Russia is dying and Islamists will grab parts of the carcass

[Kilgor]

October 31, 2005

REMEMBER the months before 9/11? The new US President had his first meeting with the Russian President. "I looked the man in the eye and found him very straightforward and trustworthy," George W. Bush said after two hours with Vladimir Putin. "I was able to get a sense of his soul." I'm all for speaking softly and carrying a big stick, but that's way too soft.

Some experts started calling Vlad the most Westernised Russian strongman since Peter the Great and cooing about a Russo-American alliance that would be one of the cornerstones of the post-Cold War world.

It's not like that today.

From China to Central Asia to Ukraine, from its covert efforts to maintain Saddam in power to its more or less unashamed patronage of Iran's nuclear ambitions, Moscow has been at odds with Washington over every key geopolitical issue, and a few non-key ones, too, culminating in Putin's tirade to Bush that the US was flooding Russia with substandard chicken drumsticks and keeping the best ones for itself. It was a poultry complaint but indicative of a retreat into old-school Kremlin paranoia.

Russia's export of ideology was the decisive factor in the history of the 20th century. It seems to me entirely possible that the implosion of Russia could be the decisive factor in the 21st century.

As Iran's nuclear program suggests, in many of the geopolitical challenges to the US, there's usually a Russian component in the background.

In fairness to Putin, he's in a wretched position. Russia is literally dying. From a population peak in 1992 of 148 million, it will be down to below 130 million by 2015 and thereafter dropping to perhaps 50 or 60 million by the end of the century.

The longer Russia goes without arresting the death spiral, the harder it is to pull out of it, and when it comes to the future, most Russian women are voting with their foetus: 70 per cent of pregnancies are aborted. A smaller population needn't necessarily be a problem but Russia is facing simultaneously a huge drain of wealth out of the system.

Add to that the unprecedented strains on a ramshackle public health system. Russia is the sick man of Europe, and would still look pretty sick if you moved him to Africa. It has the fastest-growing rate of HIV infection in the world. By 2010, AIDS will be killing between 250,000 and 750,000 Russians every year. It will become a nation of babushkas, unable to muster enough young soldiers to secure its borders, enough young businessmen to secure its economy or enough young families to secure its future. True, there are parts of Russia that are exceptions to these malign trends. Can you guess which regions they are? They start with a "Mu" and end with a "slim".

So the world's largest country is dying and the only question is how violent its death throes are. Yesterday's Russia was characterised by Winston Churchill as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. Today's has come unwrapped: it's a crisis in a disaster inside a catastrophe. Most of the big international problems operate within certain geographic constraints: Africa has AIDS, the Middle East has Islamists, North Korea has nukes. But Russia's got the lot: an African-level AIDS crisis and an Islamist separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet.

Of course, the nuclear materials are all in "secure" facilities: more secure, one hopes, than the supposedly secure public buildings in Nalchik that the Islamists took over with such ease two weeks ago. They also killed a big bunch of people.

Poor old Russia is awash with resources but fatally short of Russians and, in the end, warm bodies are the one indispensable resource.

What would you do if you were Putin? What have you got to keep your rotting corpse of a country as some kind of player?

You've got nuclear knowhow, which a lot of ayatollahs and dictators are interested in.

That's the danger for America: that most of what Russia has to trade is likely to be damaging to US interests. In its death throes, it could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East and a stronger China.

Russia's calculation is that sooner or later we'll be back in a bipolar world and that, in almost any scenario, there's more advantage in being part of the non-American pole.

In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact crumbling before his eyes, poor old Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: "The Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system."

In an odd way, that's what happened everywhere except in the Kremlin. As communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Afghanistan and Indonesia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, who would have been Marxist fantasists a generation or two back, are now Islamists: it's the ideology du jour. And, despite Gorbachev turning down the offer, it will be Russia's fate to have large chunks of its turf annexed by the Islamic world.

We are witnessing a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. The ideological vacuum was mostly filled with a nihilist fatalism. Churchill got it wrong: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss.

Mark Steyn is a regular contributor to The Australian's opinion page.

[Midav]

I was not aware of the declining birth rate in Russia so did some checking myself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4125072.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia
http://www.futureofrussia.org/

And many more links....

If all holds true of the above article, then this is quite alarming.

