Russia Is Screwed

By Jim Geraghty

Sunday, March 27, 2022

 

In the short to medium term, Russia is fairly screwed. But in the long term, Russia is really screwed.

 

We all know that the Russian economy is in dire straits as it faces unprecedented sanctions from the West, and that countries pulling out of the Russian market now are unlikely to return for a long, long time. The ruble is now almost worthless outside the country, interest rates jumped to 20 percent, and inflation in Russia could rise to a jaw-dropping 20 to 30 percent. Even the longer-term outlook for Russian oil production is darkening.

 

The Russian military is performing badly, has lost its fearsome reputation, and will need a major expenditure to replace all its lost tanks and transport trucks in addition to its expended precision-guided missiles, artillery, and other weapons.

 

But the Russian invasion is exposing other weaknesses that Moscow would rather the world didn’t notice.

 

Douglas London, a former CIA operations officer, writes in the Wall Street Journal that the outlook for recruiting Russians spies has rarely looked better: “Some of the CIA’s best agents have been volunteers who finally are pushed over the edge by a life-altering event and offer their services to an intelligence service. Tolkachev, Polyakov and Kuklinski were volunteers. Thanks to Mr. Putin’s deplorable behavior, I expect an increase in Russian volunteers who have toyed with the idea of doing something to better Russia’s future and might now be receptive to an encouraging nudge.” The FBI is sending Russian-language recruitment ads to cellphones in and around the Russian embassy that read: “If you have information that could help the FBI, please contact us.”

 

But it is in the long term — say, a generation from now — that Russia is screwed . . . really, really screwed.

 

Russia’s population dropped by a million people in 2021 — a stunning figure that reflects a team-up of an aging population, a low birth rate — the number of births per woman stands at around 1.5, well short of the minimum of 2.1 necessary to renew the population — and the Covid-19 pandemic. (As I observed in the Morning Jolt, back on July 9: “COVID-19 is particularly dangerous for those who are heavy smokers and heavy drinkers, who are more likely to have other comorbidities or health problems. Hey, it’s a good thing Russia doesn’t have a lot of those, huh?”)

 

Many outside observers have accused the Russian government of trying to downplay the severity of the pandemic by classifying Covid-19 deaths as pneumonia deaths. But no matter how Moscow wants to qualify it, a lot of Russians died last year.

 

A short-lived bump in the birth rate in the middle of the last decade ended, too. The result: 1.94 million children were born in Russia in 2015 but only 1.44 million in 2020.

 

If you have 1.94 million Russian children born in 2015, that means you’re going to have about 1.94 million Russian 18-year-olds in 2033. If you have only 1.44 million Russian children born in 2020, you’re only going to have about 1.44 million Russian 18-year-olds in 2038.

 

None of these problems will be helped by the ongoing exodus of Russians who can emigrate; more than 200,000 Russians have reportedly crossed borders since the start of the invasion. Dissidents, elites, critics of Putin — anyone who prefers the West or fears what is coming is looking for any opportunity to get out. And while we don’t know exactly how many Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine — estimates range from 7,000 to 15,000 — it’s a lot for one month of fighting. Most of those 7,000 to 15,000 killed were young men who will not be returning home and starting families.

 

In addition to not-great life expectancy, Russia also has distressingly high rates of alcohol-related deaths, drug addiction, deadly accidents, violence, and suicides:

 

According to official data, 15,000 people per year die because of low-quality alcohol. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Low-quality alcohol also creates and worsens many diseases that lead to people dying early.

 

While drinking substandard alcohol is a long-standing Russian tradition, drug use is a relatively new trend. Currently, 13 million people in the country occasionally use psychoactive substances, and 5 million do so regularly. Most drug users are between the ages of 16 and 30. This data only includes people who have committed crimes or who are registered with state medical institutions. People who are treated in private rehabilitation centers, or those who have not been treated, are not counted in the statistics. Neither are those who use substances not included in the official state list of narcotics.

 

Russia’s high mortality rate also results from external causes like traffic accidents, violence, industrial injuries and suicides. In 2020, there were 140,000 such deaths.

