The Left has been desperate to throw Israel to the wolves just to save their own skin for a few more years - now Georgia and the Ukraine are also apparently on the lupine menu.
It also looks like Soviet-worship hasn't been entirely eradicated by the embarassing and total failure of the Soviet Union two decades ago.
First, truly first rate article.
Secondly, I'm somewhat confused about something, which perhaps someone with relevant knowledge can help me with. I'm fine with ascribing most of Russia's malaise to the after-effects of Communism, but something doesn't quite compute when it comes to Russia's astoudingly high abortion rates. I'm not aware that this is particularly characteristic of other ex-Communist countries or peoples, with the notable exception of the Serbs.
The obvious common thread between the two, aside from their Communist past, is Orthodox Christianity, but I can't imagine that any of the Patriarchs take a substantially different view from the Pope on the matter. Yet Poles, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars etc. are baby factories and Serbs and Russians, as Perry put it, make Gemany et al. look like a stud farm. So what gives?
Absolutely top notch piece James.
My proposal is simple: Russia's help in containing nuclear proliferation and terrorism in the Middle East is of infinitely greater import to the West than the dubious self-determination of Ukraine.
The thing that is so depressing about this is that it so echoes the Cold War. Sacrificing the Baltic States/East Timor/Namibia/countless other places (in various ways) in return for bigger things is realpolitik necessity. Except that in virtually all cases it wasn't and it didn't achieve much other than betraying people who should have been our friends. That it has taken us little more than fifteen years to get us back to seemingly the same position is rather appalling.
>> but something doesn't quite compute when it comes to Russia's astoudingly high abortion rates
It's quite simple. Abortion in Soviet times was considered a form of birth control among large segment of population - since the soviet-made condoms were both in a very short supply and of very poor quality (never mind other birth control products, such as pill which were practically unheard of).
Availability of abortion on demand + lack of decent birth-control = high abortion rates.
My guess that this cultural paradigm (abortion as method of birth control) will take some time to regress, as both medical services and birth control methods become better and more widely available to general population.
>> Yet Poles, Croatians, Bosnians, Kosovars etc. are baby factories
Oh forgot to add - don't know about the rest, but Poles are in the bottom 5 European countries (yes, even below Russia) as far as birth rates are concerned:
Poland - Birth rate: 10.20 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
Russia - Birth rate: 11.28 births/1,000 population (2007)
So, not so much a "baby factory" ...
It is not just amoral, it is idiotic even from a utilitarian perspective for all the reasons James lays out. Great article.
Ahh, I had assumed otherwise because of the the high rate of Polish emigration. Having checked, it appears that low fertility rates are characteristic of the whole ex-eastern block.
I'm not mad keen on the source, but this would seem to confirm the point. Abrtion rates are also high in non European ex- and sort of ex- Communists states. (Quite horrifying actually, did you know that the average Vietnamese woman has 2.5 abortions?). Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Rep. and some central Asian countries have lower rates than the U.S. though, but not by much.
So my only remaining question is why are the Muslim populations of these regions so different?
Gabriel, my advice: Go and live there for couple of years. Then you will understand.... I know, I've lived there for the best part of my life...
There is a difference between intelligence and wisdom. Ronald Reagan, and I would argue, George Bush are wise. Putin is intelligent. All that means is that he can figure out a clever way to do the wrong thing. It is usually better to do the right thing poorly than to do the wrong thing brilliantly. Add to that the fact that the US does most things very well indeed and you see why her opponents on the left with their emphasis on intellectualism almost always end up collapsing in such a spectacular fashion.
It is kind of like James' analysis. It is sufficient to say that allowing a totalitarian country like Russia to consume its neighbors is wrong and can only end badly if it is allowed to continue. You can add several paragraphs of spiffy details but those are only necessary for the "intellectuals" in the crowd who are somewhat slower on the uptake.
Whilst the foreign policy games of the big powers are far too complex to be likened to either chess or monopoly, monopoly comes much closer to the real world than chess.
Chess is a game of logic with a restricted number of moves and with formalised opening gambits. A computer can examine all the available moves for many turns ahead to such an extent that computers regularly beat Chess Grand Masters.
Monopoly at least has an element of random chance - the throw of the dice - and has four opponents each seeking what they see as their own advantage, sometimes co-operating with each other and sometimes fighting each other.
If they could add in an element of treachery from one's own side, it would be even nearer to real life politics. (Though still not very near.)
The Orthodox churches are at least as fervently against abortion as is the Catholic church. The only trouble is, the church has limited influence on the younger people for whom abortion is more than a theoretical issue.
IMO, there are two broad reasons for the low Russian birthrate. The first is common to most of Eastern Europe: life in the former communist countries remains drab and unrewarding. Especially in Russia (the only one where I have person experience), living conditions are overcrowded and drab. When you live in a two room apartment with in-laws, and organized childcare is almost non-existent, and women are expected to work- raising even one child is a challenge. Not one of the Russians my age or younger whom I know have more than one child.
Next- factor in the general European collapse of religion (ok, Christian only) and trust in the government to provide all. The government will take care of you in your old age. There is no moral underpinnings for or reason to have children. Why bother?