[rocket13]

It has been known for a while now that the russian population / society was collapsing / shrinking. I think i remember seeing a 60 minutes report on it 3 or 4 years ago.

[Midav]

It has been known for a while now that the russian population / society was collapsing / shrinking. I think i remember seeing a 60 minutes report on it 3 or 4 years ago.

It's news to me :oops:

[Dima-RussianArms]

Kilgor, let me put it this way: Only in your wet dreams...

Russia has been dying, according to people like the author of this article and yourself, for more than a thousand years already.

It has been dying from Mongols, numerous European rulers with ambitions bigger than common sense, it has been dying from Napoleon, Hitler, etc. So what is different about present time - nothing...

Declining birth rates in both Russia and Europe are cyclical - it is historical fact, simple like that.

What author either forgets or doesn't know about is number of people who migrate to Russia from former USSR state, so you all can relax/get very upset but chances are that Russia will be around for longer than you;)

[Kilgor]

I think the author forgot to mention people leaving the country for work and lifestyle in the west... There is plenty of examples that could be given...

[)I(EHbKA.]

Kilgor, let me put it this way: Only in your wet dreams...

Russia has been dying, according to people like the author of this article and yourself, for more than a thousand years already.

It has been dying from Mongols, numerous European rulers with ambitions bigger than common sense, it has been dying from Napoleon, Hitler, etc. So what is different about present time - nothing...

Declining birth rates in both Russia and Europe are cyclical - it is historical fact, simple like that.

What author either forgets or doesn't know about is number of people who migrate to Russia from former USSR state, so you all can relax/get very upset but chances are that Russia will be around for longer than you;)


Dima i know you try to sound positive about Russia, and so do I, but the fact that Russia's population is decreasing very quickly is true, it has been accepted by Putin as well as others. A few years ago Russia's population was 150 million now it's 145

[balkan_boy]

if usa gets kicked in balls because of the russias problems today, they only have them selfs to blame.... by getting rid of the soviet union they only made it easyer for an even more dangerous enemy to get to the nukes. They are to blame for the hundreds of people that are starving in russia today, and all the young girls fu****g for money so that they can eat. thats the price they (usa) are going to pay for not thinking before doing something.
We all know about 9/11 and we all know who created that group that did the Twin Towers. So when that happends in the future, a new attack on the usa with weapons from russian used by muslim extremists, someone is going to say: "Its like the history is repeting its self" well then its gonna be too late....

[Son_Of_Suvorov]

It has been known for a while now that the russian population / society was collapsing / shrinking. I think i remember seeing a 60 minutes report on it 3 or 4 years ago.

Population growth rate in Russia has been declining since the mid 1960s. Fertility rate has fallen below replacement rate sometime in the late 70s/early 80s. Except, uh, the same thing happened everywhere else in the developed world, including Australia. To compare, the current fertility rate in Russia is 1.27. In Germany - 1.39, Spain - 1.28, Italy - 1.2, Britain -1.7, Canada - 1.4, US - 2.13, Australia - 1.7. The replacement rate is 2.1, so the only country in that list where the native population is not dying out is the US. The problem is that countries like Australia and the UK solve their population problems by importing hundreds of thousands of immigrants per year, many of them poor and uneducated, and the majority of them Muslim from a very different culture. Naturally this cultural difference translates into racism and distrust which translates into unrest and violence (what, did you think it was going to be all hand-holding and kumbaya singing **** like they told you about in school?), so you get **** like the London subway bombings, those Paris suburb riots, and wannabe Islamic gangsta Pakis from Sydney's Muslim ghetto. In contrast, the US imports (mostly) peaceful Mexicans who largely have the same culture and values.

