With Russian president Vladimir Putin playing an outsized role on the world-stage, any book discussing “the end of Russia” is quite the intellectual outlier. But Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council and an experienced Russia hand, looks to the field of demographics (too often ignored by students of international affairs) to observe that Russia’s population is on the precipice of a rapid decline and that its current economic strength rests on weak foundations. Berman has done an enormous service in pointing out this deep trend in international affairs.
Russian birthrates are well below replacement levels; life expectancy has declined, and Russians are rapidly fleeing the corruption and lack of opportunity in their homeland by emigrating to the West. Russia’s depopulation is particularly problematic in the Far East where a resurgent China covets the vast resources of this enormous region. As Russians leave Asia, Moscow will be hard-pressed to enforce its authority in the face of China’s growing presence.
Meanwhile, in European Russia, Muslims are the fastest growing segment of the population and, thanks in great part to Russia’s heavy-handed counterterror policies, are isolated from broader Russian society and turning towards radical Islam. Berman suggests some nightmare scenarios were these trends to continue, but more importantly, he raises the fundamental question of what will become of Russia when Russians are a minority in their own country.
While the Russians have proven adept at exploiting their Soviet-era arms, nuclear, and space industries as well as the country’s vast energy reserves to woo and pressure other states, the author also shows how other Soviet legacies, such as a decayed social and physical infrastructure, are rapidly hollowing Russian power.
After sketching out these trends, Berman prudently avoids making predictions, but a more in-depth analysis would be welcome. Are there no opportunities for the United States and the West in Russia’s coming implosion? And how can Washington best position itself to take advantage of them? Finally, Russia is not the only Eurasian country facing a demographic collapse: How will aging Europe and Japan factor into Russia’s future?
