinary Russians. But consider the case of a patriotic Russian who detests the corruption and proizvol (arbitrariness) of state institutions and genuinely wants to improve human rights – not just those of Khodorkovsky, but of prison inmates, conscripts, minorities, etc. What can she realistically do about it, apart from ranting about the return of neo-Soviet totalitarianism in front of foreign TV cameras?

A GOOD TREATY: People “do” all kinds of things. Thirty-six parents and teachers in Ulyanovsk went on a week-long group hunger strike to successfully protest the closure of several local schools. On the opposite end of the spectrum, a group of youths in the Far East, fed up with local law enforcement and inspired by a particularly trigger-happy version of nationalism, decided to arm itself and start attacking police officers. Some people make it their profession to work in the line of danger — people like Natalia Estemirova and Sergey Magnitsky. Others lead scholarly human rights organizations like Oleg Orlov of Memorial, dedicated to unearthing a Soviet past they believe is forgotten at Russia’s peril.

All of these people are patriots in their own heads, and who am I to disagree?

I don’t begrudge the liberal opposition for ranting hyperbolisms in front of foreign TV cameras. This is half the business of being in the Russian liberal opposition, after all: (a) they need to provoke/tempt the authorities into cracking down on their rallies, otherwise nobody would ever care, and (b) they need to attract the attention of the West — for financial aid, for international connections, and for status. The liberal literati are frequent visitors to the United States — even the younger, student-”employed’ members like Ilya Yashin (who recently concluded a cross-country tour of the U.S.) and Oleg Kozlovsky (who’s been Stateside for weeks and is currently attending some kind of not-at-all-propagandistic-sounding democracy workshop at Stanford University).

These boys are more than welcome to globetrot wherever they like, but I personally can’t help but see them as a bunch of spoiled brats, partying to their own celebrity and hopelessly out of touch with the needs of ordinary Russians. (I’ve made it a point on AGT to focus on their endless infighting in order to highlight how self-centered and oblivious they really are.)

ANATOLY KARLIN: You noted that Oleg Kozlovsky’s rush to disassociate Solidarnost’ from the gay rights movement, or ”radical LGBT activists” as he calls them, is remarkably similar to the Kremlin’s own arguments for dismissing the Russian liberal movement: neither minority enjoys much approval from ordinary Russians (see On “Minor & Non-Critical” Issues: Oleg Kozlovsky vs. Gay Rights). This is an inconsistency at best; a less charitable explanation is that many Russian liberals are themselves hypocrites and homophobes.

But consider this from another perspective – though claiming to be “a fan of free societies”, you insist the current Russian liberal movement is morally bankrupt and should moderate its anti-Kremlin rhetoric to be accepted by ordinary Russians. But if compromise is the key to political breakout, why should Russian liberals embrace the LGBT movement, an act that is sure to “alienate the vast majority of the population”, as Kozlovsky says, but improve neither rights of assembly nor LGBT rights? Are you not guilty of the same double standards as both Kozlovsky and the Kremlin?

A GOOD TREATY: The leaders of the liberal opposition may be a band of egotistical creeps, but I don’t think the principles of the movement itself are necessarily bankrupt. Like with the communists, there’s an unhealthy degree of backward-looking thinking, in their case consumed primarily with nostalgia for and white-washing of the ‘troubled 1990s.’

I don’t think the opposition needs to “moderate its anti-Kremlin rhetoric.” Plenty of Russians are more than responsive to criticisms aimed at the authorities, and liberals from Eduard Limonov to Liudmila Alexeeva could remain prolific dissidents without abandoning their principles. Remember that even at 70% approval ratings, almost one-third of all Russians still disapproves of the political status quo.

What liberals would benefit from is a reappraisal of their goals. Over the last few years, they’ve moved from one fad to another. ‘Other Russia’ to ‘Solidarity.’ ‘Marchy nesoglasnikh’ to ‘Days of Rage.’ The newest campaign, ‘Strategy-31,’ is catchy, but it likely maxed out its publicity potential with the blowup at the end of May. (We’ll see if the next one in three days proves me wrong.) As Vladimir Milov pointed out in a radio debate with Ilya Yashin, Solidarity and its various rally projects have peaked. More people just aren’t coming anymore (in fact, many seem to be leaving, he claims).

This, I think, has more to do with the focus (or lack thereof) of the professional liberal protesters. Everywhere they look for concrete platform ideas, they’re terrified of casting the net too narrowly. Hence, they mustn’t support the gays for fear of alienating the masses. Certain environmental causes are taken up (such as the movement to protect Lake Baikal), but it’s usually in response to local initiatives elsewhere, and it’s after the real hubbub has ended. What Moscow’s protesting “elites” typically trumpet is an unattractive medley of ad hominem attacks on national figures. So it’s “Putin v ostavku” or “Luzhkov v tiur’mu” — the Russian equivalent of Bush-era peacenik demonstrators demanding the president’s impeachment or today’s Tea Party comparing Obama’s healthcare plan to National Socialism.

For the individuals involved in this movement, I’ve no doubt that they think they’re speaking ‘truth to power.’ On a superficial level, it’s certainly a pretty daring person who delights in taunting Russian OMON troops, essentially begging them for a beating and an arrest. But it’s that photogenic rush that seems to fool these folks into believing that they’re soldiers on the 21st century front against totalitarianism. When I met Oleg Kozlovsky earlier this year, he was asked if people feared for their jobs when attending rallies. His answer? Nope. Nobody gets fired for coming to these circuses. Come one, come all, to the political pageant.

If people like Yashin and Kozlovsky (and Milov and, I’m sure, nearly all the high profile lib leadership) want to ignore the gay rights movement for fear of endangering their popular appeal, I wonder why they can’t apply that same political sense to the rest of their activism. Either they are purists proudly pontificating from the periphery, or they’re cutthroat and calculating, and presumably seeking a way to speak to the interests and tastes of society at large. Right now, they seem to be occupying a sort of idiot’s limbo, where just about everyone has a reason to dislike them. And — what a shock — most Russians do.

ANATOLY KARLIN: When the Feds rolled up the “extremely undangerous” Russian spy ring, you argued that they managed to “jeopardize” an important relationship with the world’s second nuclear superpower. But STRATFOR would argue that you missed the point (see Russian Spies and Strategic Intelligence). Though Boris and Natasha failed to steal anything important, that wasn’t their goal to begin with! The traditional modus operandi of Russia’s intelligence services is to recruit young, promising Americans with potential careers in organizations like Lockheed Martin or the CIA (think Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames). Unless you want foreign moles infiltrating the Homeland’s national security agencies and military-industrial complex, why would you criticize the FBI for doing its job?

A GOOD TREATY: It’s funny that you mention Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames as examples of people at risk of being ‘turned’ but Russian secret agents, as both these men initiated their work as spies by themselves. Hanssen and Ames each lived beyond their means, and apparently approached Russian embassy personnel to sell U.S. state secrets in order to cover their debts and subsidize the high life. No unregistered foreign employees were required to flip these Americans, whose volunteered treachery led in turn to the deaths of Soviet and Russian traitors working for us. If Anna Chapman or anyone from her team of ‘Illegals’ was in a position to ‘flip’ an important American source, it would have marked a departure from the history of U.S. sellouts, who typically defect of their own accord to registered Russian officials.

ANATOLY KARLIN: You describe yourself as a foreign policy realist and admire Otto von Bismarck for his political acumen. But what if American geopolitical imperatives and “a good treaty with Russia” are incompatible? Let me expound. The foundations of geopolitics are Mackinder’s Heartland Theory and Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power upon History. According to this view of the world, the Russian Empire seeks hegemony over the Eurasian Heartland; in direct opposition, the United States tries to prevent its emergence through geopolitical balancing, economic constriction and amphibious interventions (in what Aleksandr Dugin calls the “Anaconda Strategy”). These geopolitical dynamics colored the Cold War and are once again coming into play: even as Russia reasserts its influence over the post-Soviet world, the US is preparing to withdraw from Iraq and is building forward bases in the Balkans and expanding defense ties with Poland.

Two questions follow from the above. First, one of America’s great strengths is the abiding attraction of its purported democratic model. Why then isn’t then the US export its “freedom” to check Russian expansionism, and if possible undermine the Kremlin itself? (After all, if guys like Kasparov or Khodorkovsky come to power, they can be expected to participate in the “international community” / serve Western interests). Second, as a realist, why would you disagree with Mearsheimer’s argument for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent?

A GOOD TREATY: The U.S. is withdrawing from Iraq … and doubling-down in Afghanistan. Being overstretched and unable to seriously deliver on open-ended defense pacts with Eastern European states, the White House’s rhetoric about missile defense and security investments along Russia’s western periphery is worrying, to say the least. The decision to militarize what could have functioned as a peaceful buffer zone between Russia and Europe seems to me to have been an extremely unwise decision by U.S. decision-makers. Even at the height of the Cold War, American buildup in Western Europe was met by (or in response to) Soviet maneuvers within the Warsaw Pact. It was certainly competition, but spheres of influence were generally agreed upon, and — even during the various uprisings that led to Soviet troops being deployed in 1953, 1956, and 1968 — the U.S. never threatened intervention, and any direct confrontation remained a nonfactor. In the 2008 Ossetian war, however, George W. Bush’s advisers apparently lobbied for an attack on the Roki Tunnel — an act of war that would have engaged American soldiers directly against Russian troops. That the U.S. has reached a stage where it even contemplates initiating military strikes against the Russian army indicates the frightening recklessness behind any worldview built upon a foundation of “America’s great strengths.”

Any conversation about realism is incompatible with a question that opens, “If guys like Kasparov or Khodorkovsky come to power.” That being said, Vladimir Milov compares Kasparov to the early Bolsheviks, indicating that he might not be the friendliest candidate for a job in America’s global utopia. As for Khodorkovsky, installing him in the Kremlin would theoretically only put in his hands yet more power to buy or bump off his enemies and competitors. Even in this scenario, there’s reason to assume the U.S. would not find its ideal Slavic partner.

In living memory, it seems Washington has really only been happy when it’s been free to call all the shots — i.e., under the administration of Boris Yeltsin. If that’s really true, American spooks should look not to the liberal elite (who likely would only use more power to fight amongst themselves), but to institutional fissures in the Russian state. Yeltsin was in large part such a swell pal because he was all too happy to sell off the kitchen sink, as long as it meant the Soviet cooking space was left without running water. “Take all the sovereignty you can swallow” he commanded initially. It was only later, after he consolidated his own authority and raked the USSR’s ashes into the garbage chute, that national determination transformed into an all-out war for territorial integrity.

A weak Russian state will be less assertive on the international level, but destabilizing Russia itself can and would pose devastating risks to the human beings actually living there or nearby. (Luckily for Uncle Sam, I guess, his primary constituents are well across the pond.)

Regarding a nuclear Ukraine: great idea, but they surrendered the last of their bombs in 1996. Moreover: not a great, but a lousy idea. Russia would never have bought the concept that an unaligned Ukrainian state could exist with or without atomic weapons. Aside from the crippled era of Boris Yeltsin, the Kremlin has never been comfortable with the premise that Ukraine exists outside its “privileged sphere.” The attraction of a buffer zone does not apply to Ukraine. If Washington had insisted on maintaining a nuclear Kiev, Moscow would have interpreted it as a direct existential threat. In other words, it would have been extremely destabilizing in an already topsy-turvy decade.

Back to the Future

Many Russia watchers don’t like to put their money where they mouth is. Though I’m sure you’re not the type, feel free to confirm it by making a few falsifiable predictions about Russia’s future. After a few years, we’ll see if you were worth listening to.

Medvedev will be reelected in 2012. Putin will continue on as Prime Minister. There will be some staff reshuffling, but nothing will really change. By 2012, the Russian economy should be doing much better. (I expect the same to be true in the U.S., where Obama will likely ride an ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’ mantra to a second term.)

The 2014 Sochi Olympic Games will not produce any major international embarrassments for Russia. Investigative reporters will have no trouble turning up horror stories about the waste that went into the project and the poverty it ignored alleviating in the surrounding areas, but I don’t expect any Dagestani terrorist attacks or roof collapses to indict the Kremlin for lousy management. As for Russia’s medal count: better than it was in Canada, but still low enough to trigger another slew of articles about the collapse of Soviet sports training.

Sooner or later, Alexei Kudrin will be ousted from his position in the Ministry of Finance. This guy’s name is attached to too many revenue-saving, unpopular budgetary measures for him not become a political liability eventually. I don’t expect him to go the route of Andrei Illarionov, however. He’ll be honorably discharged and put to use in some less public capacity.

The Solidarity Movement will fizzle out within the next few years, to be replaced by the next ‘it’ conglomeration of the very same individuals. Maybe they’ll call it the ‘March of the Raging 31 Dissidents.”

What are you plans for A Good Treaty?

I intend to simply keep posting 1-2 pieces every week on topics of my choosing. I like to alternate between big-headlines-grabbers (like the Russian spy ring) and stuff that requires me to be a bit more inventive and take time to research (like previous posts on Russian defamation law, the recent FSB law, the ‘Clean Water’ program, and so on). Unfortunately, based on the WordPress statistics to which I have access, it’s these latter posts that generate substantially fewer readers. I can’t blame the interwebs for sending me less traffic when I’m not writing about hot topics, but it is a little disappointing to know that some of the stuff that takes to most work to write is also the least popular.

The biggest thing I’ve started doing in connection with the blog recently is actively using Twitter. I include a snapshot stream of my tweets in the lefthand column on the blog, but I hope users will actually subscribe to my feed on Twitter itself, as this allows me to better track my followers, and allows for opportunities to interact with readers/users — which is something I love about the service.

There is a possible Russia blogging collaboration project in the works with Mark Adomanis, but I really can’t say anymore because I don’t know anything more than that. He contacted me recently about the idea, and we tentatively agreed to make something happen. As I said above, Mark is a very talented writer, and I’m pretty excited about the idea of mooching shamelessly off his celebrity. Thanks, Marco!

And thank you, A Good Treaty, for an excellent interview!

If you wish me to interview you or another Russia watcher, feel free to contact me.

Back in November 2008, the VTsIOM polling site released some very detailed results about what peoples in the former Soviet Union think about each other. The first graph below asks people which countries they consider to be friends or allies of their country.

And these were the results. Some 74% of Belarussians, 58% of Ukrainians, 49% of Moldovans, 82% of Armenians, and 67-89% of Central Asians named Russia as a friend and ally. In contrast, only 11-17% in Georgia, Azerbaijan and Lithuania like Russia this way, but that is hardly surprising. (The Latvians are rather higher at 26%, presumably because of their large Russian minority, though far higher numbers, almost half of them, orient themselves with the other Baltic states).

The poll below is even more telling. It asks peoples in the former USSR to name which countries or blocs they would like to unite with, the main contenders being Russia, the EU, and “independence”.

Russians are mostly split between those favoring some kind of Slavic or Eurasian bloc (37% – Belarus, 29% – Ukraine, 24% – Kazakhstan), and Russia-as-is (32%); the European Union really isn’t that popular at 15%. This isn’t much different in Ukraine or Belarus. Some 56% of Belarussians and 47 of Ukrainians would like to unite with Russia, while 25% and 22% favor the EU, and 18% and 25% favor independence, respectively. Some 51% of Kazakhs favor Russia and 32% independence.

The Moldovans are equally split between Russia and the EU or independence (which in practical terms would mean the Romanian sphere of influence). The Azeris identify most strongly with Turkey, with 31% expressing a desire to join it, followed by 24% yearning for the EU and 24% for continued independence. Big majorities (65-73%) in the Central Asian nations of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan would like to rejoin Russia, which is unsurprising given their relative underdevelopment and the relative success of Russification there. Georgia has always had a strong sense of national identity, including during the Soviet period, so by far the majority there wants independence (38%) or the EU (37%); only 10% wouldn’t mind falling back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

Why is this important? Because to some extent, even in semi-authoritarian systems, national leaders are to some extent beholden to popular sentiment. This is not to say, of course, that this is the only factor – an objective assessment of national interests (which are often synonymous with the interests of the ruling elites) almost always trumps anything else. But it does illustrate that the much ballyhooed “Russian resurgence” across the former USSR rests on firmer foundations than just political pressure or economic takeovers – of at least equal importance is that many of the peoples in its path back to regional hegemony aren’t actually that averse to it*.

PS. Another useful survey of attitudes towards Eurasian regional integration by Gallup: “In all countries except Azerbaijan, the median average wants at least an economic union across Eurasia”.

* The big exception is Georgia. This is where there is both a clash of primary geopolitical interests (the irreconcilability of Georgia westward path and Russia’s desire to anchor itself in the South Caucasus) and of civilizational values (AFAIK, the only social grouping in Georgia with a real pro-Russia tendency are the monarchist “People’s Orthodox Movement“). Coupled with simmering border tensions, it is probably not surprising that this developed into a flashpoint for armed conflict.

Now I’ve never really worried about the consequences on mortality of an economic recession, because I don’t buy into The Lancet‘s arguments that it was the reduction in Russian social spending in 1998 that contributed to the mortality wave of 1999-2002, since the increasing affordability of, and consumption of, alcohol was by far the more convincing factor. (Also, in industrialized states, recessions tend to correlate with falls in mortality rates). On the other hand, hard recessions – especially ones which result in reduced public spending on social welfare – usually are associated with substantial reductions in fertility. In this post I’m going to take a look at how valid these observations and theories are in light of the recent economic crisis in Eastern Europe.

Russia. At the start of the crisis in late 2008, I expected Russia’s fertility rate to fall slightly – though nowhere near the magnitudes predicted by Russia’s “demographic doomers”, of course. (Though even for that I got a lot of flak). Yet ironically even my predictions turned out to be too pessimistic, probably because increased government spending meant that Russians’ social welfare hardly suffered at all during the crisis. Even Russia’s fertility rate continued to climb, reaching 1.56 in 2009 (2008 – 1.49, 2007 – 1.41, 2006 – 1.30), a level last seen in 1992. And like I said, Russia’s trends towards falling mortality actually accelerated, with life expectancy for both genders hitting 69.0 years in 2009 (2008 – 67.9, 2007 – 67.5, 2006 – 66.6, 2005 – 65.3) – a level that was only ever previously observed in 1963-1974 and 1986-1991. Most encouragingly, Russians’ mortality from “vices” – homicide, alcohol poisoning, and suicide – have fallen back to their late Soviet levels. The decline in alcohol poisonings is particularly good because much of Russia’s “hyper-mortality” (including the high rate of heart disease) is tied to excessive alcohol consumption.

[Source: Rosstat].