In Russia the problem is more akin to that of the black community in the US - since the collapse of the Soviet Union, capitalist ideas, and with them racism and ethnic unrest (in the guise of "ethnic unity" and "self-determination" and other neocon divide-and-conquer bull**** guised in the form of political correctness and leftist ideas) have made some people of Russia's many (100+) native ethnic groups believe (sometimes correctly, sometimes through deliberate disinformation) that they are not being treated fairly and are being discriminated against. Even though these feelings don't have hundreds of years of legally-protected racism and ethnic enslavement behind them (the only group to be systematically persecuted in Imperial Russia were the Jews, and of course that changed with the Bolshevik revolution), they still lead to the same problems - ethnic gangs and armed ethnic movements (the FBI has been exceptionally good at suppressing black militant organizations of the US and generally keeping firearms out of the hands of the black people, so since the Black Panthers there has not really been a credible threat of black militant groups in the US - all the Nation of Islam and the 5 percenters seem to do is inspire rap albums). The Russian government has I think been very prudent in limiting immigration from 3rd world countries to insignificant levels, as anything on the scale of what the UK and France are doing would really destabilize the economy and political situation. The problem is that even the inflow of immigrants (is that really the correct word?) from other former Soviet countries is not enough to offset the flow of immigrants out of Russia. Quite frankly, after seeing some of the human **** (I really can't describe these "people" any other way) that's floating around Brighton Beach, I think that a lot of the immigration out of Russia that's happening is a good thing (I don't think its an exaggeration to say that if the SU had allowed people like that to emigrate early on it would still be around today).

To conclude, if anything, its Australia that will be overrun by militant Muslims, while Russia's ethnic groups more likely than not will coexist like they always have.

[DE6]

It's nothing new.

I wouldn't go as far as predict the death of a nation, but the next 50 years are going to be rocky, and Russia could get increasingly unpredictable in its actions, wether these are "death throes" or not.

The health crisis was already catching attention as far back as 1999 (http://www.policyreview.org/jun99/eberstadt.html), even though Putin's arrival to power made things hard to figure out, much less predict.

The environmental issues also caught attention, and not just from enviro-lobby groups like Bellona. The case of Alexandr Nikitin's efforts to blow the whistle on nuclear wastes handling by the russian navy (Nikitin is a former sub officer) and the subsequent effort to suppress him earned attention from mainstream political observers, like Mark Hertsgaard (http://www.markhertsgaard.com/Articles/2000/RussiaEnvironmentalCrisis/). That was back in 2000.

The health crisis didn't get better since, far from it. In 2004, Michael Specter wrote one of the best (but also grim) article on the issue for The New Yorker. It earned him the 2005 Excellence in Media Award, and it's scary.

The Devastation (http://www.globalhealth.org/images/pdf/the_devastation.pdf).

With these kind of prospect in terms of health and environment as well as social issues, it's hard not to worry about what will happen when the economy hits the pothole (one point of worry should be oil revenues) in the next 50 years.

Too soon to diagnose the death of nation, but it's ailing bad and it's not going to be a smooth convalescence, in any case.

[toad]

Russia has been dying, according to people like the author of this article and yourself, for more than a thousand years already.

It has been dying from Mongols, numerous European rulers with ambitions bigger than common sense, it has been dying from Napoleon, Hitler, etc. So what is different about present time - nothing...

Declining birth rates in both Russia and Europe are cyclical - it is historical fact, simple like that.

I think your reply kind of glosses over an obvious point. You cite mongols and Europeans and hitler as causing "dying". But there are no mongols or Hitler or Europeans to blame now for attacking.... :|

Russia is not prospering, healthcare, economics, social issues all seem to be a problem. While many nations are gowing and prospering, Russia seems to be transitioning to a backwater.

[LibertyUnites]

if usa gets kicked in balls because of the russias problems today, they only have them selfs to blame.... by getting rid of the soviet union they only made it easyer for an even more dangerous enemy to get to the nukes. They are to blame for the hundreds of people that are starving in russia today, and all the young girls fu****g for money so that they can eat. thats the price they (usa) are going to pay for not thinking before doing something.
We all know about 9/11 and we all know who created that group that did the Twin Towers. So when that happends in the future, a new attack on the usa with weapons from russian used by muslim extremists, someone is going to say: "Its like the history is repeting its self" well then its gonna be too late....

yeah goddamn America for winning the cold war... wtf were we thinking?

[Dima-RussianArms]

To toad
The point is that people like the author have been saying that "Russia has been dying" for more than a thousand years and yet it is still there.

Think about what you wrote logicaly:
Do China, India or Pakistan have better healthcare, economics and social climate than EU? Than how come European countries are "dying" (according to stats) and forementioned increase their population? Explain that please.