 

As bad as all of this sounds, there’s a strong argument that Russia is really going to get hurt by climate change.

 

For the “climate change isn’t real!” crowd, just accept for now that a planet with nearly 8 billion people is going to generate more carbon into the atmosphere than a planet with 6 billion or 7 billion did. The more carbon you put into the atmosphere, the more likely it is to have at least some effect on the climate. Even if you don’t buy everything Al Gore or little Greta Thunberg contends, certain parts of the world are likely to grow warmer, and weather patterns more intense and unpredictable, year by year, decade by decade.

 

Thane Gustafson’s recent book, Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change, takes a long look at this topic and acknowledges that climate change will bring some advantages to Russia. Higher temperatures will bring shorter winters and longer growing seasons in some parts of the country, thawing ice will open up or expand new Arctic Circle transit routes for trade and exports, and food shortages elsewhere will expand the demand for Russian grain and agricultural exports.

 

But the advantages are likely to be more than offset by serious disadvantages and worsening problems. Gustafson contends that demand for oil, natural gas, and other fossil fuels will remain strong, or at least sufficient, until at least 2030 or so. But “in the early 2030s,” he writes, “a second phase will begin.” Gustafson continues:

 

As the energy transition takes hold worldwide, Russia’s export revenues from oil, gas, and coal will decline sharply, with corresponding pressure on the economy, the society, and the state. Russia’s revenues from other sources, such as agriculture, will not be able to compensate. This will mark a major turning point for Russia. From that point on, the external and internal impacts of climate change on Russia will only increase.

 

And that’s just Russia’s energy exports. He elaborates:

 

Large areas of Arctic permafrost will melt, endangering local infrastructure such as pipelines, making houses and buildings more fragile, and making new construction more difficult and expensive. The warming of East Siberia will bring increases in pest-borne diseases. Forest fires will become more frequent and extensive. Areas of marginal rainfall, covering much of south Russia, will experience more frequent droughts, and agricultural production, which has been a success story in recent years, will be affected as well.

 

Melting permafrost will create problems for every country, but the current effects for Russia are surprisingly dire: “More than 60 percent of buildings in Igarka, Dikson, and Khatanga are cracked and damaged by the melting ground, over 50 percent in Pevek and Anderma, and 40 percent in Vorkuta. . . . Railroad tracks twist apart, roads heave, pipelines rupture. Most of the road system in the Far North consists of ice roads, which are usable only in winter; as the cold season shortens, the region becomes more isolated. An increasingly serious consequence of melting permafrost is coastal erosion. At present, the Russian coastline is retreating by one to five meters per year, in some places by as much as ten. . . . The long-term threat to the region is that much of the traditional economic basis of the Arctic Inland become unsustainable.” And these are the regions where a lot of Russia’s oil and natural-gas exports originate.

 

And after experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, it is legitimate to be concerned that thawing permafrost will unleash viruses and bacteria: “In 2016, on the Yamal peninsula on Russia’s northern coast where local people herd hundreds of thousands of reindeer, that summer, temperatures were unseasonably warm and some of the permafrost thawed. The bacterium that causes anthrax — which had been present on the peninsula for over a century — emerged from the soil and spread like wildfire. Before the outbreak was brought under control, more than 2000 reindeer had perished. Dozens of people also caught the disease, including an unnamed boy who died.” The nightmare scenario — deemed unlikely but not impossible by scientists — is that melting permafrost releases some sort of ancient virus that current human immune systems have little or no ability to fight off.

 

The collapse of foreign investment, high inflation and interest rates, severe economic recession with lingering drags on growth, a shrinking population, greater strain on health-care systems, a declining demand for its exports, worsening environmental crises . . . on a variety of fronts, the Russia of 2030 is likely to be weaker than the Russia of today, and the Russia of 2040 weaker still. From this light, Vladimir Putin’s seemingly senseless decision to invade Ukraine makes a bit more sense, as perhaps he saw a window of opportunity slowly closing.