Demographic improvements relative to the same period last year continued in Q1 2010, with the birth rate up another 1.3% and mortality rates falling by 2.0% (inc. by about 10% for external causes). (The figures on fertility are particularly significant when you recall that Russia reached the nadir of its economic crisis in H1 2009). According to Sergey Slobodyan’s demographic model, the data indicates that a projection of 1.9-2.0mn deaths and 1.8-1.9mn births in 2010 is feasible, meaning that natural population decrease will almost cease (the total population should grow, as last year, due to immigrants).

Conclusion – contrary to hysterical predictions of economic and demographic apocalypse propagated about Russia in late 2008, the real impact on social welfare was very marginal and the demographic situation actually continued to improve. This year, Russia’s life expectancy will probably approach 70 years (still very low for an industrialized country) and its total fertility rate will hit around 1.6 children per woman (as in Canada). Although the mortality rate remains very substandard relative to the industrialized world, current healthcare and anti-alcohol initiatives are helping usher in rapid improvements.

PS. There has been a small update to Rosstat‘s demographic projections. Its middle projection now indicates a population of 140.9mn and its high projection a population of 146.7mn in 2025, relative to 141.9mn in 2009; in the last few years, Russia’s demography has tracked between the High and Medium projections. (This is in line with my own forecasts).

Ukraine. Mark Adomanis claims that Ukraine has a “much more serious demographic crisis than Russia”. But much as one can condemn Orange mismanagement of the economy and social relations, it can’t really be said in good faith that its demography is a lot worse. Whereas its birth rates are lower and its death rates are higher than Russia’s, this is in large part because Ukraine has a marginally older median age than Russia.

Let’s instead use measures that cancel out the effects of specific population age structure. Ukraine’s life expectancy (68.3) was marginally better than Russia’s (67.8) in 2008 (World Bank), and its big mortality reductions in 2008-09 indicate that it kept the lead. Similarly, Russia’s fertility rate (1.49) is not awesomely bigger than Ukraine’s (1.39) in 2008, and may be partly or wholly explained by the fact that Russia’s demographic collapse in the 1990’s was both quicker and sharper than Ukraine’s. Finally, both countries have been displaying very similar demographic dynamics in recent years, despite their political differences – a moderate recovery in fertility rates (from a low base), and plummeting death rates (from a very high base).

[Source: World Bank Development Indicators. Note that for all the vast differences in the political economy and post-transition success of Russia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine, their fertility (and overall demographic) dynamics are remarkably alike].

Now what about the crisis, which hit Ukraine much harder than Russia? (Ukraine’s GDP declined by 15% in 2009, compared to Russia’s 9%, and it wasn’t cushioned by increased government spending on social welfare). Ukraine’s birth rate increased ever so slightly from 11.0/1000 in 2008 to 11.1/1000 in 2009 (but fell from 11.2/1000 in Jan-Feb 2009 to 10.7/1000 in Jan-Feb 2010). Meanwhile, its death rate decreased from 16.3/1000 in 2008 to 15.2/1000 in 2009 (and from 17.2/1000 in Jan-Feb 2009 to 16.4/1000 in Jan-Feb 2010). In crude terms, Ukraine had a higher rate of natural population decrease than Russia (-4.2/1000 versus -1.7/1000 in 2009), and its overall population is still falling fast because unlike Russia it does not have many immigrants.

Nonetheless, the Ukrainian crisis is now easing and the new government seems to be moving from concentrating on historical grievances to modernization and stability. Given the inherent similarities between and increasing integration of Russia and Ukraine, their demographic dynamics will probably be likewise similar - a recovery of fertility rates to 1.7-1.8 within a few years, a rise in life expectancy to 75 years within a decade, substantial net migration to Russia and zero net migration to Ukraine. The result would be a slowly rising or stagnating population in Russia, and a stagnating or slowly falling population in Ukraine.

Conclusion – Ukraine is experiencing a demographic recovery, with particularly impressive gains in life expectancy during the crisis. Though its fertility rate remained more or less stagnant, it now again shows signs of improvement – a good sign, since nine months ago Ukraine was still at its economic nadir.

Belarus. Thanks to its isolation from the global financial system, Belarus did not experience much of an economic crisis at all. It’s GDP even grew by 1.5% in 2009, and has since expanded by 6.1% in Jan-Apr 2010 relative to the same period last year. But ironically, its demographic improvements have been modest.

The birth rate rose from 11.1/1000 to 11.6/1000 and the death rate rose from 13.8/1000 to 14.2/1000 from 2008 to 2009*. (In Q1 2010 relative to the same period last year, the birth rate fell from 11.3/1000 to 11.2/1000 and the death rate fell from 15.3/1000 to 15.1/1000). The rate of natural increase eased slightly to -2.5/1000 in 2009, from -2.6/1000 in 2008.

This means that Belarus retained a fertility rate of about 1.45-1.5 children per woman in 2009, compared to Russia’s 1.56 and Ukraine’s 1.4-1.45, and its life expectancy was somewhat higher than both at 70.5 years in 2008 (very slightly lower in 2009), compared with Russia’s 69.0 years in 2009 and Ukraine’s 68.3 years in 2008 (maybe a year higher in 2009).

Conclusion – despite emerging from the crisis largely unscathed, the demography of Belarus showed no significant improvement (or deterioration).

Latvia. Latvia saw a catastrophic decline of GDP of 18% in 2010 and its welfare state has been decimated to a degree unparalleled anywhere else in Europe (at least so far). From 2008 to 2009, births fell by 9.5% and marriages, a very rough indicator of future fertility, fell by a truly stunning 23.3%. The decline continued into 2010, with births in Jan-Mar falling by 11.6% and marriages declining by 22.4% on the same period in 2009. Since Latvia’s total fertility rate was a not too healthy 1.45 back in 2008, this means that it is now in one of the deepest demographic chasms in Europe.

[Source: Latvijas Statistika].

On the positive side, Latvia did see modest improvements in its mortality rates, which fell by 3.6% from 2008 to 2009 (though they’ve remained almost stagnant so far in 2010). Unsurprisingly, after a period of demographic recovery in the 2000′s, Latvia’s rate of natural population decrease has started opening up again, rising from a loss of 7058 people in 2008 to 8220 people in 2009, and almost certain to increase further this year.

Small consolation. Going by the experiences of other countries in the region, the falling marriage rate in Latvia should have been accompanied by a simultaneously falling divorce rate, so the post-2008 annual decline in net couple formation should have been less than 20%.

Estonia. Estonia’s had a milder recession than Latvia with a GDP fall of 14% (it’s all comparative!) and it did not decimate its welfare state to quite the same extent. It also started from a position of significantly greater affluence and its fertility rate was at 1.66 children per woman in 2008. The number of births fell by 2.6% from 2008 to 2009, and by a mere 0.9% in the first four months of 2010 relative to the same period last year. This decline was outpaced by improvements in longevity, with mortality rates falling by 3.7% in 2009 relative to 2008, and a further 3.5% in the first four months of 2010 relative to the same period in 2009. Since it now shows signs of mounting an early recovery, the crisis should not make a big dent in Estonia’s long-term demographic prospects.

Lithuania. Their situation seems to have become somewhat worse, based on the monthly estimates of the population size for 2009. But their national statistics site is bad and doesn’t have detailed recent data so I can’t really say much more than that it is worse than in Estonia but far better than in Latvia.

Conclusion – the crisis has been a demographic disaster for Latvia, with its total fertility probably falling to a “lowest-low” rate of around 1.2 children per woman by 2010. Since its economic crisis seems to be deep and long-lasting, with deleterious effects on social welfare, we can expect a resumption of demographic free fall and perhaps a rise in ethnic Russian emigration to (fast recovering) Russia. In contrast, Estonia’s stronger foundations weathered the crisis well and its total fertility rate, now at perhaps 1.6 children per woman, is still relatively healthy by East and Central European standards.

Caucasus. In Armenia, the crude death rate remained unchanged at 8.5/1000 from 2008 and 2009, while the birth rate rose from 12.7/1000 to 13.7/1000, despite its big decline in GDP during the crisis. Given that its total fertility rate was at 1.74 in 2008, it is doing fine. Georgia is probably doing OK, since their population actually rose in 2009 – the only other post-Soviet year in which Georgia experienced population growth was in 2006, which happened to coincide with Russia’s deportation of illegal Georgian immigrants.

Moldova. Doesn’t have vital stats for 2009. Its overall population fell by five thousand people in 2009 relative to 2008, which is lower than usual, since on most years it falls by around ten thousand. I don’t think this was due to demographic improvements – don’t forget that many Moldovans were returning from their work in Russia during its recession in 2009.

Rest of post-Soviet space. Azerbaijan and Central Asia don’t need to be considered since they have healthy demographics anyway.

The Balkans. Birth rates and death rates seemed to have remained essentially stable from 2008 to 2009 in Bulgaria and Romania, with a slight improvement overall. Crisis hasn’t affected them much – at least, not yet.

Final conclusion – overall, the crisis did not greatly affect the demography of the Eurasian region. There continued to be modest improvements in the two most populous nations, Russia and Ukraine. The death rate has fallen rapidly during the crisis almost everywhere, the sole exceptions being Belarus and Romania where it increased by a tiny amount. On the other hand, birth rates have either risen slowly (e.g. Russia), stagnated (e.g. Ukraine), or fallen slowly (e.g. Estonia). The major exception is Latvia, where birth rates have collapsed at an amazing rate from regional average to “lowest-low”. This reflects the particular severity of the economic crash in Latvia.

* The real rise in the birth rate and the death rate from 2008 to 2009 are actually slightly exaggerated. That is because from 2009, Belarus lowered its total population (on the basis of which birth and death rates / 1000 people are calculated) to correlate with the preliminary results of the 2009 Census. The actual number of births rose from 107.9 thousand to 109.8 thousand and the number of deaths rose from 133.9 thousand to 135.0 thousand.

Let’s start from the “banderovtsy“ who despise the “sovok” Yanukovych for selling out Ukrainka to the Moskali Horde. (Yes, I’ve grossly caricatured three complex groupings in that sentence). Their problem is that they believe the “Ukrainian people” share their own rigid conception of Ukraine as a rigid nation-state, rejecting opposing views that stress its civilizational commonalities with the Orthodox, Slavic, or Eurasian spheres. This manifests itself in a particularly antagonistic attitude to Russia and Russianness, which are perceived, not inaccurately, as the greatest enemies of Ukrainian nationhood yesterday, today and tomorrow. Their biggest problem and frustration – indeed, their predicament – is that by and large, the Ukrainian people simply do not buy into their efforts to imagine into being a narrow, militantly Ukrainian vision of Ukraine*.

I’m not saying this as a Russian chauvinist**, but as someone who actually bothers to find out what Ukrainians themselves believe, as mediated through opinion polls. And the Ukrainian nationalists would not like the lyrics Ukrainka is singing. As of April 2010, some 63% of Ukrainians supported Ukraine joining the Union of Russia and Belarus, while only 27% spoke out against. This is not the whole picture, of course: 53% would also like to join the EU, although 63% speak out against NATO membership. But it does destroy the Orange myth-making that seeks to portray Yanukovych’s policies of deepening relations with Russia as some kind of treasonous, nefarious plot against the Ukrainian people.

How can they be, when 56% of Ukrainians themselves support keeping the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol? In direct opposition to the opposition’s narrative, only 28% of Ukrainians support their accusations that Yanukovuch betrayed the interests of Ukrainians, while a much larger majority of 63% disagree. Still denying what Ukrainians are saying for all to hear? Then explain why if elections were held today, the Party of Regions and its allies would take 42% of the vote, while the combined opposition forces would net just 32%. Or try to rationalize Yanukovych’s 12% point jump in approval ratings during the first four months of his (pro-Russian) Presidency.

[Source: Approval ratings of Ukrainian politicians - Yanukovych; Timoshenko; Tihipko; Yatsenyuk; Simonenko from 2007 to 2010. Note Yanukovych's sharp jump from December 2009 to April 2010].

Second, what about the analysts like Golts who claim that Russia has been duped? On the surface, it does have a great deal of credence. Neither Russia nor Ukraine has a history of keeping their promises to each other. As Craig Pirrong pointed out:

So, my view is that this is just an interlude in the ongoing battle of bilateral opportunism between two fundamentally corrupt and unprincipled states. Remember the old Soviet joke: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us”? Well, I’d characterize this deal as “We pretend to give them a price break, and they pretend to extend our lease.” All this deal does is create more promises to be broken. And broken they will be.

And too bad for Russia its 4bn $ in effective annual gas subsidies kick in immediately, whereas Ukraine’s obligations to not kick out the Russian fleet in 2017 can be annulled by the next administration, should an Orange coalition come back to power.

However, this all rather misses a vital point. The process of Eurasian reintegration is, in my view, a self-sustaining process. Once it passes a critical point, it cannot go into reverse, even should politicians like Tymoshenko or Tihipko “win back” the country.

Take the example of the Baltics. Despite their substantial Russian minorities, the indigenous populations were strongly pro-Western and this was reflected in their foreign policies. They joined Western institutions like the EU and NATO, their economies were integrated with Europe, and their financial systems taken over by Swedish and German banks. As a result, they successfully “anchored” themselves into the Euro-Atlantic world and Russia can do nothing about it, short of a military intervention whose consequences cannot be foreseen. Much the same can be said of Ukraine, but in reverse. It’s cultural, economic, and political ties to Russia didn’t snap even during the Russia’s period of collapse and relative weakness. Now Russia is resurgent, while the Atlantic world order faces fiscal ruin and imperial overstretch. The conditions are in place for a rollback of Western influence across the post-Soviet space. It is already proceding at an accelerating pace. Ukraine lies at the center of this rollback – and the majority of Ukrainians are either supportive or apathetic about it.

Say what you will of them, but Putin and Medvedev are not idiots. They would not agree to a deal so ostensibly unfavorable to Russia, unless their thought processes were governed by calculations outside the mainstream purview. My instinct is that they do not view negotiations with Ukraine in terms of a set of rational exchanges between two sovereign nation-states. Instead, they view it as a soon-to-be assimilated territory. Not direct political control in the style of a “neo-Soviet Union”, mind (though the possibility cannot be 100% excluded). But what we are looking at is Ukraine becoming a certain type of client state, similar to Belarus, that will enlarge the scope of the Eurasian economic-industrial system back to Soviet levels and provide a lengthy buffer against Western encroachment by anchoring Russia’s effective borders in the Carpathian Mountains. These considerations may explain why the Russian state, now sure of its permanent influence over Ukraine, may not feel particularly nervous about the severely asynchronous nature of the Kharkov agreement.

Besides, by piecing together the other Russo-Ukrainian deals in this period, the gas-for-fleet agreement no longer looks anywhere near as one-sided as it appears on paper. Yanukovych needs the cheap gas to ease Ukraine’s fiscal situation, which is in dire straits. Russia on the other hand is proceeding with a series of initiatives to “lock in” Ukraine into its sphere of influence, such as its proposals to merge their nuclear, aviation, and gas industries.

Not all of them have been met with enthusiasm even by the heavyweights in the Party of Regions. They must recognize that should it be allowed to proceed, the marriage of Russian and Ukrainian economic interests will be near irreversible, and cannot fail to produce political consequences that will lead to a dimunition of Ukraine’s sovereignty, as observed in Belarus or Armenia. But it should be stressed that this is not a new development under Yanukovych. Russian corporations were busy buying up Ukrainian industrial assets, such as the Industrial Union of Donbass steel giant, even under the Orange administration. Whatever the personal reservations of Ukraine’s leaders, this process can only accelerate under a Ukrainian government that is overtly friendly with Russia.

And this brings us to the third class of analysts who I don’t believe have it quite right – those who recognize Russia’s growing influence over Ukraine, like Alexander Motyl, but couch it in the negative and ideologized language of “Russian imperialism” and “democratic rollback”, with all their dark connotations. Their approach conflates democracy with liberalism, economic pragmatism with anti-market neanderthalism, and Eurasian reintegration with Ukrainian subjugation.

If anything, Ukrainians are even less liberal in their views than Russians. This is not surprising considering that it is an economic disaster zone, essentially a post-Soviet fragment that never left the Yeltsin-era state of “anarchic stasis”. Twenty years on, Ukrainians are tiring of it all. They now just want a leader who can get things done. (Interestingly, and very tellingly, even the Ukrainian nationalists tend to respect Putin and wish they had someone like him at the helm). What about the lower gas prices perpetuating Ukrainian industrial backwardness – is it not a short-term fix that will only benefit Yanukovych’s oligarch allies in the Donbass? But Ukraine’s industry won’t flourish at “market” gas prices; the post-Soviet experience suggests much of it will simply collapse, and Ukrainians do not want that. Or in another words, as so often happens to the dismay of Western chauvinists, the people’s choice, as channeled through democracy, clashes with both liberal and market ideals.

Finally, the process of “Eurasian integration” cannot simply be reduced to slogans like “Russian revanchism” or “neo-imperialism” (though this is not to say that they are wholly false). Ukrainian attitudes towards this are actually rather contradictory. The opinion polls indicate that while most are supportive of entering into an economic union with Russia and Belarus, a similar majority insists on maintaining Ukraine’s political sovereignty. But herein lies the contradiction. Economics and politics are inextricable linked, especially in that part of the world. Economic reintegration cannot help but result in a certain level of political integration, and considering Russia’s position of economic dominance in Eurasia, it cannot help but result in “a regathering of the Russian lands” (or what Motyl calls a “creeping re-imperialization”). This circle cannot be squared.

Some Russia-watchers like Nicolai Petro believe that Ukraine Can Have Them and Us.

Few, however, seem to see that there is a third option — embrace Ukraine and turn it to the West’s advantage. Replace the misguided “divide and conquer” strategy that the West has been pursuing in the region with a new one that aims at the simultaneous integration of the Slavic cultural component of Europe into pan-European institutions. Make Ukraine Europe’s indispensable partner for bringing Russia into the European Union. Rather than placing the two countries on different tracks, reward them both for moving along the same path.

Although I respect Petro as an analyst, I think this assessment is pollyannish, a dream that can only be realized if history truly ends. But history never ended. ”Divide and conquer” is the way of states and this remains the case to this day, even though it is now far better concealed and fought with money, not motor rifle divisions. This will become clearer in the next few years. Burdened by an increasingly untenable debt load and global commitments, the US and its allies and proxies cannot help focusing inwards during the next decade; even in the unlikely event that it should it tilt sharply back Westwards, the “Ukraine fatigue” that Pfifer warns about is all but inevitable in Western capitals.