Fluctuations in population are nothing new. Sometimes they are triggered by wars, sometimes by changes in social climate, sometimes by deseases.
Look at the Europe, and Russia for that matter, in 14-17th century and demographics of that period, and now think of what has followed, how would you and the author explain that?

Economics, politics and even fashion are all about cycles, right now there is a down cycle, simple like that.
There is no reason to panic.

USSR lost 30 mil people in WW2 alone, which was preceded by WW1, civil war like no other country ever seen and yet at the end it had 298 mil people, how do you explain that?

True, Russian population had shrunk from 150 to 148 but so what?
I live in a city where anglo-saxons are the minority, does it mean that US is dying?

What Russia needs to start doing is to relax its immigration laws, to get some fresh blood in. Couple of days ago it did make a first step and pardoned 20000 illigal alliens.

Also your comment about "Russia is not prospering, healthcare, economics, social issues all seem to be a problem."
has no substance to it.
First of all what is "prospering"?
Second, name me a single country that doesn't have healthcare, economics and social issues?
And third, name me a period when Russia was ever doing better, overall, than it is doing now?

[walford]

This is what Pat Buchanan discovered on the subject during his research for The Death of the West (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312302592/thebigpicture-20/002-0440590-7881653?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2):
The Passing away of Mother Russia (http://www.theamericancause.org/patthepassingawayof.htm)

...Katya, a Russian woman of 30, had an abortion at 19. She thought little of it, though she was alarmed by the sustained bleeding. At 23, she and her husband tried to have a child, and failed. She did become pregnant at 27, but the fetus lodged in one of her blocked fallopian tubes. Doctors aborted it. Childless and infertile at 30, she will never know the joy of motherhood.

Katya Esipova is a metaphor for Mother Russia.

In Russia, until recently, women of child-bearing age averaged three abortions. Katya's story is thus replicated millions of times. And because of abortion, Russia has one of the lowest birth rates on earth – about one child per woman, only half the birth rate needed to maintain Russia's population...

...Russians are literally disappearing from the face of the earth at a rate of about 1 million a year. Mother Russia is dying. And if her birth rate is not doubled or even trebled soon – of which there are no signs whatsoever – the largest nation on earth will cease to be in a few generations.

...By mid-century, Russians in Asia could be outnumbered by Chinese 200-to-1. Is there any doubt as to which nation will control Siberia, that last, vast, untapped storehouse of natural resources on earth?But it's not only Russia who is dying:

Yet, send not to know for whom the bell tolls. For the birth rates in the Baltic republics, Italy and Spain are as low as Russia's. And the average in all of Europe, 1.4 births per woman, is only two-thirds of what is needed to keep Europe alive. Already, in 17 of the nations of Europe, there are more burials than births...And who stands to benefit?
...While the Islamic world cannot match the West in science, technology, weaponry or wealth, all the Western nations have populations that are aging and starting to shrink, while all the Islamic nations have expanding or exploding populations.

God is on the side of the big battalions, said Napoleon. In 1950, peoples of European ancestry comprised 30 percent of the world's population. They were the big battalions. By 2050, European Man will amount to a tenth of the world's population, and the oldest tenth at that, and be facing near extinction by century's end.

La Dolce Vita is apparently not healthy for a people interested in longevity. Someone else is going to inherit the earth...And for their part, the evangelical Moslems are certainly aware of the implications. The controversial Oriana Fallaci (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/vidino200405040834.asp) has been intent upon...
...provoking Europeans into realizing what is going on right under their noses and getting rid of their fear to say something that goes against the PC dogma. According to Fallaci, the "Modern Inquisition" has managed to keep individuals in fear of expressing what they believe: "If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light...nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you."

Fallaci has her own interpretation of the massive Islamic immigration that is rapidly changing the face of European cities. She sees it as part of the expansionism that has characterized Islam since its birth. After reminding the reader how Islamic armies have aimed for centuries at the heart of Europe (a part of history that is not taught anymore in Europe, since it would offend the sensitivity of Muslim pupils), reaching France, Poland, and Vienna, she lays out her case, claiming that the current flood of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa is part of a carefully planned strategy. Fallaci uses the words of Muslim leaders to support this thesis.

