A 15-year-old Russian boy today has the same life expectancy as a 15-year-old boy in Haiti. Remember, Russia is one of the world’s richest countries in terms of natural resources. And it is an urbanized, industrialized society with levels of education comparable to, and perhaps even exceeding, other European countries.
With huge numbers of well-trained people, especially in the sciences, Russia performs miserably in the knowledge economy, much worse than did the Soviet Union. In 2019, Russia ranked behind Austria in international patent applications, despite having 16 times the population. Today, it ranks alongside Alabama in annual U.S. patent awards (the gold standard for companies everywhere), despite having almost 30 times the population. All these numbers will likely get much worse given the hundreds of thousands of (likely well-trained, urban, educated) Russians who fled the country after its aggression against Ukraine.
The article goes on to imply that Putin is opposing Innovation in Russia, as he views Modernity as a plot by the West to destroy his rule.
Add to this the growing number of mutinies, including ill-discussed Regular Army mutinies–and the risk o0f total collapse seems very real.
But a decent rule of thumb definition in the foreign policy community is one where the central government does not control all the land within its borders. Instead various areas are controlled by regional warlords, criminal gangs, and other sources of organized violence that do not answer to the titular central government. By that definition Somalia and Libya are failed states, but North Korea and Iran are not. One can bicker a bit about whether Syria is failed.
It seems unlikely to me that Russia will disintegrate to that degree. I suspect it’s likely the satellite states in the Caucasus (e.g. Moldova), the Central Asian “stans”, and Belarus may go their own way in the next decade, openly splitting any formal fraternal associations with Moscow. In the alternative, some of those states will simply follow Russia down the rathole to economic and social dysfunctionality.
Will Russia degrade into being a shithole-First Class instead of the shithole-Second Class it is today? Almost certainly. Will the Kremlin’s writ not run far beyond the Moscow Oblast? No way in hell.
The link isn’t there. I assume it’s supposed to go to the Washington Post, not the NY Times. Here we go.
Obviously, the best pull quote is “What does this all add up to? I am not sure.”
Russia’s structural problems date back to, I don’t know, Rurik in 862? Communism didn’t help, but it was building on tsarism, which was almost a negative base. Russia has never been a first world country and certainly not a modern one. Both Lenin and Stalin made shows of modernism but modernism cannot be forced with a gun to the head. If it didn’t have nukes, it would be another Iraq - mineral rich and therefore of interest but negligible otherwise.
Yet it does have nukes. Despite whatever failings it has Russia by any name will be propped up so that present and future strongmen won’t be tempted to go down in a blaze of glory.
I don’t know how one defines failure. But I have seen various definitions. Are there areas where government cannot or does not provide basic services or safety? Are things like adequate food, utilities, medical care, education and other necessities realistically available? Is there employment, elections, press, basic access to the Interwebs, safe drinking water, some form of rule of law, some respected rules regarding possessions?
I suspect reasonable minds may differ on this one.
My intended target was simply an exemplar of the European mini-states that were former Soviet or near-Soviet Warsaw Pact territory that were not the central Asian “stans”. And which today are still orbiting the Kremlin, whether by choice or coercion.
Moldova seems a decent example of that genre. Whether or not they are in fact within the Caucasus proper.
I think the answer to the question depends upon the definitions, as @LSLGuy pointed out in post #2. But, in terms of surviving the current adventurism and near future, I suspect that it depends on one key factor. Do we, as a world, get over (or at least go on the wagon) our petrochem addiction in say the next 15-20ish years? If so, despite the rest of Russia’s abundant resources, I bet that they collapse - with no easily accessible/shareable wealth to prop up their system, combined with the brain and youth drain that were only made worse by their war, it’ll slump into a failure, possibly of several minor states each holding on to a part of the territory and a portion of the nuclear arsenal (claimed, if not confirmable).
I suspect that China will trade financial security for whatever successor chunks have the resources they wish to claim, with some degree of success.
If we DON’T get past our addiction, then that wealth will likely be enough to continue to prop up the central authority and buy the grudging loyalty of the military and populace, enough to continue stumbling forward much as they have the last two decades.
The crystal ball of course cracks with the inevitable death of Putin though. He’s never going to allow a true successor to be prepared, as they’d be far to great a risk to him. And it’s very plausible to see him die with his generals and internal security all claiming to have the mantle of the the strongest… at which point the whole regional warlords, criminal gangs, and organized violence without the rule of law seems likely. But with nuclear weapons for that extra special sphincter-twist!
This isn’t a matter of if, but when. Even if it takes thirty or forty years, or 100, Russia is going down because wind and solar are inevitable, and they’re growing cheaper every day. Russia will almost literally be put in the position of selling ice to Eskimos–they’ll have a dirty product that no one will want to buy at any price. The Saudis look like they’re finding ways out of the oil business. The Russians, not so much, in part because their foreign policy has made an international pariah out of them.
I would like to see it happen. I hope and believe it will happen. But I’m not positive it will, and certainly not sure it will happen before we are past a point of no return environmentally.
But in the section I was quoting it is about the short to middle term as it applies to Russia. Exactly as you elaborated, if we vastly reduce and/or eliminate the world’s (still looking at your current purchases as well China / India) usage of petrochemicals then they’ll be stuck selling access to their other resources on a post-excavation basis, with quite a lead up and probably a huge rake-off. I don’t think they have any other easily convertible options, well, other than the semi-unthinkable one of selling spare nukes to the highest bidder.
That definition went out of date decades ago. And my understanding is that former Third World (note the Caps) countries hated being defined that way then and much more so now.
I used first world (no caps) as shorthand for a modern economy and all that goes with it. China is first world today, despite being Communist. Russia is just an army with borders.