In the meantime, Russia is resurging and seemingly set to become a developed nation by the 2020′s. Despite the popularity of EU membership amongst Ukrainians, it is unreachable. Not only are European countries against Ukraine’s accession, but the EU itself now shows more signs of disintegration than further expansion. On the other hand, Ukraine would always be welcome in Eurasia, and as pointed out above even more Ukrainians want to join the Union of Russia and Belarus than the EU. The attractions of joining (ailing) Europe will diminish, while the pressures propelling Ukraine back into (dynamic) Eurasia will intensify.

[Source: A (feasible) geopolitical forecast from the Italian magazine Limes. Though the details will probably be wrong, the general trends correlate with reality].

In his Presidential campaign, Yanukovych told America that Ukraine would be a bridge between East and West. In the coming age of post-peak oil “scarcity industrialism”, one of the surest predictions I can make is that the world will see the retreat of liberal globalization, more protectionism, and the rising preeminence of regional economic blocs. If Ukraine were to follow Yanukovych’s or Petro’s vision, its bridge would not survive; it would get sucked into a geopolitical black hole. And empires rarely tolerate vacuums on their borders.

Hence the contradictory views of many Ukrainians on how to reconcile Ukraine with a Russified Eurasia, and the profound challenges its rulers face in balancing national interests against the imminent return of history.

* To be achieved by glorifying freedom-fighting pogromists, making an anti-Ukrainian genocide out of a Stalinist democide, changing the Great Patriotic War to World War Two in history textbooks, etc.

** Personally, I am a moderate “Eurasianist” and support (non-coercive) economic, political, and military integration between Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. As I’ve argued on this blog, it would provide manifold benefits to the majority of Eurasian people. Does that make me a “Russian chauvinist”? In my own (unavoidably biased) view, probably not, though that really depends on who you ask.

Last year I discussed four myths about the Eastern Front, and Fedia Kriukov unraveled a fifth in the comments. This year, I’m going to comment on one of the most contradictory, even harrowing, debates in Russia. How to reconcile Stalin, the despotic Messiah, and Victory 1945, now emerging as the primary national myth consolidating the Russian nation-state. I don’t intend to resolve this debate (I don’t believe that’s even possible), but I do believe it is necessary for people on all sides – Westerners, ordinary Russians, Russian liberals, and Stalinists alike – to understand it a bit better. This is my humble hope in writing this.

First, the facts. Russians are not hardcore Stalinists. Neither is the Russian government. President Medvedev unequivocally condemned Stalin, saying there is “no justification for the repressions”, and spoke out against Moscow mayor Luzhkov’s initiative to publicly display a few Stalin posters (amongst thousands) during the Victory celebrations. He was backed in this sentiment by 51% of Russians, while only 12% fully supported Luzhkov. Today, most Russians are either conflicted on or indifferent to Stalin. Neither for, nor fully against. Ambiguous.

Many Westerners, sparing themselves from hard critical reflection, like to condemn Russians for their ambivalence towards Stalin. Wasn’t he a mass murderer who killed more Russians than Hitler? (This is a constant theme of anti-Stalin and general Russophobe propaganda). Quite apart from this being simply wrong according to all objective estimates, Russians themselves say they suffered far more under four years of the Nazi yoke than under twenty plus years of Stalinism*.

According to polls, 50% had a close relative die in the Great Patriotic War (33% – injured, 16% – missing in action). Only 14% say that nothing particularly bad happened to a close relative during the war. These answers are in line with the statistics on wartime demographic losses – some 27mn Soviet citizens died in that war (13mn Russian), of them 8.7mn soldiers (5.7mn Russian)**. That’s out of a total Soviet population of 197mn in June 1941.

In contrast, in response to the question, “Did anyone in your family suffer from the repressions shortly before or after the war?”, 22% of Russians said “yes”, while 63% said “no”. (Note that “suffer” does not imply death, since contrary to the popular anti-Soviet mythology most Gulag inmates survived). This also tallies with the hard statistics. During the entire 1921-53 period, some 4.1mn people were condemned for counter-revolutionary activities, of them 0.8mn to death and 1.1mn of whom died in camps and prisons. After adding the 3.5-5.0mn excess deaths from the collectivization famines, it is hard to see how Stalin could have been responsible for more than ten million deaths at the absolute maximum.

Russian man with Stalin portrait, May Day 2010 (h/t Sean Guillory).

And before some ideological fanatic comes out with the cheap “You’re a filthy Stalinist!” card, I would note that it is quite possible to condemn Stalin on the basis of his real crimes, without resorting to neo-Goebbelsian propaganda about “62 million victims of the Red Plague” or “Stalin killed more Russians than Hitler” spread by the ideologue Rummel. If anything, such rhetoric actually encourages the rehabilitation of Stalinism. No, really. Scratch a Stalinist, and you reveal a can of understandable human emotions – pride, nostalgia, defiance. From Sean Guillory’s post on meeting a small, old KPRF man holding a Stalin portrait during the May Day protest a week ago:

But for a little old man holding a photo of Stalin? For him, the dictator means something wholly different.  There is certainly a large element of historical nostalgia embedded in Stalin’s portrait.  Stalin is mostly about the USSR’s victory over the Nazis and a time when Russia was a superpower… The Stalin posters also signify a longing for an imagined past of stability, predictability, and ironically, a paternal state that dealt a measure of social and economic justice… Lastly, Stalin is also defiance.  People carry posters of Stalin simply because others tell them they shouldn’t. Hoisting Stalin to the sun is about the current war over memory.  It’s about saying without hyperbole: This is my Stalin and he has nothing to do with yours.

In contrast to Russians’ conflicted views on Stalin, the Victory is unambiguous, unequivocal, absolute. The Victory that cost 26.6mn Soviet lives, but saved the Slavic world entire from a historyless future of deportations, slavery, and death. A Victory reverently regarded by all Russians with a profound, bittersweet pride. And not only by Russians. Despite Yuschenko’s five year anti-Russian campaign***, 87% of Ukrainians say they believe Victory Day belongs to all people, only slightly lower than 91% of Russians. In a very real sense, Victory isn’t just Russia’s national myth. It belongs to and unites all the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

But here we stumble across the central contradiction. This Victory was won under the supreme leadership of Generalissimo Stalin, the despotic Messiah who ruled Russians like the God of the Old Testament. This isn’t fawning hyperbole. The tendency to ascribe semi-divine or “natural force” characteristics to Stalin is actually rather common amongst Russians. I suspect that is because it’s the clearest way to resolve their radical ambiguity towards Him.

The Kremlin is faced with a dilemma in reconciling Stalin with Victory. Promoting the Victory isn’t only feelgood propaganda. It is very useful. It stokes the social cohesion that Russia needs to consolidate itself, and to actualize her shift towards sobornost’ (the catch-all term for a deep sense of internal peace and unity between races, religions, sexes, etc, within a society). It also creates powerful bonds with other peoples of the erstwhile USSR, buttressing the Kremlin’s drive to (re)gather the Russian lands. For this reason, under Putin, Russia has devoted lavish attention to the public spectacle of Victory. The Victory parades in Moscow become ever more impressive, – indeed, imperial – with every passing year. Under the initiative of Kremlin-affiliated youth movements, the Ribbon of Saint George was popularized as a symbol of Victory since 2005. This harkens back to the Medal For the Victory Over Germany, which was awarded after the war to all the soldiers, officers and partisans who directly participated in live combat actions against the European Axis. A medal dominated by Stalin’s visage.

This very symbology reveals the crux of the dilemma. Stalin. Not as man, but as avatar. The idea. The imagined past of sobornost’. A Golden Age in which the intelligentsia and old Bolsheviks; the corrupt bureaucrats and oligarchs; the Western idolizers and rootless cosmopolitans, were condemned, and extirpated. Above all, the singular emancipation of Victory. Even neglecting the moral dimension, all this opens a frightening, churning vistage that the Kremlin elites dare not approach. Nor is repudiating Stalin an option, for that would also mean repudiation of Russia’s national myth. And that is the surest path to ruin…

So the Kremlin’s position is neither the rose-hued nostalgia of the old Stalinist protester, nor the desaturated grey of the moral relativist. Not in thrall to kitsch, like the blogger behind the Stalin bus (for even discredited kitsch can resurrect itself if enough people begin to believe in it again). Nor the uniform shadows of the Russian liberals (since that is simply too depressing).

When called out to defend or condemn it, the Kremlin is forced by the tides of history and fate into a position of radical ambiguity towards the Stalinist project.

A turbulent world of clashing white and black, the very essence of Stalinist metapolitics. Ironically, the permanent contradiction of both Russians and the Kremlin towards the Stalinist legacy is also its most fitting epitaph, for that was its very essence. Slavoj Zizek on When the Party Commits Suicide:

Precisely as Marxists, we should then have no fear in acknowledging that the purges under Stalinism were in a way more “irrational” than the Fascist violence: paradoxically, this very excess is an unmistakable sign that, in contrast to Fascism, Stalinism was the case of a perverted authentic revolution… the “irrationality” of Nazism was “condensed” in anti-Semitism, in its belief in the Jewish plot, while the Stalinist “irrationality” pervaded the entire social body. For that reason, Nazi police investigators were still looking for proofs and traces of actual activity against the regime, while Stalinist investigators were engaged in clear and unambiguous fabrications (invented plots and sabotages, etc.).

However, this very violence inflicted by the Communist Power on its own members bears witness to the radical self-contradiction of the regime, i.e. to the fact that, at the origins of the regime, there was an “authentic” revolutionary project — incessant purges were necessary not only to erase the traces of the regime’s own origins, but also as a kind of “return of the repressed,” a reminder of the radical negativity at the heart of the regime. The Stalinist purges of high Party echelons relied on this fundamental betrayal: the accused were effectively guilty insofar as they, as the members of the new nomenklatura, betrayed the Revolution. The Stalinist terror is thus not simply the betrayal of the Revolution, i.e. the attempt to erase the traces of the authentic revolutionary past; it rather bears witness to a kind of “imp of perversity” which compels the post-revolutionary new order to (re)inscribe its betrayal of the Revolution within itself, to “reflect” it or “remark” it in the guise of arbitrary arrests and killings which threatened all members of the nomenklatura — as in psychoanalysis, the Stalinist confession of guilt conceals the true guilt… This inherent tension between the stability of the rule of the new nomenklatura and the perverted “return of the repressed” in the guise of the repeated purges of the ranks of the nomenklatura is at the very heart of the Stalinist phenomenon: purges are the very form in which the betrayed revolutionary heritage survives and haunts the regime. The dream of Gennadi Zyuganov, the Communist presidential candidate in 1996 (things would have turned out OK in the Soviet Union if only Stalin had lived at least 5 years longer and accomplished his final project of having done with cosmopolitanism and bringing about the reconciliation between the Russian state and the Orthodox Church — in other words, if only Stalin had realized his anti-Semitic purge…), aims precisely at the point of pacification at which the revolutionary regime would finally get rid of its inherent tension and stabilize itself — the paradox, of course, is that in order to reach this stability, Stalin’s last purge, the planned “mother of all purges” which was to take place in the Summer of 1953 and was prevented by his death, would have to succeed. Here, then, perhaps, the classic Trotsky’s analysis of the Stalinist “Thermidor” is not fully adequate: the actual Thermidor happened only after Stalin’s death (or, rather, even after Khruschev’s fall), with the Brezhnev years of “stagnation,” when nomenklatura finally stabilized itself into a “new class.” Stalinism proper is rather the enigmatic “vanishing mediator” between the authentic Leninist revolutionary outburst and its Thermidor…

But some things are certain. Victory can never be fully disassociated from Stalin. And Stalin is far too complex a historical figure to be reduced to an ideological for/against binary. Of course, by now I’m only repeating myself…

* Of course, there are some Russian families – and relatively more Ukrainian and national minority families – who did suffer more from Stalinist policies than under Nazism. That is because Stalin’s repressions tended to target particular social groups and families, such as former nobles or wealthy farmers. Their descendants tend to remember Stalin with much greater distaste than “normal Russians”, for whom just keeping your head down more or less nullified their chances of being repressed. Though even here, a qualification is necessary. On hearing of Stalin’s death, there were reports of even the Gulag inmates weeping. The contradictions, confusions, warping, psychoses, call them what you will, of Stalinism – they have always been there with us.

** Not directly related to this year’s topic, but I do want to recall one of the myths I covered last year on the GPW, the (Western) myth that the “Russians” lost five or ten or whatever soldier for every heroic Aryan. In reality, the ratio of Soviet to Axis losses on the Eastern Front was 1.3:1.

*** From the same article – the Ukrainian Minister of Education also said that Ukrainian textbooks will again refer to the “Great Patriotic War”, reverting back from Yuschenko’s ideological campaign to call it just the “Second World War”.

2. Putin made a conciliatory speech on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, much more so than the one a year ago. It was balanced and considered, condemning the crimes of totalitarianism, while avoiding any acknowledgement of modern Russia’s responsibility.

In a bitter irony for the Poles, three days later the firebrand Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tumbled out of the sky while flying (uninvited) to attend a separate commemoration. Among the dead were assorted members of the Polish military, clergy, politicians, and Katyn victims’ families (see list).

First, putting all your eggs in one basket is pretty stupid. High-ranking politicians and generals are important national assets. They shouldn’t all be packed into one plane just to save a little money. In banana republics – which fortunately for Poland it is not – such accidents can cause state breakdown and revolution.

Second, the insistence on continuing to land in Smolensk against the advice of ground control is key to understanding the tragedy. Lech Kaczynski has a history of interference with pilots’ decisions. During the South Ossetian War, he threatened to fire the pilot for countermanding his orders to land in a war zone and instead continuing on to Azerbaijan. Though the threat wasn’t carried out, the pilot is known to have suffered from depression afterwards. The same pilot was flying the aircraft in this case. It will not be surprising if some similar, irresponsible stubbornness typical of Kaczynski was at play here. Or perhaps the pilot just really, really didn’t want to “fail” Kaczynski again.

Few people explicitly blamed Putin, the FSB, or even NKVD trees planters from the 1940′s for the crash. The exceptions were ultra-nationalist Artur Gorski (he who also tried to make Jesus Christ proclaimed King of Poland) and the ever reliable Russian liberast Novodvorskaya. There is absolutely nothing indicating a conspiracy, which in any case is highly unlikely given that this would have produced great risks for very limited payoffs.

Russia has been using the crash as an opportunity to mount a charm offensive towards Poland: Putin hugging Polish PM Donald Tusk; shows of solidarity towards Poland from Russia’s leaders and citizens; the prime-time airing of the Polish movie “Katyn”. I am almost certain that most of it is simulated, at least amongst the Russian leadership. Would America’s elites shed any real tears if Chavez, or Putin for that matter, fell out of the sky while flying to the United States? No, I don’t think so. But it seems to be working.

The fortuitous (for Russia) death of Kaczynski kills two birds with one stones. One of the most prominent and respected Polish proponents of the anti-Russian agenda is elimated, while relations with Poland can be improved so as to ease its concerns over Russia’s westwards-creeping sphere of influence.

3. In recent months, there has been talk of Poland’s reserves of shale gas, which – or so some commentators have suggested – will wean off east-central Europe from its dependency on Russian gas. US giants announced exploratory drilling will begin in Poland within the next few weeks. One oil and gas research group estimates there could be as much as 1.4tn cubic meters of unconventional gas in tight rock formations across northern and central Poland, which have recently become accessible thanks to American developments in hydraulic fracturing technology. These reserves would boost the EU proven reserves of natural gas, now at 2.8tn cubic meters, by 50%. Furthermore, Poland itself – whose own gas consumption is pretty low at 14bn cubic meters of gas (72% imported) – will become self-sufficient for decades. Poland is clearly very enthused about this, offering foreign companies excellent tax incentives for developing the shale gas.

Will this actually produce the desired results? First, the high costs mean that only 28% of gas-producing wells have generated decent profits, making investment risky. Second, they have amazingly huge decline rates – e.g., around 60% per year for the Barnett shale fields in Texas (and up to 80-90% in the Haynesville wells). This makes ramping up production quickly difficult since you have to run so hard just to keep still. Third, the projections indicate European gas production (now c. 200bn cubic meters) will decline while demand (now c. 520bn cubic meters) will increase. Poland’s 1.4tn cubic meters of shale gas reserves are insignificant relative to Russia’s 43tn cubic meters of conventional gas reserves, for which the infrastructure is already built. Finally, it is not even at all clear that Poland switching from coal to shale gas will even be that environmentally-friendly.

Now if there is the political will in Poland, it will probably be able to build up a shale gas infrastructure and ensure itself – and even its Visegrad and Baltic neighbors – energy independence for a few decades, starting from around 2020. (That period may also coincide with Nabucco coming onstream by 2015, if it gets the go ahead this year). The geopolitical configuration of Europe will change. Poland will become a far more significant pole in the European power balance than it is today, while Germany – and Britain further downstream – will become even more dependent on Russian gas, delivered by the Nord Stream pipeline bypassing Poland and the Baltics.

4. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland erupts, covering northern Europe with a haze of ash and disrupting transatlantic flights.

There are three things to be said about this. First, people in Britain have been reporting that the sky was unusually clear, with nary a cloud in sight, and that there was a spike in temperatures, with people even sunbathing. This was to be expected following the grounding of air fleets in the affected regions, since aircraft contrails, or vapor trails, are a major source of global dimming. This effect limits the amount of solar radiation hitting the surface of the Earth, and has caused the real extent of global warming to have been underestimated. (Or put another way, if all the world’s air fleets were to vanish today, temperatures would immediately spike by about 1C).

Second, the Eyjafjallajökull volcano could trigger off the much bigger Katla volcano. Katla has seen a significantly increased incidence of tremors in the past day. In the worst scenario, albeit a pretty unlikely one, the skies over Europe could remain ashen for up to two or three years – wrecking havoc on transatlantic transport and nudging already-strained airlines into bankruptcy. However, there shouldn’t be any major cooling effect, since even the larger Katla eruptions have historically been an order of magnitude less intense than that of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. (Unless the really big one blows off, that is Laki, whose eruption in 1783 caused dearth throughout Europe). That said, the global warming-induced melting of the Icelandic glaciers could make its volcano eruptions both bigger and more frequent in the decades to come.

Finally, see this Oil Drum post about The Possible Impact of the Icelandic Volcanoes on Energy Production. In short, major Icelandic eruptions could cause energy problems due to 1) a decrease in biofuel crop yields and 2) wind turbines having to be shut down so that their turbines don’t get damaged by air particles from the eruption.

5. With the British elections on May 6th 2010 fast approaching, the key debates center around the economy. During the recession, Britain experienced a peak-to-trough fall in GDP of 6.2% and its budget deficit this year will account for 12-13% of GDP. Foreigners are beginning to look at Britain as the new “sick man of Europe”. Below are three articles which, roughly speaking, offer an “optimistic”, a “realistic”, and a “pessimistic”, respectively, view on the British economy.