In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory." In other words, says Fallaci, what Islamic armies have not been able to do with force in more than 1,000 years can be achieved in less than a century through high birth rates. She cites as evidence a 1975 meeting of Islamic countries in Lahore, in which they announced their project to transform the flow of Muslim immigrants in Europe in "demographic preponderance." But we in the West are too Clever to be bothered with such concerns as to the legacy we leave behind. Raising families is such a nuisance! It is not so important what color that mankind of the future is, but what ideas will survive. It stands to reason that such concepts as limited representative government, women being considered more than just livestock and leadership/policy being chosen peacefully will die out with the people who developed it if they are bred out before they can be sucessfully passed on.

History is not a natural progression toward improvement. Change is not necessarily for the better. Many times civilizations have peaked and fallen, followed by centuries of darkness. Is that what beckons for mankind again?

[Lokos]

It is only a matter of time before abortions are made illegal in Russia (there are some 1.7 million abortions in Russia each year - were they halted, the population crisis would cease to be an issue).

Lokos

[walford]

Abortions will most assuredly be legally prohibited in all of the Western places where there are 'more coffins than cradles' once Shari'a Law is implemented.

[uhramechi]

for that i am enemy of the leftish, the socialist, the abortion, the atheism, and comunist.

look russia, 70 years of comunist atheism, socialist, and look the crap is now.

and sadly western europe is going in the same road, thinking the indidualist the homosexualism the abortion is good, and follow leaders like zapatero they are making their own destruction, the destruction of europe, maybe th european can say with inmigration wiill resolve the problem, but, really that thing of inmigrations only is another bad decition for that policy europe will became euroarabia,

the situation of rusia, and the situationof europe only make me think, be leftish of support the abortion is like put a gun in my head and shoot, really god forgive and save the european from their own disaster

[ed316]

Putin is leading a country that is bleeding to it's second death...it will be a while, but the ball has been rolling and getting faster. The Chechnya campaign needs to be overhauled and reexamined. The oligarchy is making money and not reinvesting in the future of Mother Russia, it's sending money abroad which says something to what they know and what the west thinks they know.

[rocket13]

for that i am enemy of the leftish, the socialist, the abortion, the atheism, and comunist.

look russia, 70 years of comunist atheism, socialist, and look the crap is now.

and sadly western europe is going in the same road, thinking the indidualist the homosexualism the abortion is good, and follow leaders like zapatero they are making their own destruction, the destruction of europe, maybe th european can say with inmigration wiill resolve the problem, but, really that thing of inmigrations only is another bad decition for that policy europe will became euroarabia,

the situation of rusia, and the situationof europe only make me think, be leftish of support the abortion is like put a gun in my head and shoot, really god forgive and save the european from their own disaster


You sir are a credit to the progression of humanity :/

[uhramechi]

what do you mean with credit?? i dont understaind sorry forgive my english, what do you mean with "You sir are a credit to the progression of humanity "

what do you try to say? please say me

[Laworkerbee]

Don't worry about him compadre :)

[dangerclose]

Good riddance ... hope the rest of europe folllows.

[Kitsune]

[Too bad that there is no head-shaking smiley...]
Yes, if one assumes that the present trend will continue for eternity, Russia and Europe will trun into regions devoid of human life. And the USA will change into a nation with a population looking like a mix of Mexico and Haiti where no one is able to move without stepping on someone elses toes (the reproduction rates of whites in the US is only 1.7, it's the Hispanic and Black population that is responsible for the alleged "healthy" growth of the US population).
Its really looking bad, it seems.

But perhaps it is not a very rational idea to simply extrapolate a given trend into the distant future, because trends tend too change. For example during old Adolf's time Germany was such a healthy, optimistic society with a solid reproduction rate (Nazis were very keen to see to that, even giving medals for those mothers who gave birth to a record amount of children)...to the delight of some people here completely against homosexuality, by the way. From a viewpoint of that time the Germany of the year 2525 would have had a bazillion inhabitants (badly in the need of Lebensraum), from todays viewpoint it will be a northern province of Turkey. Trends have changed in Europe, indeed.