What is causing the spectacular Russian demographic collapse though, is not just the low birth rate. It's that combined with the high death rate. I am constantly surprised by the number of "who died" comments when my Russian spouse discusses childhoold friends and acquantances.
Gabriel: So my only remaining question is why are the Muslim populations of these regions so different?
Could it be anything to do with this?
The Koran: 2:223. Your wives are as a tilth unto you; so approach your tilth when or how ye will; but do some good act for your souls beforehand; and fear God, and know that ye are to meet Him (in the Hereafter), and give (these) good tidings to those who believe.
Gabriel:
So my only remaining question is why are the Muslim populations of these regions so different?
You're not exactly correct on this point either. I don't have any hard data about the demographics of Bosnian Muslims (a.k.a. Bosniaks), who are on average as secularized as European Christian populations, possibly even more so than Catholic Poles or Croatians, but being from Bosnia myself, I can guarantee that they don't have particularly high birth rates. I couldn't find the breakdown of Bosnian birth rates across ethnicities, but the overall Bosnan birth rate is very low, about 9 births per thousand, and Bosniaks accout for about 50% of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina these days. And don't let the newspaper stories about the growth of Wahhabi fundamentalism in Bosnia give you the wrong impression. Yes, it is a problem, but the percentage of Bosnian Muslims affected by these imported, Saudi-financed fundamentalists is minuscule, certainly far from sufficient to have a noticeable effect on the overall demographics of the country.
As for the other Muslim populations in the ex-Communist Balkans, the only significant ones I can think of are Sandzak Muslims (who inhabit a region in Serbia that borders with Bosnia), Albanians in Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Macedonia, and Turks in Bulgaria.
Albanians have high birth rates simply because, to put it bluntly, Albania and especially Kosovo are quite primitive traditionalist societies where making lots of kids is still a social requirement. In fact, only something like 65-70% of Albanians are Muslims, and I don't think they have any higher birth rates than the rest. I can't find any hard data about Sandzak Muslims, but as far as I know, their birth rates are higher than those of Serbs, though not spectacularly so. Again, it's probably just because it's a relatively backward region of Serbia that's running a bit late in its demographic transition. Finally, Bulgarian Turks do have much higher birth rates than Christian Bulgarians, similar to Albanians vs. Serbs in Kosovo. I don't know much about them, but the situation in Bulgaria is probably the closest to your idea of "Muslim populations [being] so different".
Thank you for a very interesting article.
What I find most fascinating about this entire issue is the assumption that the problem belongs to the US, and the non-existence of any significant involvement by the EU.
Wasn't the whole point of its creation the development of a 3rd power to offset the bi-polar, or mono-polar, or whatever polar situatiuon that was supposed to be such an important aspect of the world's power equation?
Why does anyone think the US would again put itself in the front lines to resolve what is essentially another European civil war?
If you are listening for the bugle calls of the approaching cavalry riding to the rescue, I'm afraid you will be badly disappointed. Been there, done that. Not coming this time. Good luck.
I'm trying to think of the last time I heard someone use the phrase "monkey's uncle" appropriately.
Off to split bottle of vodka with the family before bed.
Ivan. Thanks for further confirmation that my general impressions of Eastern Europe bare rather less relation to reality than I would have liked. In my defence, though, I was taking my cue on that point from the article
This will also ensure the minority status of the Muslim population in Russia (the only ones who are breeding)
I no longer recall her name, and Google is of little help, but there was a secessionist politician successfully assassinated in St. Petersburg perhaps a decade ago. Putin had the temerity to visit her political companion, wounded in the same attack and to make a promise to the effect that everything would turn out all right. I haven't heard anything about the perpetrators' having been caught.
Putin managed to cut off the bulk of the private funding of opposition politicians via, er, criminal prosecution. I suppose this spared them their lives.
Who has been, um, luckier than Putin to have had so many critics and/or witnesses die? The Clintons?
Putin, despite his perhaps unwitting long-term destruction of the Russian people, is able to make short-term gains against naive and ruinously effete opposition. Reagan was right about the Bushes.
About two generations after the Persian Wars, Athens engaged in offensive military action in support of its hegemony. Its delegation to Sparta demonstrated hubris rather than firmness, making the case for its opposition, rightly or wrongly. It is not clear that Sparta had expansionist aims, but prosperity and past glory were ultimately of no help to Athens in that war. The stakes were and are high.
Of course, the advantage to having hotels on all the properties is that the other players are eventually bankrupted as they try to compete.
Take that maxim and apply it to everything (not just geography), and you have the American mindset.
It's called "competition", and we love it.
Kevin B:
I got a bit of a giggle out of that, too. I completely agree -- although chess can be a computationally complex game, it's completely deterministic, atomic moves, and includes no elements of uncertainty, etc. Not exactly a good fit for describing the real world, IMHO.
I can't find the Reagan quote on the Bushes, and it might have been indirect, from Nancy, but it was something to the effect that they weren't first-rate, that you wouldn't want to invite them to dine with you (or some other social expression of the thought). I thought I remembered the phrase "parlor people" but that doesn't seem to be it.