A) The pain to come: A terrible recession will be followed by a lacklustre recovery, but Britain is no basket-case (Economist). ”The economy may have been lopsided before the recession, but on nothing like the scale of southern Europe. In 2007 Spain’s current-account deficit ran at 10% of GDP; Greece ran one of 14.4%. By comparison, Britain’s 2.7% was a mere bagatelle. The fall in the pound has allowed the economy to regain competitiveness in a way not open to the weaker members of the euro area. As for the resemblances with the 1970s, history is not repeating itself. Inflation has recently flared up, but at 3% in February it is tame; the post-war high, reached in 1975, was 27%… But [Britain's debt figure] is inflated by London’s role as a global financial hub where foreign banks cluster to do international business. Adjusting for this, McKinsey reckoned that debt amounted to 380% of GDP in 2008. Although this was the second-highest after Japan (459%), four other countries – Spain, South Korea, Switzerland and France – had debt above 300%… Britain’s economy was overhyped before the recession, but the gloom has been overdone since the great fall.”

B) A Prayer from the Death Bed: Great Britain Stars in Its Own Greek Tragedy (Spiegel). “The country that was once referred to as “Cool Britannia” is in a serious crisis, with a hole in its budget even bigger than Greece’s budget deficit, now at 12.2 percent. And nobody knows how to fix the problem. Indeed, the problem has become so worrisome, that the European Commission told London on Wednesday to do more to tighten its budget, … “The fiscal strategy outlined in the United Kingdom’s convergence program does not foresee the correction of the excessive deficit by the fiscal year 2014/2015, as recommended by the Council,” the European Commission said in a statement… The accountants at PricewaterhouseCoopers have calculated that starting next year, Britain would have to make across-the-board budget cuts of 5 percent a year to come close to cutting the deficit in half by 2014. But because the Brown government has already declared the budgets for health, law enforcement and schools to be off-limits, cuts of up to 10 percent – per year – are to be expected in most areas… And things could even turn out to be much worse if there is no strong economic upturn during this period. … There will also be massive cuts in low-income housing construction and transportation, translating into even more dilapidated housing, more potholes on Britain’s already miserable roads, and new cutbacks in high-speed train service. Universities have already lost close to £1 billion in funding, and various think thanks predict that the defense budget could shrink by about 15 percent between now and 2015.”

C) Election 2010: Debt – A conspiracy of silence (The Independent). ”In 1975 the UK had government interest-bearing debt of about 45 per cent of the total economy (GDP) and the debt was rising at about 8 per cent per year. We then had to crawl to the IMF in 1976.Today, that interest-bearing debt is about 65 per cent of GDP, rising nearly 13 per cent a year. A degree in economics will not be necessary to spot that things are a lot worse than in 1975… The mid-1970s IMF crisis was triggered largely by the fact that foreign buyers of government debt were so nervous of the UK’s ability to repay debt that interest rates roared into the teens. Inflation was a much bigger issue then than now, and foreigners and Brits alike also feared we intended to “repay” our debt with relatively worthless scraps of paper. So there was a buyers’ strike on government debt and we had to be bailed out. Rationally, the currency collapsed in value, and as the cost of importing oil and the like rose, so did inflation. … So how can we get out of this financial hole before our creditors get to us? There are three ways to reduce our national debt: let inflation rip to destroy the debt; increased tax revenues from higher taxes and economic growth; cut government spending. … The political debate talks of a few hundred million here and there – it needs to be about tens and scores of billions. Neither party has plans to deploy actions for the economy remotely commensurate with the size of the problem.”

I lean towards the “realistic” / “pessimistic” sides of the debate. The Government’s rosy projections of 2.5%+ growth are unlikely to materialize. Consumption is going to be kept down by consumer indebtedness, the upcoming hikes in interest rates, and increases in tax rates. There’s little room for export growth, considering the deindustrialization of the British economy. Finally, there itsenergy problems. The North Sea oil and gas fields are fast depleting and Britain’s reliance on gas supplies is increasing. Having failed to make any long-term arrangements with suppliers like Gazprom on the cheap, it will be forced to bid at spot prices on the LNG market to a greater extent than the European nations. Finally, the emerging trends towards the unraveling of liberal globalization cannot bode well for a nation that derived so much of its prosperity from open markets and international financial, legal, and consulting services.

Now what about the elections? Below is a graph of party approval ratings. Of late, the Conservatives, New Labor, and the Liberal Democrats have been running neck and neck.

[Opinion polls on British election: Conservatives, New Labor, Liberal Democrats].

My suspicions are that if the Tories win, there will be attempts at a strong fiscal rentrenchment. The shrinking of the public sector will hurt living standards, but lay the foundations for eventual stabilization. On the other hand, New Labor or the Liberal Democrats will be unwilling, or unable, to follow through will this, and the eventual result would be one default or another accompanied by a sharp drop in living standards. Another possibility is a “hung parliament”, should the three parties all win roughly equal shares of the vote (as seems to be a strong likelihood today). Such a paralysis would delay any actions to address Britain’s imbalances.

6. Demography watch.

• U.S. Birth Rate Decline Linked to Recession – small fall in US birth rates in 2009.
• On migration and population in reunification-era Korea (Randy McDonald) and discussion.
• Russia’s demography Jan-Feb 2010: relative to same period last year, births fall 0.8%, deaths fall 2.0%. Not too surprising since Russia’s recession troughed some nine months back.
• Comparative demography in the CIS states (Demoscope).
• Таджикские трудовые мигранты во время кризиса (Demoscope).

7. Energy & climate blast – lots of important reads these last two weeks.

• Online World3 simulator @ http://live.simgua.com/World.
• Confidential document reveals Obama’s hardline US climate talk strategy.
• The dark side of coal – some historical insights on energy and the economy (Ugo Bardi). 1) In a world devoid of coal or other high-EROEI energy sources, life is hard and dependent on muscle power. 2) It is justifiable, and if so to what extent, to cite the economic ramifications of “peak coal” as a contribution factor to the European crisis of 1914-45 (since oil only began to expand in a big way from the 1950′s).
• Avoiding Collapse (Global Guerrillas)
• Easter Island : A Case Study in the Response to Resource Depletion.
• Hottest Jan-Feb-March on record in 2010. Could the deniers and fudgers STFU already? More.
• The Future of Capitalism – Profits and Growth (George Mobus).
• Peak asphalt: the return of gravel roads (Ugo Bardi).
• Social Security and Medicare Funding Issues: Even Worse when One Considers Resource Constraints (Gail Tverberg).
• Increasing Global Nonrenewable Natural Resource Scarcity—An Analysis (Chris Clugston) – important reference.
• Tipping towards the unknown – “Researchers propose critical planetary boundaries, transgressing them could be catastrophic. But there is hope.”
• You think only leftist losers go on about peak oil? US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015.
• Dancing with the devil known as geohacking & Birth control vs. geohacking (Lou Grinzo).
• The Twilight of the Machine & A Blindness to Systems (John Michael Greer).
• An Introduction to Global Warming Impacts – a summary from Climate Progress. For another key post on Limits, see World Oil Production Forecast – Update November 2009 from Oil Drum.
• A Superstorm for Global Warming Research, an 8-part skeptic series by Spiegel. Criticized here at Real Climate.

8. Eurasia watch.

• The Failure of the Anti-Russian “Freedom Agenda” (Daniel Larison).
• Yanukovych removes Ukraine’s application to join NATO, a move that is supported by the majority of the Ukrainian population.
• Russia’s industrial production in Q1 2010 continues a slow recovery. More encouragingly, after the sudden collapse in late 2008-early 2009, Russian consumer expectations are rapidly approaching their old boomtime highs. Merrill Lynch is particularly optimistic – Russian Economy May Get ‘Biggest Bounce’ in World, making the highest yet prediction of 7% growth  for 2010 (most analysts suggest 4-6%).
• Randy McDonald writes about Soviet computers.
• A detailed study from Russia’s VTsIOM polling agency on the Internet in Russia. Summary: 81% of Russians have cell phones; 46% have computers; 38% are Internet users (23% use it daily).
• Russia Weekly Sitrep (Patrick Armstrong).
• The Sirens of Russia. Post by A Good Treaty about Russia’smigalka culture of impunity – and how it is perhaps slowly beginning to retreat under public pressure and the influence of social media.
• Russian attitudes towards Katyn (Levada). Some 50% of Russians view Poland positively, 26% negatively (AK: these figures are likely the reverse in Poland). Only 43% of Russians have heard about Katyn. Asked who was responsible for it, 19% said the USSR, 28% Nazi Germany, and 53% didn’t know. Around 15% think it was “genocide”, 38% a “crime”, 14% consider it justified under wartime conditions, and 33% didn’t answer. Only 18% think Putin should apologize for Katyn in Russia’s name, while 46% disagree. Of the latter, 47% think he shouldn’t apologize because Nazi Germany was responsible; 34% – because today’s Russia shouldn’t answer for the USSR; and 8%, because it would weaken Russia’s position in relation to Poland.
• Russia: Other Points of View analyzes Stratfor’s coverage of Russia and The Dangers of Meddling in Russia’s North Caucasus.
• The new Journal of Eurasian Studies (h/t Sean) from South Korea. I checked out the first article in its first issue: Eurasian polities as hybrid regimes: The case of Putin’s Russia, which is basically accurate: “It is argued that Russian political development under Putin is best understood not as “authoritarianization” but as a process in which Russia transitioned from a system of “competing pyramids” of machine power to a “single-pyramid” system, a system dominated by one large political machine. It turns out that in single-pyramid systems that preserve contested elections, as does Russia, public opinion matters more than in typical authoritarian regimes.”

9. Mexico and the Failed State Revisited (free Stratfor) has the counter-intuitive take that far from challenging the state, the drug cartels are actually benefiting the Mexican economy because the immense profits reaped from selling drugs to the affluent US can be reinvested into Mexico.

…It is not clear to STRATFOR that Mexico is becoming a failed state. Instead, it appears the Mexican state has accommodated itself to the situation. Rather than failing, it has developed strategies designed both to ride out the storm and to maximize the benefits of that storm for Mexico. First, while the Mexican government has lost control over matters having to do with drugs and with the borderlands of the United States, Mexico City’s control over other regions — and over areas other than drug enforcement — has not collapsed (though its lack of control over drugs could well extend to other areas eventually). Second, while drugs reshape Mexican institutions dramatically, they also, paradoxically, stabilize Mexico. …

On the whole, Mexico is a tremendous beneficiary of the drug trade. Even if some of the profits are invested overseas, the pool of remaining money flowing into Mexico creates tremendous liquidity in the Mexican economy at a time of global recession. It is difficult to trace where the drug money is going, which follows from its illegality. Certainly, drug dealers would want their money in a jurisdiction where it could not be easily seized even if tracked. U.S. asset seizure laws for drug trafficking make the United States an unlikely haven. Though money clearly flows out of Mexico, the ability of the smugglers to influence the behavior of the Mexican government by investing some of it makes Mexico a likely destination for a substantial portion of such funds.

Of course, there’s also the problem that Mexico’s oil production is plummeting as the supergiant Canterell depletes. (the state oil company is blamed for managerial fecklessness, but geological reasons are more important). An interesting scenario: if Mexico becomes a net oil importer and the US relaxes its drug policies, could it experience a liquidity crisis?

10. Ahmed Karzai and the US have fallen into a blame game of necessity. Karzai criticizes the West for electoral fraud and legitimizing the insurgency. Since NATO troops are, one way or another, going to leave Afghanistan in a few years, Karzai needs to build a base of support amongst his own people and his neighbors (Iran, China) if he wants to survive. The US in turn blames Karzai’s corruption for the sabotage of the war effort, because the alternative would be an indictment of the entire American war strategy. As of now, Karzai may be rightly feeling like Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, – the US no longer regards him as a reliable asset and he is at risk of being overthrown in favor of someone more manageable.

11. From Stratfor. There is relative optimism in Iraq and the US about the security situation as American troops continue a steady withdrawal. However, there remain questions about the governing capability of the new government and the ability of the security forces to maintain stability. Iran retains the potential to inflame ethno-sectarian strife, albeit thus far it prefers to (successfully) exercise its influence through “softer” means. The main problem is that by invading Iraq, the US has destroyed the old Iran-Iraq balance of power – and the forthcoming withdrawal of US forces will actually give Iran much better opportunities for extending their sphere of influence over Mesopotamia.

According to another source, Iraq will take 5-10 years to (re)build a military capable of defending the country against Iran or Syria. “The Iraqi plan is to stock up on superior American weapons, and train Iraqis to use that stuff with effectiveness approaching that of the Americans. That takes money, and time. Iraq is buying second-hand F-16s, but it will take three or four years to get the pilots and ground crews up to an acceptable level of performance. Along with this, the Iraqis want to buy modern anti-aircraft missile systems, and get them into service.” Also recall that it will take about a decade to ramp up Iraqi oil production, if the effort is successful.

Conclusion? The US is withdrawing from Iraq, bogged down Afghanistan, and in uncertain fiscal straits. Iraq has the potential to stand on its own feet, but will need a few years of stability. Thus, Iran will now enjoy a “window of opportunity” of around 5 years to make a play for hegemony in the Persian Gulf.

12. Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance.

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance. …

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

Reminds me a bit of this scene from A Sum of All Fears.

13. Peter Lavelle interviews Middle East journalist Robert Fisk back in September 2009. If you want a ten minute video summary of why the West fails in Dar al-Islam – this is it.

14. United States watch.

• Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms to states that have nuclear weapons or haven’t renounced or violence the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It is rational and profitable for US interests.
• US gunships attack Iraqi civilians in Wikileaks scandal (see video). This is a non-story – mistakes do occasionally happen (if you really want to get all moral and uptight about this, the relevant question is why the US is in Iraq in the first place). Some might complain the soldiers were cold-hearted by laughing and making morbid jokes, but humor is a typical defense mechanism to scenes of carnage.
• Obama administration ‘looks backwards’ to punish heroes. As I’ve said before, most of the Obama administration’s “change” is more cosmetic than real. It is a continuation of Bush post-2006.
• The march to American Caesarism continues. When did it become legal to assassinate Americans? “Anwar al-Awlaqi, the New Mexico-born cleric living in Yemen, has been placed on a target list that makes him fair game for assassination by the U.S. military or CIA”. The problem isn’t so much the authorization of assassination, which is a useful anti-terrorist tool, but the fact that this further widens the gap between US liberal/rule-of-law pretensions and reality, and hence undermines its international legitimacy. After all, Israel or Russia, states that are not averse to assassinations on foreign soil, don’t portray themseves as guarantors of liberal internationalism. America does.

15. The consevative reaction in Europe spreads to Hungary, with the election of the Fidesz Party to power. By itself this is a normal development unworthy of much comment, except for the fact that the democratic left (the Socialists) have now been marginalized, and now enjoy about the same level of support as the far-right Jobbik and his Movement for a Better Hungary. This party is truly extremist – it has a “Magyar Garda” militia, its symbology draws on the banned Nazi-era Arrow Cross Party, and its rhetoric attacks the Jews above and the Roma below.

Hungary is going to face lean economic times in the years ahead and Viktor Orban of Fidesz can be expected to come under attack by a Jobbik energized by supporters dissilusioned of conventional politics. As Walter Mayr of Spiegel writes in “The Monster at Our Door”: Hungary Prepares for Shift in Power, the end result could be that Orban deserts austerity politics for the seemingly greener pastures of identity politics – for instance, it is known he is in favor of double citizenship for ethnic Hungarians outside Hungary, which could lead to clashes with Romania and Slovakia. (Though it should be stressed this is hardly unusual for Eastern Europe – for instance, Russia’s conferral of dual citizenship was one of the factors provoking conflict with Georgia over S. Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the Romanians themselves are at odds with Russia and Ukraine thanks to their issue of Romanian citizenship to Moldovans).

16. The Caucasus Emirate (Scott Stewart & Ben West), free Stratfor article about what is now the foremost jihadi group operating against Russia in the North Caucasus.

Umarov’s founding statement for the Caucasus Emirate, in which he called for the region to recognize the emirate as the rightful regional power and adopt Shariah, marked a shift from the motives of many previous militant leaders and groups, which were more nationalistic than jihadist. This trend of regional militants becoming more jihadist in their outlook increases the likelihood that they will forge substantial links with transnational jihadists such as al Qaeda — indeed, our Russian sources report that there are connections between the group and high-profile jihadists like Ilyas Kashmiri.

However, this alignment with transnational jihadists comes with a price. It could serve to distance the Caucasus Emirate from the general population, which practices a more moderate form of Islam (Sufi). This could help Moscow isolate and neutralize members of the Caucasus Emirate. Indeed, key individuals in the group such as Umarov and Kosolapov are operating in a very hostile environment and can name many of their predecessors who met their ends fighting the Russians. Both of these men have survived so far, but having prodded Moscow so provocatively, they are likely living on borrowed time.

17. Maoists kill 75 police in central India attack. Not much comment, except to note that many countries, including ostensibly succesful and democratic ones, have violent, festering insurgencies. Russia/Chechnya is hardly unique.

18. Turkey Overtaking Germany No Wishful Thinking on Paradigm Shift (h/t Randy McDonald). “Turkey’s $620-billion economy could move ahead of Germany’s to become the third-biggest in Europe by 2050, behind Russia and the UK”. Such long-term projections are pretty useless, but it’s true that in the medium-term Turkey has bright prospects, in part thanks to its demographic vigor and favorable geographical position.

19. @ any Asian readers or people familiar with the region – how accurate is this “Spenglerian” article on “Asia’s Permanent Advantage” by Chan Akya?

For the frequent traveler, there is a stark dichotomy across the world. Almost without exception, traveling with an Asian carrier to any Asian airport is a pleasure. In contrast, using any airline domiciled in Europe or North America with passage through airports in that part of the world is stunningly inconvenient. …

When you leave the airport in Shanghai and can get to the main city 30 kilometers away within eight minutes on the superfast magnetic levitation train, you cannot help but notice that the actual technology for this wonder comes from Germany. Yet, there are no such trains in operation anywhere in Europe, let alone Germany. …

Surely this is because, here in Asia, we are in the biggest cities you say. … Well, drive from Shanghai in virtually any direction and the first time you see roads that are any worse than those around the city you are a good 200 kilometers away. And even there, the roads are better than many American motorways.

Yeah alright, so the Chinese truck driver barreling towards you looks like he hasn’t slept in three days (very likely), and there is the occasional car wrapped into the milestone on the side of the road; but none of that detracts from the sheer robustness of the infrastructure. …

And then the last observation sinks in. Every single Asian city is heaving at the edges, with millions of people. Yet, crime rates are negligible and social tensions appear well under control. A far cry from the banlieu of Paris or the Turkish quarter of Berlin, for example, not to mention the public housing nightmares of Chicago or Detroit.