Speaking of changing trends. The "Jihad of the Cradles" which the evil Muslims are waging against us may be just another example for this. The average number of children per woman in the most important Islamic countries in 1981 and 2001:

Turkey: 1981:4,3 2001:2,5
Azerbeijan: 1981:3,1 2001: 2,0
Iran: 1981: 5,3 2001: 2,6
Iraq: 1981: 7,0 2001: 5,3
Syria: 1981: 7,2 2001: 4,1
Egypt: 1981: 5,3 2001: 3,5
Algeria: 1981: 7,3 2001: 3,1
Marocco: 1981: 6,9 2001: 3,4
Indonesia: 1981: 4,1 2001: 2,7
Jordan: 1981: 4,3 2001: 3,6

Uh? What is this? They are all going down? Seems that the endurance of this rug-headed sexual athletes is dwindling...(This trend goes for most muslimic nations, by the way, notable exceptions are Afghanistan and Palestine).
Who knows...in the end Muslimic promiscuity may not be the big topic in the year 2100 any more.


Perhaps this all is part of a quite natural developement. Europe for example is not that large a continent. Its population density is among the highest of the world (Germanys for example is more than 7 times as high as the one of the USA). Frankly, we have bred like rabbits for centuries. And the once mighty Islamic regions of this planet had to watch powerlessly as we filled Europe (a formerly not overly densily populated region that then massively outstripped the regions inhabited by the followers of Muhammad in population growth), but also both of the Americas, as well as parts of Africa and Australia and Oceania with pale humans. From the viewpoint of the Arabs white men started to settle everywhere...not only to the north of them but also to the south, in the new world or the strange lands down under. And that trend continued for centuries. That must have been frustrating.
Now they are catching up somewhat. That is all.


Interesting is, that wealth and propserty seems to adversly effect the human will to beget children. It are usually the poorest nations which the "healthiest" growths rates. And not only Europeans fall prey to the curse of prosperity - it effects Asians in a similiar way (look to Japan for example) and, it seems, the Muslims, too. But South Americans and Africans continue to breed.
Do you know what the first rate damper to procreation is? Television? Good guess, damn close. No, its literacy. Or literacy of the female part of the population, to be precise. Once a nation gets literate self induced birth control sets in. This is nearly a law of nature. One can downright measure the successes of literisation by looking at the birthrates. (Too bad that the Soviets have seen that literacy is spread solidely in their Empire...even in the Muslimic parts of the country the brithrates are much lower than in other muslim regions outside the old Sovietunion).
But literacy is effecting even South America and Africa today. Slowly but steadily the birthrates go down even there. Today experts assume that humanity will reach 10 billion in 2100, max out at perhaps 11 billion one or two decades later, and then start to shrink slowly. ("Oh God we will die out!" *Screech* *Whimper*)

Know what? This may be not so bad after all. Have you already noticed that place on this planet is somewhat limited? In the beginning of the 20th century about 1.6 billion human beings were around and about on Mother Earth...as the century ended it were 6 billion. More humans mean more waste products, more energy that is needed, ultimately less freedom for everyone. Would it truly be better if humanity continued to procreate like hell? Would that future be better?


That does not mean that a sharp decline of birthrates isn't a problem. Nations like Britain (1.7 children per woman) have to attract foreigner or to accept a decline in numbers. For nations like Germany (1.4 children per woman) its worse. They have to accept more foreigners, and may still see a reduction of the population. For them it would be good to increase those rates somewhat, no question. Its really bad for nations like Italy (1.2 children per woman). Thats a very steep decline. But all of the mentioned three are rich countries, they nearly automatically attracts foreigners and can afford to pay them. And they can stomach a certain overaging of the population. We will see.
True is that the future holds some REALLY problems in store for nations like Russia. Less than 1.3 children per woman, and no great prosperity at present that mitigates the problem. On the contrary, people tend to leave more than to immigrate. That makes it quite probable that Russia is not exactly the great power of the future...or even among them. Russians may not "die out" - but instead to expand again to old soviet glory they will have to concentrate on keeping what they have in the 21st century - and even that may not work. (Once, when Russia was strong and China powerless, the Tsar annexed the vast realms of Siberia north of China. The Chinese have never accpeted that. They may attempt to do something about it in the future now that the tables have turned. Lucky for the Russians that nuclear weapons have been invented...)