It is not the gargantuan dams of China or the super-efficient underground in Singapore that impresses you, but rather the fact that even the most economically backward parts of Asia have taken growth to be their mantra. What’s more, they have the financial muscle to push it through.

With that, your despondency turns to depression. How, you ask, can the “developed” world ever regain its luster?

For a start, all American and European cities will have to reinvest hundreds of billions into their cities to rejuvenate the existing infrastructure. Then the states/smaller countries will have to connect the cities to the rest of the region, install new technology infrastructure, focus on customer service and improve productivity to new heights to compete with the Asians.

Ah, but a minor detail intervenes. Who has got the money to do all that? Well, let us raise taxes you say. Problem is, no one in your country is making much money in the first place so raising taxes will simply drive consumption down and drive the deficit wider. Well, let us borrow the lot you say. Trouble is, no one has the money to lend to you at your abysmally low rates. Except the Asians – who you then recall can play tough once in a while.

And that’s about when you reconcile to the inevitable future – Asia with its apparently permanent advantage on infrastructure and operating efficiency leaving Europe and North America ever further behind. Nothing appears to have the ability to reverse this trend.

See also It’s China’s World. We’re Just Living in It (Rana Foroohar & Melinda Liu) - “The middle kingdom is rewriting the rules on trade, technology, currency, climate—you name it.” Another related post on the same theme is Coal and Treasuries by Gregor McDonald.

20. Military blast.

• The Post New START Nuclear Arsenal – a summary: “1,550 strategic warheads; 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs and deployed nuclear capable heavy bombers; A combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and nuclear capable heavy bombers.” See Sublime News #7 for more details.
• Sizing Up Sukhoi’s PAK FA 5th Gen Fighter. Summary: it is a superb dog-fighter and its IRST may be the first to pick up a hostile stealth fighter, but there are questions over whether the Russian MIC is advanced enough to produce and maintain many of these complex planes (more).
• Chinese Fleet Closes In On Okinawa, increases tensions since China started drilling offshore gas halfway between Okinawa and the mainland. Also illustrates increasing ambitions of the Chinese Navy (PS. No longer PLAN) to carve out a maritime buffer space beyond its eastern seaboard.
• South Korea buys CBU-105 sensor fuzed weapons, a cluster-type bomb that is programmed to hunt for tanks below it. An excellent way of stopping any Northern armored assault, this tilts the militay balance on the peninsula further in the South’s favor.
• Andrew Barton describes environmental warfare as a “target-rich environment” and predicts it will become more prevalent. That is in line with my own thinking.
• Iran gets advanced military speedboats, illustrating its asymmetrical strategy geared at closing down the Straits of Hormuz in the event of war with Israel or the US.
• France Backs Away From The Chinese Threat – France won’t supply Pakistan with advanced military hardware since it would pass them on to Chna.
• Case in point – China copies Swedish Bv206 all-terrain vehicle.
• Russia has problems with their Yasen nuclear powers cruise-missile subs.
• Gates Says U.S. Has Conventionally Armed ICBMs. They are not a good idea.
• Iran boosts air defenses with new missile system – an upgraded version of the Hawk, a 1960′s system and probably vulnerable to Israeli/US jamming.
• India sets sights on killer drones.
• Smart trucks in Afghanistan.
• Global IT Supply-Chain Insecurity is important.
• From the Monitor scam to the Gorschkov scam, corruption in military procurement – an eternal scam.
• Future for US naval procurement looks bleak as costs rise and budgets are slashed. Substantial decline in Navy size is inevitable.

21. Things are getting more interesting in North Korea. There is danger of famine. The people are increasingly disillusioned, but unlikely to revolt. A coup by pro-Chinese military officers is a possibility. “Rumors of a North Korean submarine being responsible for the March 26th sinking of a South Korean corvette are growing more popular in the media… Survivors of the explosion agree that the blast came from outside the ship.” Watch this space.

22. Russophobe & liberast watch.

• Link to The Soviet Story propaganda flick. I haven’t yet seen it, or plan to, despite having had the chance. (The screening coincided with my gym-going time).
• David Satter, respected Russia-watched: “The present Russian leadership not only does not care about America’s security concerns, it is indifferent to Russia’s own.” Need more be said?
• The bear is back: Poland’s tragedy, Russia’s gain (Arthur Herman) – “the most insane column in the entire history of mankind”, according to Mark Adomanis.
• Putin wins again: Rebuilding imperial Russia (Ralph Peters), whom Mark Adomanis says is “very likely the single most repulsive figure in American  journalism”. More on Ralph Peters.
• Paul Goble the Propagandist flip-flops from “Muslims will take over Russia!” in 2006 to “Muslims are no longer a demographic reserve” in 2010. Either way, however, Russia is doomed according to according to Goble’s cherry-picked sources. There is something resembling a “discussion” of this article on SWP’s blog.

23. Remember what I wrote about Russians’ attitudes to Stalinism in Sublime News #7? An “interesting” discussion about it developed on a far-right forum.

24. Flotsam and jetsam.

• GDP by… language (Randy McDonald).
• Phrases people search for to arrive at poemless blog.
• Spiegel has a 7-part series on The Failed Papacy of Benedict XVI.
• Richard Dawkins plans to arrest the Pope. George Monbiot approves.
• The “Pedophile’s Paradise” (Brendan Kiley) – “Alaska Natives are accusing the Catholic Church of using their remote villages as a “dumping ground” for child-molesting priests—and blaming the president of Seattle University for letting it happen.”
• Just An ‘Average Brunette’ from the Banlieue – the three female challengers to Sarkozy from the Socialist, Communist, and Green Parties. I hope they win!
• Journalist on the run from Israel is hiding in Britain: ‘Haaretz’ writer fled to London fearing charges over exposé on Palestinian’s killing. Now while there’s no argument Israel is a liberal democracy, it is highly influenced by the prerogatives of the national security state.
• Why are so many girls lesbian or bisexual?
• Ending the Myth of ‘Market Fundamentalism’ (Dean Baker)
• «Я опознал свою дочь» – the Moscow shahidka‘s father speaks out.
• For all their problems, North Korea remains firmly committed to Juche, release “Red Star” operating system based on Linux. (h/t Randy)
• Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics.
• San Francisco “anti-war” rally (are commies, Islamists) according to this conservative-leaning blogger.
• Stalinist Icon (h/t Jason)
• The East German bunker that was to have been the Warsaw Pact operational center for conducting a nuclear war against NATO forces in Europe.
• Cannibal trial halted after juror falls ill looking at pictures of girl, 16, who was ‘eaten with potatoes’. Why did Russia have to cancel the death penalty in deference to European cultural Diktat?
• Dmitry Rogozin: “Sergey Kovalev is a parody and a loser compared with the great human rights activist and intellectual Andrey Sakharov”. Links to К портрету Сергея Ковалёва.
• Tourist attractions… wait a second, how can that be?!
• How do you perform in this Zombie Survival Quiz?

2. Is Obama transforming America into Amerika? Let me explain. Take a look at the details of the healthcare bill, which was passed despite my pessimism (to be fair I think I had a good excuse). Essentially, it will eventually require everyone to buy a health insurance, but there will be subsidies for the poor / employers and continuing competition amongst insurance providers. Overall, could it even be said that the current administration is essentially transforming the American welfare state from one based on liberalism (in which markets are the primary guarantors of welfare with government only stepping in to restrict un-competitive practices, streamline market distortions, and assume only minimal relief obligations from private charitable and religious groups) to corporatism (in which the provision of welfare is tied to the imperative of maintaining social stability)?

Second, the US is developing a proper industrial policy in a bit to reverse deindustrialization. For instance, there are the plans to double exports by 2015, expand into foreign markets, and react strongly against currency manipulation by China. In other words, the US may be beginning to abandon its status as the world’s consumer of last resort – an important foundation of the current international system. These is also a higher focus on equality of opportunity, energy efficiency and greentech, closer ties between the state and the “commanding heights” (see Goldman Sachs, General Motors, Google, etc).

This is a suggestion, not a conclusion, and certainly not a moral judgment. Quite possibly, a “convergence to Europe” is inevitable as the US population ages and comes under increasing limits-to-growth pressures (e.g. peak oil). Incidentally, Matt Taibbi has a different take - his best line, ”The whole picture is strange: Democrats running as Republicans, Republicans running as Turner-Diaries conspiracy theorists.”

3. Climate change & energy blast.

• The Oil Drum celebrates its fifth birthday. I wish it well – it has been an invaluable resource on energy and sustainability issues. (I have two articles in the pipeline which I plan to submit to them).
• Tipping Point: Near-Term Systemic Implications of a Peak in Global Oil Production – Part 1 – Summary. This is an introduction to a 55-page paper (pdf) on the topic that sounds like a must-read, and I may write more about it in the next few weeks. ”We are living within dynamic processes. It matters little what technologies are in the pipeline, the potential of wind power in some choice location, or that the European Commission has a target; if a severe economic and structural collapse occurs before their enactment, then they may never be enacted.”
• The Logic of Abundance (John Michael Greer) – excellent piece debunking cornucopian myopia.
• Study: “It is clear … that the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice.” Physicist: “If temperatures change just a few tenths of a degree then this oh-so-thin ice cap is doomed.”
• Americans’ Global Warming Concerns Continue to Drop. No comment.
• UK Telegraph Reports, “Oil Reserves ‘Exaggerated by One Third’”–An Analysis – no kidding, “peakists” have been harping on about this for years!
• India-Bangladesh border dispute solved by island in question sinking due to global warming.
• James Cameron, director of Avatar, lashes out at the GW deniers.

4. Geoengineering watch

• 6 Ways We’re Already Geoengineering Earth (Brandon Keim) – draining the rivers; painting the Earth black; the infinite farm; wiping out reefs; the plastic revolution (note: will probably be mankind’s longest-lasting legacy); altering the atmosphere. (h/t Lou Grinzo)
• A Survival Guide to Geoengineering (James Cascio) – “despite its potential to trigger conflict, geoengineering will likely be part of the global response to climate change. Be prepared.”
• On terraforming the solar system, with pictures & What do you think of geoengineering (Randy McDonald) – in my huge post on the topic, I’ve described it as a “final gambit”. We will soon be so far beyond climatic tipping points that sacrificing prodigal resources into geoengineering, in the hope that it will provide a big payoff (e.g. avert the collapse of industrial civilization), will become both rational and inevitable.

5. Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart – Gallup measured life satisfaction for 155 nations by “asking respondents to place the status of their lives on a “ladder” scale with steps numbered from 0 to 10, where 0 indicates the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life”.

The results? Dernmark 82%, Canada, Australia & Israel 62%, Brazil 58%, USA 57%, Britain 54%, Germany 43%, France 35%, Poland 28%, Russia & Ukraine 21%, Japan 19%, India & Egypt 10%, China 9%, Togo 1%. For some reason, only the the Americas, northern Europeans, and Anglo-Saxons consider themselves to be thriving, while most of Eurasia and Africa are heavily depressed.

6. In other news from Gallup, 49% of Americans believe that the healthcare bill is a “good thing”, whereas just 40% believe it is a “bad thing”. Some have critisized this as an outlier, however. Time will tell as passions die down and Americans get access to more affordable healthcare (and assuming the fiscal situation remains more or less under control – no certainty given the range of possible discontinuities).

7. Russia watch. Mark Adomanis does a good summary of the week’s main issues: START, pipelines, and economic growth. Now for my thoughts.

I agree with Mark that the agreement over START will not overspill into better overall Russia-America relations. What they have is a fundamental geopolitical clash of interests that simply cannot be resolved while both nation-states retain imperial mentalities. The deal to cut nukes is 1) a rational cost-cutting measure – though not an imperative one, ignore the talk that Russia can’t afford maintaining a massive nuclear arsenal, it can but would rather not, and 2) in any case the age of the ICBM is slowly drawing to a close with the proliferation of effective ABM systems covered on this blog.

PS. Nikolas Gvosdev on START.

So what do we have? Based on preliminary reports, the Russians will get language that recognizes that there are important linkages between offensive and defensive systems–acknowledging their concerns over how U.S. missile defense systems could impact the strategic balance–but that language is nonbinding, and does not prevent Washington from moving ahead, if it so chooses, with plans to deploy limited BMD systems in the Black Sea region. Both sides will have an upper limit of 1,675 warheads and may shoot for an even lower number of delivery vehicles than originally outlined in last year’s MOU–from 1100 to an upper limit of 800. Some of the Russian reductions are likely to occur from attrition and the retirement of aged systems. This will test the willingness of the Senate to accept a compromise, because it has been argued that Russia would have “no choice” but to bring down the size of its nuclear arsenal, to a size it can more effectively maintained–but now Russia will get binding limits on the size of the U.S. arsenal as well.

Russia’s potential buyout of the Ukrainian gas pipeline network in return for selling Ukraine gas at lower prices is potentially a huge deal that will further tighten its control over European energy supplies – agreed with Mark. (It would also in large part remove the need for South Stream). Note that Ukraine is now very strapped for cash and its implicit social obligations to provide subsidized gas to the populace are placing it between a rock and a hard place (popular unrest, fiscal collapse, and increased Russian influence).

World Bank predicts Russia will grow at 5.0-5.5% in 2010 (not news: most investment banks predict 4-6%, Citibank predicts 6.2%), but will slow to 3.5% in 2011 “as tight credit and unemployment constrain consumption”. Nonetheless, this means that by 2012, Russia will have regained its peak GDP level of 2008 (which in turn was roughly equal to its peak Soviet-era GDP in 1989 – excellent, a whopping 23 wasted years!). But anyhow, still better than common expectations during the crisis…

8. Military & hi-tech blast (no, I’m not a Sinophobe, I admire good spies).

• Cyber-attack on U.S. firms, Google traced to Chinese (Bill Gertz) – describes how 2000+ Chinese hackers infiltrate US companies to steal industrial R&D. Makes perfect sense for a country looking to leapfrog development, of course.
• Jihadism and the Importance of Place – free Stratfor article on the geopolitics of jihad. The jahidi movement is transitioning from being based on large organizations to clandestine cells and individuals, as country after country is “drained” of its ability to sustain Islamist militants.
• The people have been liberated. China no longer has a People’s Liberation Army, now it’s just the Chinese Army. I think they should go all-out and rename it to Ever Victorious Army!
• Has you Gmail been hacked by the Chicoms? Find out!
• Stratfor has a long, detailed history of Chinese espionage efforts (“mosaic intelligence”). Behind subscriber wall.
• Is Russia Google’s next weak spot? – the Kremlin to launch “national search engine” and give government e-mail accounts to every Russian to rationalize social services. (PS. Paranoiacs hold your breath, totalitarian Turkey already has a system. PSS. Apprecite deadpan humor).

9. This whole nonsense about the “Day of Wrath” and how the foundations of the Putin regime are crumbling in the recent wave of “protests” that are hardly large enough to even deserve the name! According to Barret Brown anyway, who believes that “it is worth noting that a poll conducted this month indicated that almost 30 percent of Russians are inclined to engage in protests of this sort, and that this percentage is higher than it was just a month ago”, hence spelling the apocalypse for the Kremlin. Erm, this is basically the same figure as in early 2005 (coinciding with protests over welfare reform), and LESS than two occasions in the 1990’s. Give me a call when it breaks 50%, then we might have something to talk about.

[Blue line = "yes I think protests are possible"; light blue line = "yes I will probably participate in protests. Opinion polls from Levada].

The fact of the matter is that most Russians if not happy, at least satisfied, with the political system, and 70% believe they are “free” today (this figure was much lower under Yeltsin and the early Putin years).

10. The Israel-US spat over settlements. Nothing will come of it as usual. The two countries are bound together by mutual geopolitical interests – the US needs its Middle East bridgehead, Israel needs its insurance policy.

11. What’s really wrong with Russia? by Ben Aris – (h/t poemless). An excellent article that I recommend very much. It points out Russia’s real economic weaknesses, without succumbing to Russophobia or hyperbole – a rare achievement in the mainstream Russia-watching community, regretfully. A few quick comments:

The big omission here on the Kremlin’s part is that while they are spending on power and trains, they have ignored badly needed investment into social infrastructure.

I agree, but it’s not quite accurate to say that social infrastructure has been ignored – at least, not after 2007-2008. E.g., there is a lot of investment in newly-equipped hospitals and clinics since 2007, and positive results are already showing.

Oil is heavily taxed, with the state taking 90 cents on every dollar when prices for oil are over $27. The extra revenue has been used to subsidise income and profit taxes (13% and 24% respectively) in an effort to boost economic diversification. Even this largesse can’t soak up all the petrodollars, so the excess cash is siphoned off into the “lockbox” of the Stabilisation Fund and kept out of the reach of free-spending MPs by Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin.

Good points, but note that some extreme free marketeers would decry the heavy taxation on oil (they’re incorrect of course, having never heard or serious studied lock-in or dependency theory).

The Kremlin’s solution is to lift struggling sectors up by the bootstraps by pouring enough money into them so that even if they can’t compete on price, they can compete on quality. The trouble is that state-led rescues of industry look intrinsically wrong-headed to almost everyone.

Katinka Barysch… spoke for many recently in a recent paper when she wrote: “A genuine modernisation alliance would have to be bottom-up and driven by the private sector. The Russian leadership is pursuing a model of modernisation that is state-centric and top-down. It throws money at new institutes to foster research, it nationalises big industries, it tells state-owned banks which sectors to lend to. It does not do the things that would be required for genuine economic diversification. … Barysch assumes there is a foundation of business that will flourish if the shackles of government are removed, but the Kremlin is facing an economy where rafts of products and services are simply missing and can’t get started.

State spending is inherently wasteful, but as Russia has the money thanks to oil, the issue at hand is not the efficiency of state spending, but rather its effectiveness: can the spending create sectors that don’t exist now or upgrade those that can’t compete now? “As there is no vibrant [small and medium-sized enterprise] sector, the only option left is heavy state spending. The Kremlin is doing this not because they want bigger versions of the existing state-owned behemoths, but because how else are they going to change the nature of the Russia economy?” says Plamen Monovski…

Head. Nail. Railing about how a large degree of state involvement is necessary for Russia to develop has been one of S/O’s common themes.

More worryingly, these nascent attempts to remake the system have already led to an increase in political risk. Up until now Russia has grown by first putting bums in empty seats, and then building new factories when the Soviet-era capacity was fully used. To go to the next stage, the system itself has to be liberalised, as it is efficiency not volume that counts now. This means cutting into the vested interests and they are already fighting back. In March, Medvedev told ministers that they had to obey orders “or take a hike” – a rare visible sign of the growing tension.