Compared to Africans, Asians and Hispanics, the number of white man will reduce over the next century. That is certain. Even in the USA the relations bewtween the ethnic groups will shift, America will become more "latin". From 2050 on the majority of the US population will be non whites. The crew of the spaceship "Enterprise" will look less Caucasian, it seems. Not predominantly whites with one or two black and yellows thrown in but a much more even mix. Whites may not even be the largest group.

But that has not necessarily mean the end of culture and civilisation. A good advice may be "Don't panic." (Or in the case of dangerclose: "Do not be overly hopeful".)

[Ogi]

Russia survived such horrific times as "Times of Trouble" and Bolsevik Revolution, invasions from Mongols, Poles, Swedes, Teutonic Knights, and hopefuly there will come next Nevski or Peter the Great who will restore everything that Communists and last two Romanovs have taken away. Russia will be what it was during the times of Alexander I and after WWII. It has the greatest natural resources, which are well protected by it's nuclear weapons even against China, and hopefully this moral detoriation is just a consequence of Communist rule, which will fade away and become just a bad mamory once Russia gets on it's feet.

[walford]

Hoping things get better w/o recognizing the problem and taking steps to correct it will not get the job done. Entire races of people have arisen and then eventually disappeared with only their artifacts remaining to witness their former existence.

And the idea that those societies with high birthrates that are demographically supplanting us will also slow their birthrates once they become prosperous assumes that our burgeoning replacements will become prosperous. That would entail them adopting such critically important concepts as limited representative government, equality before the law and economic achievement via merit rather than cronyism.

From what we've seen, they expect US to adapt to THEM. Thus, it seems that it is not only the genetics, but the socio-political structure is being imported intact into the West. Civilizations have fallen before. We are not exempt. If anything, we are more vulnerable.

[toad]

Maybe I'm wrong but it seems as if posters missed the many points of the article in order to focus on just the issue of population numbers? Which is just one of the areas touched upon in this piece and its larger version...
http://www.marksteyn.com/index2.cfm?edit_id=24

If you look at words like ramshackle, poor, bleakest, 'ideological vacuum'... these terms do not jive with population issues. They go much farther than that.

Yes, Mark Stein used population as a common point through out the article but was clear to point out that "A smaller population needn’t necessarily be a problem, and especially not for a state with too much of the citizenry on the payroll. But Russia is facing simultaneously a massive ongoing drain of wealth out of the system." hmmmm.....

As was pointed out by several posters... many countries have seen plateau's on population, or declines but are not struggling. Not floundering.

Its not just the population #'s. :-|

"We are witnessing a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. The ‘ideological vacuum’ was mostly filled with a nihilist fatalism. Churchill got it wrong: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss."

[Victrix]

decline in population...why...because russia is lacking of patriots..everyone is leaving the country...migrating all around the world...it's always been like that...all the econmic theft that is going on, leaves people with no choise but to leave the country for a better life...

[asch]

well, i see all of you, guys, very well know about situation here.

what about some facts from my real life?
I am living in Vladivostok, which is capital of Primorsky Region, Russia.
have a good job (designer), plans to make my own business.
none of my friends or people i know is starving.
when my girlfriend was pregnant, i learned that our birth-houses are overfilled :)
every man who really want to work can find appropriate paid work. well paid.

btw, when i remember last decade of 20 century... that was horrible times. starvation, lack of order in society, all this crap.

ps. i understand that situation in one state can be different than in other.

Victrix - u know, man, we here not very much like people who leaving to other countries.
but rats is always flee from (as they think) sinking ship. i prefer to build my life as i want than runnin around in search of better life.

now life is much better, and we all here was a part of process.

[nahimov]

I visit Russia every single year and I don't see anything that could possibly point to Russia's decline. On the contrary I've never seen so many construnction sites as I have seen in St. Petersburg. Apartments selling for $200k and up. The whole city is transformed and never looked better. Restaurants are packed, every single person has a mobile phone. Many Russians have regained their national identity. It is no longer "cool" to bash anything that is Russian. This article is written by people who wish Russia the worst and they are very wrong.

[GermaniaInvicta]

@Kitsune
Eurabia is comming for us and that's for sure.
Can you tell me how many hundred Germans (mostly old pensionists, who stay the rest of of their lives for the warm climate's sake ) live in Turkey and how many million predominantly young Turks are colonizing Germany?
As for the Netherland's the indigenious youth there will be on par with immigrants in 15 years.