Conventional wisdom has it that Putin is a virtual dictator, but bne’s sources in diplomatic, business and government circles say that Putin is visibly under an increasing amount of strain, frustrated by the government machinery’s failure to implement his plans. On top of this, bringing in Medvedev has considerably weakened his position. “Two camps have formed around Medvedev and Putin. The first wants to see Medvedev go further with the liberalisation of the economy and politics, whereas the people close to Putin want to keep things as they were prior to the crisis – where they were making money,” says an economist who has been advising the government at a top level. “Putin is visibly stressed, as some people are starting to ignore him and others are openly calling for him to leave.”

1) Demonstrates how the anti-Putinistas have no appreciation for nuance or the institutional intricacies of the system Russia’s leaders have to operate in.

2) The more portentous conclusion one could possibly draw from this is that at times when plans for reform ran into heavy vested opposition, what followed was either a) a period of conservative retreat and stagnation or b) the opposite – an upping of the tempo and increase in coercion, centralization, mobilization. It will be interesting to see what will happen this time round.

PS. One major thing Aris leaves out is Russia’s awfully low level of energy efficiency. Not that it matters for now, given that it is so well-endowed with resources, but nonetheless all good things come to an end. Furthermore, improvements in energy efficiency can translate into higher foreign export earnings or domestic saving (in the form of resources-left-in-the-ground).

13. Germany: Mitteleuropa Redux (Peter Zeihan) from Stratfor (free article) – an interesting take on the rise of German power in Europe in the wake of the financial crisis – and the possible responses of its neighbors.

All this and more has happened. We saw the 2008-2009 financial crisis in Central Europe as particularly instructive. Despite their shared EU membership, the Western European members were quite reluctant to bail out their eastern partners. We became even more convinced that such inconsistencies would eventually doom the currency union, and that the euro’s eventual dissolution would take the European Union with it. Now, we’re not so sure. …

Back-of-the-envelope math indicates that in the past decade, Germany has gained roughly a 25 percent cost advantage over Club Med. … The implications of this are difficult to overstate. If the euro is essentially gutting the European — and again to a greater extent the Club Med — economic base, then Germany is achieving by stealth what it failed to achieve in the past thousand years of intra-European struggles. In essence, European states are borrowing money (mostly from Germany) in order to purchase imported goods (mostly from Germany) because their own workers cannot compete on price (mostly because of Germany). This is not limited to states actually within the eurozone, but also includes any state affiliated with the zone; the relative labor costs for most of the Central European states that have not even joined the euro yet have risen by even more during this same period.

It is not so much that STRATFOR now sees the euro as workable in the long run — we still don’t — it’s more that our assessment of the euro is shifting from the belief that it was a straightjacket for Germany to the belief that it is Germany’s springboard. In the first assessment, the euro would have broken as Germany was denied the right to chart its own destiny. Now, it might well break because Germany is becoming a bit too successful at charting its own destiny. And as it dawns on one European country after another that there was more to the euro than cheap credit, the ties that bind are almost certainly going to weaken.

14. Liberast & Russophobe watch.

• Mark Adomanis in epic blog fight with Barrett Brown.
• A Good Treaty on Ilya Yashin’s escapades.
• Clinically insane Russian “liberal” Yulia Latynina writes about Why Putin Isn’t Afraid of a Free Internet because unlike the industrious Chinese, “Vanya the tractor driver will never vote for a liberal opposition candidate [because] deep in his soul, he understands that he doesn’t deserve anything more in life than his beloved bottle of vodka”. And equally insane or ignorant Westerners wonder why most Russians despise their liberals… (h/t Carl Thomson).
• The Economist’s criminally awful Russia coverage – Mark Adomanis revelas the obvious, kind of like I did with Paul Goble recently. Still, Mark Ames’ The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine remains the defining pinnacle of the Economist-bashing genre.

15. Odds and Ends.

• Greg Palast on the dispossession of New Orleans by the connected rich (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Whoever says corruption and social injustice are limited to Third World countries and Russia?
• Full Text of Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009 – China hits back at Western cultural imperialism and double standards! As for Russia, it “indignantly dismissed U.S. criticism of its human rights record on Friday, saying the United States was guilty of its own abuses from Afghanistan to “the streets of America”.” Really, I’ve no idea why the State Department insists on bringing out these ridiculous human rights assessments. Nobody likes being lectured, least of all by a black pot.
• Some anti-healthcare bill protesters are racists, thugs.
• La Russie n’a pas à rougir de son passé – “Russia doesn’t have to be ashamed of its past”, a (very rare) “Russophile” article from the French media (Le Figaro in this case). I particularly liked one comment, “Cet article peut nuire a la santé de A.Glucksman…” (“this article may hurt the health of A. Glucksmann” [a famous Russophobe, in fact the denizens of inoSMI.ru have designed a "Russophobe scale" in which a "Gluck" (глюк) is the basic unit!]). (h/t Alexandre Latsa)
• Obama Derangement Syndrom – Republicans are the Party of Stupid: 67% believe Obama is a socialist, 57% a Muslim, 45% a non-US citizen, and 24% the Anti-Christ.
• All the ‘Nuance’ That’s Fit to Print – The New York Times relaxes taboos about Nazi Germany. Probably a natural development as the Holocaust fades from first-hand memory to history.
• Report: Current Knesset most racist of all time
• A lot of fuss about Russian Blackjack bombers invading Scotland. NATO “buzzes” close to Russian airspace all the time too.
• Ukraine’s Yanukovich to repeal Bandera hero decree – about time!
• @ those losers who loved criticising Russia for its below-usual performance in the Winter Olympics because it is not a “a good global citizen” (whatever that is) - Russian Paralympians at Top With 38 Medals!
• A New Human Relative from the Siberian Mountains. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• CIA, State Department Apparently Acting on Plan to Destroy Wikileaks (Barrett Brown) – I found him through his exchanges with Mark Adomanis. What do you think of this article?
• Russian propaganda poster in Washington Times about why Saakashvili is a madman. (h/t Dmitry Rogozin)
• Journal of Hate Studies founded. (h/t Ali Novruzov)
• Contrary to stereotypes, the Brits have pretty good teeth (best in Europe).
• US states ranked by “size”.

16. Happy Earth Hour Day! (Personally, I think it’s a ridiculous and meaningless gesture that does absolutely nothing except assuage the guilt feelings of green-washy liberals for fucking up the planet).

I used Angus Maddison’s historical statistics, CIA figures for 2009 growth except where available the results from national statistical services (Belarus & Russia), and the IMF projections for 2010 (adjusted upwards for non-Baltic nations with sharp recent falls in GDP to account for their stronger-than-expected recoveries) to create GDP (PPP) per capita indices for post-Soviet nations and Poland (generally representative of Visegrad) where the output levels of 1989 – the year of peak Soviet GDP – are set to 100.

So which national ponds look like they’ve been subjected to grenade fishing, and which ones have the liveliest fish? Drumroll…

Belarus! At least amongst the industrialized nations, this market socialist economy – mocked and despised by proponents of the Washington consensus – is now substantially more productive than it was in 1989, beating out all its peer competitors. Furthermore, unlike the Baltics or Russia, it remains one of the most equal societies on Earth. Belarus suffered less of the “catabolic collapse” observed in neighboring Russia and Ukraine in the 1990′s, and strong growth resumed earlier. This included growth in manufacturing – Belarus did not suffer from the widespread deindustrialization from which Russia has only recently, and just barely, recovered from in 2007 (and then lost again in 2009!) – and the country even developed a competitive micro-electronics industry. Interestingly, Belarus is also the only CIS nations with whom Russia had a negative migration balance (until 2005). It seems that the stability and benefits offered by Bat’ka outweighed his collective-farm-boss chique.

That said, Belarus’ relative success – shocking as it would be to neoliberal ideologues – should not be overstated. First, in 1989 it was one of the poorer members of the “industrialized nations”, and in standard macroeconomic theory, faster economic growth is, ceteris paribus, easier when you are further behind. Second, whereas Belarus is great for ordinary workers and pensioners, the more talented find it unpromising, even oppressive. Intertwined with an authoritarian political structure, the economic system is largely closed to those who don’t like toeing the party line.

Despite its economic depression from 2007, Estonia seems to have performed very well too. Enfused with post-independence optimism, it carried out its liberal reforms earlier and more completely than any other post-Soviet nation. As a result, it enjoyed a fast revival of growth from 1993, giving it a 2-year head start over Belarus and a 5-year one over Russia. Estonia is far richer and more transparent than Belarus, has a vibrant hi-tech sector, and more political freedoms (with the important exception of disenfranchised Russophones). Latvia has been somewhat less of a miracle economy. After the recent economic collapse, its economic output is now little bigger than the Soviet-era peak, and is much less equitably distributed.

In the bubbly days of 2006-2007 (and by bubbly, I do mean bubble), these economies became known as Baltic Tigers. Their liberal economic policies, balanced budgets, favorable geography, and low-wage skilled labor attracted huge credit inflows. This enabled a debt-fueled consumerist orgy, resulting in awning current account deficits. As the 2008 global credit crisis unfolded, investors took fright and capital inflows turned into capital flight. The house of cards fell down. The Baltics embarked on brutal wage deflation and budget cuts, especially in the worst-hit Latvia, to maintain their currency pegs against the Euro, acquire much-needed IMF financing, and reattain competitiveness. This is projected to take years – and that’s discounting both further shocks to the global financial system and political discontinuities (e.g. after the last Great Depression the Baltic nations became soft dictatorships).

The Balts cannot rely on a renewal of the old bubble, rising foreign protectionism precludes an export-led recovery, and the prospects for strong domestic consumption are dim because of the huge rise in debt levels. The IMF now forecasts prolonged below-trend growth, with GDP per capita only approaching their 2007 peaks by 2014 for all three Baltic nations (the same projections show Russia and Belarus converging to or overtaking the Baltic economies by that date). Just as for the old chasm between Marxism and “actually existing socialism”, whatever the merits of neoliberalism as a theoretical construct – its proponents will have to answer for its real-world disappointments.

Now we come to Russia, which has the region’s biggest and most important economy by far. It’s post-transition history is also highly complex. First, it cannot be stressed enough that the USSR did not collapse economically because of its inherent internal contradictions. It collapsed because Gorbachev aborted central planning, or more accurately ditched the coercive mechanisms that made central planning work (though granted the observable evidence of worker unrest and economic stagnation may have tipped his hand). In the absence of evolved market mechanisms, the “dictator’s surrender” only led to ruinous insider plunder, asset stripping and managerial misappropriation, all under the slogan of “liberalization” (true liberalizing reforms were far less wide-raging and generally implemented much later than in the Baltics). Output plummetted as barter arrangements replaced late Soviet scientific socialism.

As a result, Russia’s new capitalism developed in the most anarchic and perverse ways; indeed, it arguably had a greater resemblance to old Muscovite patrimonialism. A weak Tsar (President Yeltsin) bestowed rent-gathering rights unto his new boyars (the oligarchs) in exchange for their political support – a compromise he was driven to by the combination of 1) state weakness and 2) the perceived need to prevent the Communists coming to power at all costs. Putin’s cardinal achievement in his first term was to decisively shift the balance of power between Tsar and boyars back to the former, a fact confirmed by the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of Khodorkovsky – the power-hungry robber baron who didn’t realize that the days of oligarch rule had passed. The economic crisis of 2008 led to the further reassertion of Kremlin power over the oligarchs – bailed out by a Russian state grown cash-rich from foreign energy sales, many are now little more than its glorified, well-compensated servants.

In the past decade, Russia has been in flux, metamorphosing from the chaotic, boyar-dominated, “appanage” atmosphere of the 1990′s, to the brave new world of Kremlin modernization dreams that are opening up the 2010′s. Three trends are now becoming dominant: 1) the state is becoming much more central in pushing Russia’s modernization through mercantilism (e.g. industrial tariffs), industrial policy (e.g. economic zones), and targeted investments in strategic and “sunrise” economic sectors (e.g. nanotechnology), 2) there is a concurrent, measured economic liberalization – from the 2001 flat tax reform to the raising of internal energy prices, and 3) there is a renewed attempt at social mobilization to fulfill the state’s development plans. In sum, a latter-day replay of the Petrine “revolution from above” (albeit one altered with the benefit of hindsight – Putin is careful to emphasize, even exaggerate, his Russian cultural patriotism, so as to avoid recreating the social divisions and unrest that tends to occur when a ruler is popularly seen as being in thrall to foreigners).

Russia’s post-1990 performance was far from stellar, though it should be noted that in overall per capita welfare it is still comparable to Belarus and only slightly behind Latvia (possibly ahead now) – not that much changed from the late Soviet period. Russia essentially lost two decades, like Latvia or Lithuania – and performed worse than Belarus, Estonia, and Poland (included in the graph for comparison).

This is not too surprising, since 1) Russia spent much of the 1990′s in “anarchic stasis”, a semi-failed state that had trouble maintaining any meaningful monopoly on violence, tax collection, and monetary emissions (the three vital functions of a state), 2) like the Baltics, Russia started from a relatively high base (it was already an industrialized nation), so it could hardly expect particularly rapid growth, and 3) the Kremlin only really began to focus on modernization as a priority in the mid-2000′s, as before it had been too preoccupied with consolidating the Russian state.

As I wrote in an earlier post on the Russian economy at the dawn of its late-2008 crisis (which was basically correct with the exception of the far too optimistic 2009 GDP forecast), Russia’s greatest weakness during the credit crunch was that its major corporations, the vast majority of them state or quasi-state, had come to rely on Western intermediation for accessing cheap credit. When the global credit wheel ground to a halt in late 2008, the first countries to be cut off were the emerging markets. (Having access to deep indigenous credit systems, nations like Brazil and China weathered the storm far better than Russian corporations and consumers who were suddenly cut off from cheap credit). Though the initial economic collapse was steep, Russia does not possess the long-term ailments of the Baltic states – debt has nowhere near the same level of penetration, the state remains incredibly cash-rich, and its strategic depth makes it largely invulnerable to any further retreat of globalization. Many forecasts now say that Russia will grow by 4% to 6% in 2010. In the longer-term, it has a comprehensive development plan and arguably good prospects for effecting an economic catch-up to the West.

Finally, far and away the worst post-Soviet performer amongst the industrialized nations is Ukraine. It never managed to reattain its Soviet-era level of per capita output, and that goal is now further away than ever. Comparable in its level of economic development to Belarus, Poland, and Russia in the late 1980′s, it is now far behind all three. Why? True, Russia had the gas reserves, but until the mid-2000′s Ukraine received vastly subsidized gas anyway. Furthermore, unlike Russia, Ukraine was nowhere near as burdened by “structural militarization” at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, nor did it retain prodigally expensive military forces or Great Power ambitions. It was also closer to Europe, directly bordering Poland. And besides, Belarus was in a similar position to Ukraine, but landlocked and shunned by the West to boot; but it nonetheless managed to do incomparably better.

I think the only good explanation for this retrogression is that Ukraine simply never left its 1990′s conditions of anarchic stasis. Its Tsar (or Hetman?) was always weak, Ukraine’s cultural cleft between Russian Orthodox East and Uniate West putting a glass ceiling to any ruler’s level of popular support at around 50% of the population. This constant problem with political legitimacy, experienced by both pro-Western and pro-Russian Presidents, stymied reform efforts and attempts to reign in oligarch power. Ukraine lagged well behind Russia, not to even mention the Baltics, in its economic liberalization, and its politicians remain representatives of oligarchic clans, not their puppet-masters as in Russia. Any sustained state-backed modernization scheme (e.g. on Putin’s Russia model) is doomed from the outset, while private investors and entrepreneurs are scared off by the unending political instability and lack of liberalization (in this respect, if Russia or Belarus is purgatory, Ukraine is hell). Long-term development is thus impossible under Ukraine’s conditions of anarchic stasis.

Below is a graph plotting the economic fortunes of the USSR’s less-developed nations (again per capita).

Azerbaijan‘s success is almost entirely tied up with the massive expansion of its oil production, especially from the mid-2000′s. Azerbaijan’s oil output rose from 0.2mn barrels a day between 1992 and 1998, to 0.4mn in 2005, and skyrocketed to 1.0mn by 2009, and as shown in the graph, the years of rapid increase were accompanied by amazingly high rates of GDP growth (up to 20-30% in a couple of years). A similar explanation would probably hold for why Kazakhstan‘s post-Soviet performance was substantially better than Russia’s, despite the many similarities between their economic systems – Kazakh oil production was 0.4mn barrels from 1992-95, 0.6mn in 1999, and 1.5mn by 2008.

(Russia produced only 22.6% more fuel energy in 2008 than in 1992. Its oil production went from an all-time peak of 11.5mn barrels in 1988, to 7.9mn in 1992, 6.0-6.5mn during 1994-99, 9.3mn in 2004, and 9.8mn by 2008 – i.e., correlated with general growth trends in its real GDP. Whereas the recovery in oil production accounted for a very substantial share of its GDP growth / recovery from 1999 to 2004, these effects became small after increases in oil production flattened out post-2004 due to geological factors (i.e. peak oil) and the political factors (the YUKOS affair); from the mid-2000′s, the main drivers of growth became retail, construction, transportation, manufacturing, and finance.)

Summation – Russia was recovering lost ground in oil production; Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan were gaining massive new ground. Translated into GDP growth over the entire transition period, Kazakh and Azeri growth appears much more impressive, even though it was much more narrowly based on increasing resource extraction.

Armenia showed impressive growth, despite that it has no such resource windfall and is a mountanous, landlocked nation bordered by unfriendly Turks to the west, the hostile Azeris to the east who are closely related to Turks (with whom it fought a war in the early 1990′s), a Georgia up north that dislikes its alliance with Russia, and with Iran to the south, which is friendly, but is an international pariah. How the Armenians managed this I don’t know, but kudos to them!

Despite the pro-Saakashvili rhetoric, Georgia is not that impressive on objective terms. The average, post-Rose Revolution 2004-2008 growth was 8%, which although ostensibly impressive was not exceptional by regional standards. Furthermore, it doesn’t mean very much for a nation 1) starting from a low economic base and 2) recovering from a massive prior GDP collapse. True, somewhat better than trainwreck Moldova, but left in the dust by its Caucasian neighbor Armenia (likewise wracked by blockade and the occasional war), and only slightly better than Russia – a nation that has a GDP per capita that is three times bigger than Georgia’s.

According to an alternate, non-rosy view, The Georgian Economy Under Saakashvili (Irakli Rukhadze and Mark Hauf), much of Georgia’s recent growth was one-off, being based on state asset sales and government lay-offs. This was accompanied by accelerating deindustrialization, continued emigration and poverty, and the destruction of all remaining safety nets. The authors say the government acquired the habit of pressuring independent businesses to provide “voluntary contributions” in return for not bankrupting them under corruption prosecutions. This is not to singularly condemn Georgia’s weak rule of law. After all, politicized interference in the economy, widespread corruption, and corporate raiding are the rule rather than the exception throughout the former USSR. The only thing that’s special about the Georgian economy is the chasm between the gushing, star-speckled rhetoric emanating from Saakashvili and his neocon cheerleaders – and the actually existing reality.

Finally, we can note that Uzbekistan saw much better growth than Tajikistan. Uzbekistan is an unreformed economy, as well as land-locked, poor, and truly authoritarian (i.e. an extreme version of Belarus). But starting from a low base really helps, I guess. On the other hand, Tajikistan saw a devastating civil war between Communists and Islamists that killed 100,00 people during the early 1990′s, and it is the post-Soviet republic that is least advanced in the demographic transition (capital diverted to sustain new mouths and remember that we are measuring GDP per capita in this post). Growth performance in Kyzgyzstan was in between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, whereas Turkmenistan’s was as good as Uzbekistan’s.

What to Expect?

Russia has a comprehensive modernization plan, the human, administrative, and financial resources needed to implement it, and the Kremlin’s siege mentality should give it the impetus to force it through. Thus, I am reasonably confident that Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan will continue to see relatively fast growth. These countries have relatively high human capital (a necessary prerequisite for economic catch-up), and their recent customs union will enable bigger economies of scale. As I said before, there are many reasons to suppose that Ukraine will (re)join this Eurasian space within the next few years, at which point its anarchic stasis will finally end.

As I observed above, economic openness and transparency are not as important to economic catch-up as they are sometimes made out to be (this is NOT to imply they’re bad, however – obviously, imitating North Korea’s Juche principle or Equatorial Guinea’s kleptocracy is not the way forwards). However, they shouldn’t be treated as the be all and end all of things either. Moderate levels of corruption are nothing more than an additional tax, and it is even possible to think of situations where it can be positive (for instance, nations with impossible, idiotic regulations). Meanwhile, excessive economic openness can leave one too open to the vagaries of global casino capitalism – observe Latvia today, or Argentina 2001, for good examples. Furthermore, the next decade will likely see the retreat of globalization in tandem with peak oil and the waning of Pax Americana. In this new environment of “scarcity industrialism“, states that carve out self-sufficient dominions will fare best. Russia is aware of this, and has begun to regather its former Empire, and so is China with its fevered buyout of mines, land, and political elites around the world.

The Baltics may slowly recover under business-as-usual, though in the more globally pessimistic scenarios favored by S/O the general pattern will be stagnation, political unrest, and authoritarian reaction (especially possible in the most vulnerable member, Latvia). Central Asia does not really have the capacity for generating its own sustainable development. Far from potential markets and tyrannized by extreme climes and distances, the region is doomed to perpetual backwardness, except in so far as outside Powers like Russia or China find it in their interests to subsidize their development. In the Caucasus, the threat of instability and violence hangs permanently in the air, making any attempts at prediction even more of a futile endeveour.

It should be noted that political assassinations aren’t that rare. Apart from Mossad’s well-known activities, there immediately comes to mind 1) Iran’s large-scale campaign of assassinations in the 1980′s-90′s of emigre dissidents / separatists, 2) Russia’s war against the Chechen separatists (e.g. Yanderbiyev, killed in Dubai, 2004 by GRU operatives), and 3) the US war on terror, in which members of terrorist organizations vanish into “black holes” not to reemerge. No doubt many other, more circumspect nations can be added to this list.

The problem with assassination as a political or military tool is that it is rarely effective. Few organizations are so dominated by a single charismatic leader that his decapitation would deal it an irreperable blow. In practice, most successful organizations – be they political, military, terrorist, criminal, etc – have highly dispersed power structures, with strong horizontal layers ready to slide in to fill the gap should any single vertical be destroyed. This is particularly the case for clandestine groups, since some of their operatives are expected to get detected and killed.

In the media age, assassination has in many cases become decidedly counterproductive. Typically, the minimal gains in direct damage to the enemy are massively outbalanced by negative press coverage, diplomatic blowback, the uncovering of useful intelligence assets, etc. The only real benefit, such as it is, may be emotional. This is almost certainly the case here.

2. Speaking of terrorists, Osama bin Laden calls for an “economic jihad” versus the United States – on the basis that it is a major CO2 polluter! He goes on to say, “Talk of climate change isn’t extravagant speculation: it is a tangible fact which is not diminished by its being muddled by some greedy heads of major corporations. The effects of global warming have spread to all continents of the world”. The solution? Though the first and most important thing is of course to “dedicate worship to God and ask for forgiveness”, nonetheless being “economical in all of our affairs” and striving to “avoid luxury and wastefulness, especially in food, drink, clothing, housing and energy” is also very important.

Now Osama and S/O don’t normally see eye to eye, but in this case he does have a point. The threats posed by climate change are orders of magnitude bigger than the sum of all terrorism. However, Osama’s specific anti-US slant is unhelpful (“we should refuse to do business with the dollar and get rid of it as soon as possible”, since this is “an important way to liberate humanity from enslavement and servitude to America and its corporations”). In reality, in the post-Bush era, it is China that is now the biggest obstructionist to global commitments on CO2 emissions cuts. If he was really serious about curbing climate change, Osama would have called for a global embargo on the entire industrial System.

3. You think I’m being crazy (partially) siding with a terrorist on AGW? But really what else is one supposed to do when one stumbles across real life satire like South Dakota legislators’ call for ”balanced teaching of global warming in the public schools of South Dakota” (h/t Lou).

Instead of taking the time to understand the science, South Dakota legislators submit as proof against climate change this remarkable list: “[T]here are a variety of climatological, meteorological, astrological [sic], thermological, cosmological, and ecological dynamics…”

No, that isn’t a misprint. South Dakota legislators actually proposed astrology as evidence against climate change. Do they think glaciers melt slower when Virgo is ascending?

South Dakota legislators probably meant to say “astronomical,” but that also makes no sense. The astronomical influences on climate are well-understood by scientists. Recent climate changes are occurring independently of astronomical influences. …

Even more disturbing than these errors is the underlying premise of HCR 1009: the assumption that political bodies, rather than scientists, should have the final say over scientific issues. We have recently seen this kind of thinking in Louisiana, where a 2008 law opened the door to non-scientific attacks on evolution and climate change. Last year, theTexas State Board of Education rewrote science standards to remove the age of the universe, mandate “different views” on global warming, and include standard creationist talking points against evolution.

No comment.

4. The Attack on Climate-Change Science Why It’s the O.J. Moment of the Twenty-First Century by Bill McKibben.

5. A wonderful site on Global Warming Art (h/t Lou again). In particular, I liked the following:

• Florida sea level rise
• Bangladesh sea level rise – this England-sized country has more people than Russia and is still growing rapidly… and much of it is just a meter or two above sea level.
• Antarctica without Ice – perhaps the Bangladeshis will be able to move here.
• Global Temperature Record 1880-2008 – no, the world isn’t “cooling”, much as the deniers might scream otherwise.
• Solar Cycle Variations – for those of you who point to fluctuations in solar irradiation as the cause of global warming, note that this measure has been falling since the early 2000′s.
• Electricity Use by US State – red states have been using more and more; meanwhile, California now actually uses less than in the late 1970′s.

6. In last week’s Sublime News #1, I covered Russia’s accelerating demographic turnaround. As of 2009, its birth rate was 12.4 / 1000 (2008 – 12.1) and its death rate was 14.2 / 1000 (2008 – 14.6). What about other related nations?

In Ukraine, the birth rate was 11.1 / 1000 (2008 – 11.0) and the death rate was 15.3 / 1000 (2008 – 16.3). However, overall it is closer to Russia than it appears, because Ukraine’s population is slightly older and so can be expected to have slightly more deaths and slightly fewer births per capita.

It is interesting to note that despite Ukraine’s massive, 15% drop in GDP (compared to Russia’s 7.9% drop), even fertility rates managed to eke out a tiny increase. This is not surprising by analogizing to Russia. During the turbulent transition era, many women postponed having children while the desired fertility rate and “average birth sequence” remained little changed from the late Soviet era, when the fertility rate was close to the population replacement level. As such, many women are now “catching up” and beginning to have the children they didn’t in 1992-2006. In Ukraine as in Russia, these dynamics mean that we can reasonably expect the TFR to hit a rate of about 1.7-1.8 within a few years and stabilizing.

In Belarus, the birth rate was 11.6 / 1000 (2008 – 11.1) and the death rate was 14.2 / 1000 (2008 – 13.8). Ironically, its death rate increased slightly despite its GDP growth for 2009 being ever so slightly positive at 0.2%. I mentioned Latvia‘s severe fall in fertility in #18 of the last issue.

For Russian speakers or Google Translate users, Не дадим себя похоронить (Иван Рубанов), a 2007 article arguing that Russia’s demographic fall is reversible. (I joined the party in 2008). Haven’t read it, yet, but you feel free to do so.

7. Collapse of Pax Americana watch: China PLA officers urge economic punch against US. The PLA colonels are none too happy with US military sales to Taiwan, and since China is now stronger than it was several years back, it feels it can now express its unhappiness in more overt ways. It is also accelerating its military spending increases and slowly growing more assertive on the world stage.

8. Karl Naylor, a Polish-residing British expat with Russophile tendencies, suspends his blog.

9. EIA International Total Primary Energy Consumption and Energy Intensity. Great stats database.

10. Visible Earth – super-high resolution photos of the Earth from NASA.

11. On Turkey: Between Russia and the West: Turkey as an Emerging Power and the Case of Abkhazia (Laurent Vinatier).

ABSTRACT. Turkey’s foreign policy finds itself in transition. Considering the new emerging context and the constraints that Turkey faces, it is essential to assess the real determinants which would transform Turkish foreign policy to encompass a more pro-active, independent, and regional strategy. Abkhazia, since its recognition by Russia on August 26, 2008, is examined here as a case study. South Caucasian issues in general and Abkhazia in particular may be essential bargaining chips for Turkey to substantially improve its stance from the Black to the Caspian Seas, assuming its new-found “emancipation” from U.S. influence and thus becoming a real regional power in the region. If all these successful challenges are met successfully, then Turkey will move to the gravity center of an EU-Russia-Iran triangle, where it will occupy a pivotal and geostrategic position.

The man behind Turkey’s strategic depth (Caleb Lauer).

From his post as a professor of international relations, Davutoglu argued that Turkey, now freed from the East-West political geography of the Cold War and embedded in the new geography of globalization, should no longer be thought of as an appendage of the West, but rather as a country at the center. He elaborated this idea in his 2001 book Strategic Depth and the title has since become a shorthand description of Davutoglu’s “doctrine”. The basic idea is that Turkey, a central, pivotal country, must use its unique geography and history to its foreign policy advantage. …

If Turkey’s strategic advantage is, as Davutoglu says, in its geography and history, then this advantage is certainly deep. Located in both Asia and Europe, Turkey borders the Balkans, the Caucuses and the Middle East. Across the water from its Black Sea, Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, Turkey has 25 coastal neighbors. All traffic into and out of the Black Sea goes through the Turkish Straits. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers begin in Anatolia, and thus Turkey controls the freshwater of Syria and Iraq. At least 12 million Kurds live in Turkey and more than 5 million Kurds live over its border in northern Iraq. Turkic languages and cultures cover the ground between southeastern Europe and northwestern China. And Istanbul, once seat of the caliphate and the Ottoman Empire, ruled Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Mecca, Cairo, Belgrade, Damascus and Baghdad for generations.

Davutoglu has pushed Turkey to use this “strategic depth” to become a key global player and take stakes in the world’s, especially the West’s, most high-profile issue areas.With the largest NATO army besides America’s, Turkey wants to ensure stability in northern Iraq once the Americans are gone. Turkey is the centerpiece country of the Nabucco natural gas pipeline project, intended to free Europe from reliance on Russian gas. Turkey has sought a reputation for mediating tough disputes: in Bosnia; between Israel and Syria; and between its two friends, Iran and America. (One Turkish writer joked that Turkey should ask Turkey to help improve the currently strained relations between itself and Israel.) …

Though in the thick of major Western concerns – Iraq, Afghanistan, Israeli-Arab peace, energy, Islam, EU – the central goal of all this policy is business: increase trade, attract foreign investment and provide for Turkey’s economy. In AKP foreign policy speeches one regularly hears about Turkey’s “young and dynamic population” who will need jobs, and whose careers and businesses will have to grow. …

Some call Davutoglu’s foreign policy “neo-Ottomanism”. And to listen to one AKP member of parliament speak of his “pride” at seeing the Ottoman walls that enclose the old city of Jerusalem, and of the Bascarsi in Sarajevo, it is clear Ottoman nostalgia warms the foreign policy imaginations of at least some in the Turkish government. …

Critics also say Davutoglu and the AKP have “Islamified” Turkish foreign policy. Religion is part of the worldview of the AKP and affects the way it governs. But the accusation of “Islamification” is clearly designed to play on prejudices and scare Western and secular observers. Many liberals and progressives in Turkey dismiss – or willfully ignore – the accusation as a point of principle. These two poles of fear mongering and dismissal have kept much helpful debate from reaching foreign ears.

Ironically, given the accusations of “Islamification”, there’s no clear moral basis to Davutoglu’s foreign policy. This may not be missed by those who like their foreign policy analysis on ice. But treating all parties with “mutual respect” and on a principle of “equality”, as Davutoglu advocates, risks being blind to real differences between, for example, Greece and Iran, or Israel and Sudan. This is, at least partially, why many find it easy to wonder whether Turkey is “leaving” the West.

Again, this may not be a problem for those who think George W Bush discredited the whole notion of distinguishing dictators from democrats. The AKP stresses that engagement with its neighbors is not a luxury, and claim they do communicate misgivings privately. But the question remains: will the masses of Turkish voters who keep the AKP in power eventually demand to hear in which terms – ones nobler than economic self-interest – their government describes its goals abroad, and on what grounds it considers a friend to be a friend? After all, “democracy” and “democratization” are the AKP’s domestic policy mantras, and the AKP has been very happy to point out America’s and the EU’s various double standards.

12. Common sense from George Hewitt – Georgia’s new plans to reintegrate Abkhazia and South Ossetia ignore a fundamental problem: their people aren’t interested.

13. Lost eXile, – good expose of the eXholes, the people behind the world’s best magazine (now sadly dead). Their reaction to the article here.

14. Speaking of silly antics, UKIP demagogue blasts the EU President and Belgium. Funny stuff.

15. Energy Follows Its Bliss - A good summary of EROIE, emergy, & energy concentrations from collapse theorist John Michael Greer

16. From CEPR, US military spending now accounts for 5.6% of GDP.

Defense spending continues to be an important factor pushing the economy as it has grown rapidly even as the economy has shrunk. Defense spending now accounts for 5.6 percent of GDP, the largest share since the first quarter of 1993. By comparison, it peaked at 7.6 percent in the 3rd quarter of 1986, at the height of the Reagan build-up. In its last pre-September 11th projections, the Congressional Budget Office projected defense spending for 2009 as 2.4 percent of GDP.

Note: As a rule, almost all official figures for military spending are systemically biased to the low side.

17. The Chemist’s War: The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences (Deborah Blum).

18. Berezovsky is none too happy with Yanukovych’s victory in Ukraine’s presidential elections (not surprisingly since he was one of the people bankrolling the Orange Revolution).

Editor’s note: This address by Russian millionaire Boris Berezovsky, who is living in exile in London after becoming an enemy of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, was written in an emotional and aggressive style, using prison slang and other expressions that may be offensive. The translation only gives a vague idea of what he meant to say.

Quite amazing.

• Another translation by Leoš Tomíček.
• Original Russian version.

19. Russian Growth Forecast Raised to 6.2% at Citigroup (Update1) – Stronger than expected recovery.

20. The world economy has no easy way out of the mire by Martin Wolf.

Anybody who looks carefully at the world economy will recognise that a degree of monetary and fiscal stimulus unprecedented in peacetime is all that is prodding it along, not only in high-income countries, but also in big emerging ones. The conventional wisdom is that it will also be possible to manage a smooth exit. Nothing seems less likely. So let us consider the endgame, instead.

We must start from the reverse side of the stimulus coin: the private sector is now spending far less than its aggregate income. Forecasts in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s latest Economic Outlook imply that in six of its members (the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, the UK and Ireland) the private sector will run a surplus of income over spending greater than 10 per cent of gross domestic product this year. Another 13 will have private surpluses between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of GDP. The latter includes the US, with 7.3 per cent. The eurozone private surplus will be 6.7 per cent of GDP and that of the OECD as a whole 7.4 per cent.

Moreover, the shift in the private sector balance between 2007 and 2010 is forecast to exceed 10 per cent of GDP in no fewer than eight OECD member countries (see chart). It is also forecast to exceed 5 per cent of GDP in another eight. In the US, it is forecast to be 9.6 per cent of GDP. In the eurozone, it is forecast at 5.5 per cent of GDP and in the OECD at 7.3 per cent. Depression threatened. …

At the 75th birthday conference of the Reserve Bank of India this month, Mr White gave a lucid version of his critique. With inflation kept down by supply shocks, inflation-targeting central banks kept interest rates too low too long. The result, he argued, was a series of imbalances, not dissimilar to those in the US in the 1920s and Japan in the 1980s. In particular, with the real interest rate well below the rate of growth of economies, the expansion of credit was effectively unconstrained. Debt duly exploded upwards.

Mr White pointed to four imbalances: asset price bubbles, notably of stocks in the 1990s and houses in the 2000s; the explosion of the balance sheet of the financial sector and increase in its exposure to risk; what “Austrian school” economists dub “malinvestment” – soaring consumption of durables in high-income countries and booming construction of housing and shopping malls in countries such as the US, and of export-oriented factories in China; and, finally, trade imbalances, with capital pouring into the US and other high-spending countries. …

Unhappily, the result of what I call success would probably be a still bigger financial crisis in future, while the results of what I call failure would be that the fiscal rope would run out, even though reaching the end might take longer than worrywarts fear. Yet the big point is that either outcome ultimately leads us to a sovereign debt crisis. This, in turn, would surely result in defaults, probably via inflation. In essence, stretched balance sheets threaten mass private sector bankruptcy and a depression, or sovereign bankruptcy and inflation, or some combination of the two. …

… The essential ingredient of a successful exit is, instead, to use the huge surpluses of the private sector to fund higher investment, both public and private, across the world. China alone needs higher consumption.

21. I acquired an iSimulate @ World Bank account and look forwards to playing with their economic models.

1. Rising tensions over the Falkland Islands between Argentina and the UK, following the discovery of oil in the region and Britain’s decision to start exploration drilling. Contrary to media hype, war is not imminent; even though Britain, like the US, suffers from “imperial overstretch” and a military-industrial “death spiral”, it is still far, far more powerful than Argentina. The Royal Navy has the world’s second best “power projection” capabilities (amphibious, logistics, aeronaval). Argentina’s military power, never impressive to begin with, has only stagnated since 1982.

On the other hand, this episode does represent two important things. First, the geopolitical factors that constitute negative feedback loops to the resource extraction sector that supports the global industrial system. For instance, as oil production peaks, we can expect an accelerating scramble for the remaining reserves. This may yield short-term benefits for the stronger Powers that will emerge victorious in the neo-colonial gunboat wars of the future, but will accelerate the decline at the global level. Second, we find that most Latin American countries expressed their support for Argentina, even including regional rivals like Brazil and Chile. This illustrates the rising prominence of the “World Without the West” / “Clash of Civilizations” paradigms that will replace neoliberal internationalism in the coming age of scarcity industrialism.

However, I must emphasize that these are incipient trends, not current realities. For now, the overwhelming fact on the ground is that 1) Argentina is weak and 2) it can only count on rhetorical support from its neighbors, not military (Brazil has no particular interest in allowing Argentina to become a potential challenger to its regional hegemony). However, many things can change within a decade. As I wrote earlier, Britain faces a panoply of problems – fiscal, debt, energy, separatism, etc – that will critically undermine its international power, including the ability to sustain the current scope of its armed forces. (In this respect, it is essentially a microcosm of the United States). Meanwhile, though it has plenty of its own problems, Argentina has shown signs that it has outgrown out of its traditional fiscal problems. Following six years of very fast growth, it was little affected by the 2008 economic crisis, its public finances are not unduly bad by global standards, and looking further ahead, its agricultural and natural resource wealth stand it in good stead for the coming age of scarcity industrialism.

If Argentina pursues a rational military procurement and modernization program (amphibious ships, cruise missiles, modern diesel subs, UAV’s, etc) - and assuming it is not once again derailed by the mismanagement and corruption that made it into a unique specimen of a country that went from “developed” to “developing” status after 1950 – then the military balance may swing sufficiently wide in its favor as to enable it to contemplate a successful military solution to the Las Malvinas issue by 2020.

2. Shortly after penning an anti-guvmint screed, Joe Stack crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, in a symbolic copycatting of 9/11. Though legally an unequivocal terrorist (as defined by the PATRIOT Act), he is fast becoming a folk hero amongst the Tea Partiers.

Though I don’t care to comment much on the ethical and moral issues, this does shed light on pertinent current trends. Foremost, the growing disillusionment with the System, the increasing perception by the citizenry that the United States is becoming a “hypertrophied state” hijacked by connected elites, who use it to cushion themselves with corporate socialism while pushing capitalism on the rest. In terms of the Belief Matrix, the country is beginning to lose belief in itself (“rejection of tradition”) and move away from rational-liberalism towards the illiberal populism and patrimonialism that is the common refuge of many post-collapse societies. Also recalls this line from Tainter’s Collapse of Complex Societies:

According to RM Adams, “By the fifth century, men were ready to abandon civilization itself in order to escape the fearful load of taxes”.

Would this action have any real effect? Rehashing the arguments of proponents of the “propaganda of the deed”, Baudrillard would argue that it would have a profound symbolic impact.

The terrorist hypothesis is that the system itself suicides in response to the multiple challenges of death and suicide. Neither the system, nor power, themselves escape symbolic obligation -and in this trap resides the only chance of their demise (catastrophe). In this vertiginous cycle of the impossible exchange of death, the terrorist death is an infinitesimal point that provokes a gigantic aspiration, void and convection. Around this minute point, the whole system of the real and power gains in density, freezes, compresses, and sinks in its own super-efficacy. The tactics of terrorism are to provoke an excess of reality and to make the system collapse under the weight of this excess. The very derision of the situation, as well as all the piled up violence of power, flips against it, for terrorist actions are both the magnifying mirror of the system’s violence, and the model of a symbolic violence that it cannot access, the only violence it cannot exert: that of its own death. This is why all this visible power cannot react against the minute, but symbolic death of a few individuals.

But in this case Trotsky’s analysis is the more persuasive.

But the disarray introduced into the ranks of the working masses themselves by a terrorist attempt is much deeper. If it is enough to arm oneself with a pistol in order to achieve one’s goal, why the efforts of the class struggle? If a thimbleful of gunpowder and a little chunk of lead is enough to shoot the enemy through the neck, what need is there for a class organisation? If it makes sense to terrify highly placed personages with the roar of explosions, where is the need for the party? Why meetings, mass agitation and elections if one can so easily take aim at the ministerial bench from the gallery of parliament?

In our eyes, individual terror is inadmissible precisely because it belittles the role of the masses in their own consciousness, reconciles them to their powerlessness, and turns their eyes and hopes towards a great avenger and liberator who some day will come and accomplish his mission. The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self-education. But the smoke from the confusion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only the police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement comes disillusionment and apathy.

3. Yushenko goes out with a provocative bang, making Galician nationalist / Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera into a “Hero of Ukraine”. With Tymoshenko’s challenge to the election results dismissed, the new Ukrainian President is now Yanukovych, who represents the Russophone, pro-Russian eastern and southern regions and Donbass oligarchs. This should come as no surprise to S/O readers, given that I predicted Yanukovych would win the second round from the beginning. (Pic h/t @ Ukrainiana).

According to the election results, the final tally was Yanukovych 49%, Tymoshenko 45%. This was stunningly similar to the result I predicted from analyzing which other candidates’ supporters would vote for Mr. Blue or the Gas Princess.

Adding up these figures, Yanukovych gets 50% of the votes, whereas Tymoshenko gets 46%.

The only question now remaining is how fast Yanukovych will now move Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit, perhaps starting with entry into the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan customs union.

4. The Airborne Laser (ABL), mounted on a modified Boeing 747, finally succeeded in “killing” a low-tech Scud missile in testing. Yes, not very impressive so far. The range was short and the second test failed anyway. But the regular mechanical breakdowns of the first WW1 tanks, far from invalidating the concepts of armored warfare, were instead portents of the future. What we are seeing is nothing less than the dawning of the age of automated laser weaponry.

5. Its official. Russia’s population grew by 23,300 souls in 2009, for the first time since 1995. Though the rate of natural increase remained slightly negative for Russia as a whole (the Siberian and Urals Federal Regions actually saw positive natural population growth for the first time in 19 years), this was more than compensated for by immigration.

This improvement was in large part thanks to an impressive increase in the life expectancy, which rose to 69 years in 2009 – almost as high as in 1963-68 (before the alcoholism epidemic) and 1986-91 (Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign. Birth rates also increased by 3%, hysterical Russophobe predictions of a crisis-induced “abortion apocalypse” to the contrary.

This of course should come as no great surprise to S/O readers, since back in mid-2008 my projections indicated that:

Russia will see positive population growth starting from 2010 at the latest.

Natural population increase will occur starting from 2013 at the latest.

Russia’s total life expectancy will exceed 68 years by 2010 and reach 75 years by 2020.

Now according to my models, in the case of a total fertility rate of 1.5 (i.e., the same as in 2008, when it was 1.49, so that is actually discounting any further increases) and assuming a very modest life expectancy rise (74 years by 2025 – it is already close at 69), and 300k annual migration (currently around 200-250k), “the population size will remain basically stagnant, going from 142mn to 143mn by 2023 before slowly slipping down to 138mn by 2050″. Of course it is also entirely possible that Russia’s LE will converge to developed-country levels quicker and that the TFR will stabilize at 1.7-1.8, in which case its population may grow back to around 150mn by 2025.

Thus far, the reality of Russia’s demographic turn-around is actually exceeding both Rosstat‘s and my own most optimistic forecasts (not to even mention “pessimists” like Eberstadt, Steyn, etc). No wonder that pundits are beginning to read and propagandize the gist of my articles, e.g. from Mark Adomanis at True Slant (h/t poemless).

1) Its population is in steep decline and chronically afflicted by alcoholism.

These are actually two very separate issues, but what the hell, why not, we’ll combine them. As I’ve argued before Russia’s population decline has actually abated rather dramatically. What is Russia’s demographic future? No one really knows (predictions are hard, especially about the future!), but it stands to reason that it’s not nearly as bad as Black, Eberstadt, Steyn, Feshbach, and all the other nameless neocon apparatchiks,  most of whom have made crude linear projections decades into the future, think. And alcoholism in Russia is not some eternal unchanging constant: the country’s current high rates of alcoholism are the result of a trend that started in the 1960’s, not in prehistory. Alcoholism in Russia was and is largely a reaction to bleak socioeconomic conditions and the easy availability and cheapness of alcohol,not the result of some quasi-mythical Russian predilection for booze and penchant for self destruction. Will this trend be reversed? Perhaps! Perhaps not! The truth is no one really knows, but to pretend that Russians are utterly passive in the face of some all-powerful and immutable force known as “alcoholism” is as condescending as it is stupid.

Now the next question – should I now rest on my laurels, or should I continue trying to refute the demographic doomers who continue to insist that Russia’s population will fall to 128mn within two decades?

6. Goldman Sachs helped Greece conceal its deficit spending shenanigans by providing it with loans disguised as currency trades. Can this get any dodgier? This also introduces an interesting philosophical exercise – who’s more responsible, the bank(st)ers or the politicos? (The drug pushers or the drug abusers?). And of course Greece is far from alone. The real elephant in the room is the United States.

7. Russian Twitter hero and unabashed patriot, Dmitri Rogozin, proves that Western diplomats are girly men.

8. Two stories that represent the two most important trends of our world systems – shortage of Rare Earth Metals could thwart innovation (limits to growth) and 10 profound innovations ahead (technological progress). If we could find some way to figure out which trend is the stronger and more stable one, you could make a good guess as to the meaning of the 21st century.

9. What blogging is all about… (h/t Lou).

10. Yulia Latynina, Russian liberal par excellence (that is, in the anti-democratic 19th century sense of “liberal”), on why Letting Poor People Vote is Dangerous. At least she is brave enough (or stupid enough?) to say what many liberasts think, but don’t have the guts to do so outright. H/t Sean.

Viktor Yanukovych’s victory in Sunday’s presidential election — not unlike the victories of former Chilean President Salvador Allende, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Adolf Hitler — once again raises doubt about the basic premise of democracy: that the people are capable of choosing their own leader. Unfortunately, only wealthy people are truly capable of electing their leaders in a responsible manner. Poor people elect politicians like Yanukovych or Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

When the Orange Revolution hit Ukraine five years ago, the people arose in a united wave and did not allow themselves to be deceived by the corrupt elite. That elite had reached an agreement with the criminals and oligarchs of Donetsk to make a minor criminal, who could not string two sentences together, the successor to former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.

And by far my favorite bit:

Can you imagine U.S. voters putting a leader in the White House who is a puppet of the ruling elite and criminal clans?

Socialist democrat Allende = genocidal maniac Hitler? The same US whose regulatory bodies are captured by Wall Street, which confirmed itself as an oligarchy with the recent removal of campaign funding limits for corporations? (I can just about see a few post-peak oil decades down the line Exxon oligarchs sending American conscripts to fight national liberation movements in Saudi Arabia or Nigeria).

Really, why the fuck does anyone act surprised that Russia’s limousine liberals – part disconnected elitist, part neo-Bolshevik, part plain insane – only have the support of 3% of the Russian population?

PS. More inane rantings from Latynina. It appears her disdain for facts extends well beyond Russian politics.

“The global warming is an invention of the global bureaucracy,” says one of Russia’s leading journalists and authors, Yulia Latynina, who in most of her publications exposes controversial activities by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“The IPCC are unable to explain to me why the 10th century and the 16th century in Europe were far warmer than it is today. They are unable even to tell what the weather tomorrow is going to be like, that is doing something that can be verified,” Latynina says in a weekly magazine. “One simple question – why do they think that warmth is bad? Did the human race drown or perish in the 10-13th centuries?”

The global warming threat, she believes “is one of the brightest illustrations of the Global Bureaucracy’s ideology, a phenomenon that is still largely embryonic. But if the current trend continues, it may spell the end of the Western civilization, freedom and progress in science and engineering.”

11. Back in the real world, the news from the climate front, as usual, gets worse by the month if not the week.

Organizers of the recent climate conference in Copenhagen sought, unsuccessfully, to forge agreements to limit global warming to 2 degrees C by the end of the century. But even an increase that small would cause deadly harm. And far greater damage is likely if we do nothing.The numbers — and there are many to choose from — paint a grim picture. According to recent estimates from the Integrated Global Systems Model at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the median forecast is for a climb of 5 degrees C by century’s end, in the absence of effective countermeasures. That forecast, however, may underestimate the increase. According to the same M.I.T. model, there is a 10 percent chance that the average global temperature will rise more than 7 degrees C by 2100, and a 3 percent chance it will climb more than 8 degrees C. Warming on that scale would be truly catastrophic. Scientists say that even the 2-degree increase would spell widespread loss of life, so it’s hardly alarmist to view the risk of inaction as frightening… (The M.I.T. model estimates a zero probability of the temperature rising by less than 3.6 degrees by 2100.)

You bet. A rise of more than 5 degrees C will result in a global collapse of food production and the almost certain demise of industrial civilization. At above 7 degrees C, we may well be looking at human extinction as “zones of uninhabitability” begin to overspread much of the world.

An adaptability limit for large warmings–are we accounting for it?

Steven Sherwood(1), M Huber(2)
(1) Yale University, Department of Geology and Geophysics, New Haven, CT, USA
(2) Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

The consequences of large warmings (>4C), which on current trends look increasingly likely in the 21stcentury if not the 20th, have received little attention. It seems to be widely assumed that humans can adapt to any amount of warming, on the basis that humans live in such a wide variety of climates now. We show that when examined in terms of the peak value of the wet-bulb temperature (Tw), which ultimately governs the possibility of transfer of metabolic heat to the environment, the world’s present-day climates are far less variable than one might think based on mean temperature. A warming of only a few degrees will cause large parts of the globe to experience peak Tw values that never occur today; 7C would begin to create zones of uninhabitability due to unsurvivable peak heat stresses (periods when the shedding of metabolic heat isthermodynamically impossible); and 10C would expand such zones far enough to encompass a majority of today’s population. It is unknown how much of our present 7-10C cushion we can live without before experiencing significant problems, making it difficult to draw conclusions about more modest climatechanges, but the limits themselves rest squarely on basic thermodynamics. These inferences stand in contradiction to damage functions currently used in economic cost-benefit calculations. In these, climate damages increase with global mean temperature according to a polynomial form, and remain moderate (typically <30% of GDP) even for 10C or more despite the implication that most of the surface wouldbecome uninhabitable by humans and most livestock during the warm season…

12. Meanwhile, AGW deniers continue spreading their malicious lies and propaganda over the Internet like a horde of virtual locusts. See IPCC errors: facts and spin at Real Climate for a thorough debunking of their mendacious drivel.

13. Something a bit more encouraging. Old dude beats up pathetic wannabe gangsta on a public bus.

14. An intriguing attempt to rank national naval strengths from Strategy Page – Naval Forces of the World. Unsurprisingly, the US completely dominates with more than half the global naval power. The only other navies of real strength are considered to be the UK, Russia, Japan, China, and France. I more or less agree with this analysis, excpet to note that 1) the importance of specifics – whereas the UK has much better “power projection”, Russia’s strategic naval forces are far ahead and second only to the US, and 2) China’s naval power is growing rapidly, it will soon overtake Japan if it hasn’t already, and by 2020 may even be ahead of the US.

15. China sells $34.2bn of US treasury bonds, indicating its loss of confidence in the credibility of any US promises to ever rein back on its fiscal overstretch. The only nations still buying up US Treasuries are geopolitically-aligned ones (e.g. Japan) and private investors, but the endgame for Pax Americana has begun and the next global credit or geopolitical shock may finish it. Meanwhile, Tokyo welcomes Chinese destroyer. Perhaps this doesn’t mean anything important, or perhaps it is just the beginning of Japan’s road towards bandwagoning with China.

16. Andrey Ternovskiy, a Russian, is behind the site ChatRoulette which anonymously pairs you up with random Internet strangers via webcam. Sounds like the perfect hangout for weirdos… and it is. Wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re interested in live gay porn.

17. Turkish Foreign Minister Calls for Eurasian Union (Leos Tomicek). Turkey is a rising power with energy, cultural, and political interests in Central Asia and the Middle East, and it will be freer to expand once NATO / the West starts becoming irrelevant.

18. Economic catastrophe in Latvia, previously hailed as a “Baltic tiger”. Latvia’s Economy Contracts Almost 18 Percent in Q4 2009 (Ed Hughes). From his Facebook updates:

“Latvia’s GDP fell by 17.7% year on year in the last quarter of 2009,meaning the economy has now shrunk by more than 25 percent in twoyears. The IMF projects another 4 percent drop this year and predictsthat the total loss of output from peak to bottom will reach 30percent. This would make Latvia’s loss more than that of the U.S. Great Depression downturn of 1929-1933.”

“The consequence of this strong recession in Latvia – more and moreLatvians are leaving in search of work elsewhere, while fewer andfewer young people feel confident enough to have children, making thelong term future of the country even more uncertain.”

There follows a graph of Latvia’s birth rates plummeting by around 8% in 2009 y/y, with the rate of decline accelerating to 12% by December 2009.

Perhaps a timely reminder of the dangers of too much economic openness, the (prior?) dogma of our times? In comparison, Russia’s GDP fell by 7.9% and Belarus’ GDP actually grew 0.2% in 2009, and both saw continuing demographic improvements.

19. On my reading list:

The Lucifer Principle – Nietzschean book by Howard Bloom. (h/t Lou).

The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima, my new hero, whose ritual suicide consitutes the epitome of artistic holism.

The Rediscovery of the Mind – Cognitive science is ”the ongoing research program of showing Searle’s Chinese Room Argument to be false”, and it’s not hard to see why.

Towards a New Socialism – Haven’t started reading this year, but looking forwards to it since it’s connected with many of my own ideas about how advances in cybernetics and computer science is making central planning feasible, even for highly complex and advanced economic systems.

Getting ready to post reviews of The Peak Oil Books, When the Rivers Run Dry (Pearce), and The Singularity is Near (Kurzweil).