Most of all, Putin and his cronies seem preoccupied with the demographic decline of Russia. Correctly predicting that this is the number one reason for Russia's declining geopolitical fortunes.
Russia's demography is actually worse than the numbers suggest. It is true that Putin has succeeded in keeping the population sort of stable by lowering mortality and welcoming immigrants from post-Soviet nations. But the main problem, low fertility rates, are still there.
These low fertility rates contain a demographic bomb of sorts. The end of the Soviet Union meant a collapse in Russian fertility. The number of births in Russia halved between 1987 and 1993. I know of no other advanced country at peace that has experienced something similar. The bomb here is that the girls born in 1987 are still adding to the birth numbers of Russia while the girls from 1993 are only now entering motherhood in force. Halving the number of potential mothers will of course wreak havoc with birth numbers.
All this is known to Putin and his government. Most probably, demographic considerations have played a part in recent Russian foreign policy. When unable to manufacture new Russians themselves, Russia is simply conquering Russians from neighboring countries that have some to spare.
The inevitable decline of Russia suggests to me that a containment strategy is better than a maximalist strategy. We don't sit around calling Eisenhower a tankie because he took the armistice in 1953, I think this is a comparable situation (assuming things stay like they are for awhile).
It's weird to me how some of the same people can say on Tuesday that if Ukraine doesn't retake Crimea before we start a peace negotiation, Russia will be emboldened to rearm and fully invade and occupy Ukraine in a few years, and then from there will roll into... NATO countries next? Like they wouldn't be smoked in 5 minutes if they tried that?
Then on Wednesday, the same commentators will say Russia is in steep economic and demographic decline and is destined to become a minor country in 10 or 20 years, and possibly even split apart. If they're so pathetic, isn't time on our side if we bunker up and play strong defense?
Not including you in that list of commentators, but it's a definite disconnect I've seen in some people.
I don't know who these commentators are, but I think a sober analysis of the situation points to the need for the West to help Ukraine more, precisely because it is very unlikely that Russia will disappear. Also, helping Ukraine regain territory is a containment strategy, I don't know why one would think otherwise, the West's help would literally be containing Russia to its own territory, and thwarting its ambitions for territorial expansion.
Some points:
1. I think Crimea is negotiable. I think the Ukrainians are planning to use Crimea in a negotiation. Yes, they are publicly saying that they want to retake Crimea, but before that they were saying that they would negotiate if Russia returned to pre-February lines, and I suspect this is still objective, just not publicly.
2. The danger of leaving Russia with Ukrainian territory, especially post-February, is that Russia will use that territory to launch new invasions of Ukraine. Is there any sane person who really wants to be here again in ten years? Of course, a safeguard against this would be to include Ukraine in NATO, but this is highly unlikely, so Ukraine's vulnerability is a serious issue for Ukraine in the future. That's why the Ukrainians are not just negotiating now and giving Russia all their new more modest goals. If the Ukrainian state cannot show that it can protect its citizens, with Western help, then it will be difficult for it to explain why its citizens should stay in the country awaiting the next Russian invasion.
3. In the scenario of Russia having conquered Ukraine, then other countries including NATO countries would be in danger. A Russia that showed military prowess and conquered Ukraine would be much bigger and much more arrogant, a perfect recipe for more war, even with NATO countries. Obviously this scenario did not occur, however, one has to assume that not only will Russia not disappear, but that they will learn some lessons from this war and build a better military in the future. The Poles are certainly assuming this, in addition to taking into account the fact that NATO guarantees are not 100% guaranteed forever, so they are building a huge military and military industry of their own.
The Ukraine War is not very much about Russia or even Ukraine. Rather it is about the post-WWII world order. It is but a small exaggeration to say that the entire UN-centered rules-based order is on the line. To defend that state of affairs Russia needs to be visibly losing. Which Russia (or rather its leadership) cannot accept. Therefore stalemate.
Russia declining while continuing to pose a military threat from its presence in Crimea is a plausible scenarios.
Russia will continue to have demographic problems and slow technological development, but a lot of its defeats came from a dysfunctional army organisation and bad preparation.
Imagine in 2030, Russian army has been reformed and its resources are concentrated on land forces, instead of the unfocused mess it was in 2022.
The US is led by isolationist republicans, while Russia has replenished its stockpiles with domestic and Chinese production. Ukraine is not part of explicit alliances due to the unclear status of Crimea. A very uncomfortable scenario for Ukraine..
Before the war, Ukraine and Belarus must have had at least 45 million people, probably more, but at least that, so conquering both would add 45 million East Slavs with high human capital to Russia's population. Russia would then go from 145 million people to 190 million people, which would mean that at purchasing power parity Russia's economy would become Europe's largest economy, and probably a larger economy than Japan, almost immediately.
That's why Putin invaded Ukraine. This is the material reason that gave life to ideological irredentism. Everything else is silliness, distractions, and at best, marginally relevant stuff. Some pro-Ukraine people will say that Putin invaded Ukraine because he feared a thriving democracy in his neighborhood, that's nonsense, Ukraine was a terrible mess, no one was holding their breath for Ukraine prosperity, and Putin in particular obviously didn't think very highly of the capacity of the Ukrainian state.
Low TFR is a problem in almost all high-income countries, and even many middle-income countries now, but the thing is that most high- or middle-income countries don't have pretensions to being great powers and vying for influence with the US, well, at least not by themselves. You could argue that the EU has some of these pretensions, but they are a collection of various countries.
Having 190 or 200 million people wouldn't have allowed Russia to beat the US, but Russia doesn't have to. The US is on another continent and the US has China to worry about, Russia just needs to be strong enough to establish dominance over its own region, which includes Eastern Europe, and then the rest is extra. Close to 200 million Russia would have a much easier time doing this.
One crucial element that I think you miss is the impact of outward migration, which saw many of Russia’s best and brightest go to Israel and the US (and even a few to Australia). This has now accelerated again.
Netanyahu might be not everyone favorite, but he believes in meritocracy and markets. His administration oversaw dramatic improvement of Israel economy and technology
Putin on other hand is old kgb apparatchik, who keeps the screws tight while allowing his cronies ( and only them) to bleed the country dry
Israel looks like a mess now, but the scale of the protests, and their freedom to do so, makes any comparison between Bibi, much as I detest him, and Putin, simply laughable.
This counter-thesis against the Russia-is-great-because-Putin is substantiated, but there's a too-ready dismissal of factors that could go just fine or even well for Russia: 1/ Why *can't* Russia just replace any US or EU imports with Chinese (or other East Asian) ones? China is a more relevant exporter of manufactured goods than either, all the way up and down the value chain! China's right next door and it wants exactly the stuff that Russia is selling: energy, minerals, and agricultural commodities. And Russia is still managing right now to import many Western goods by circumventing sanctions, anyway. How many times in the last year-plus have we heard that their war machine will run out of fuel immanently, when it appears that it's actually ours that's dangerously depleted, owing to our "efficient" industrial base that's hardly fit as the any Arsenal for Democracy in near-peer fights like in Ukraine? 2/ Russia's own looming demographic collapse is bad, yes, but it's the exact same demographic collapse that is happening in the entire developed world, so why is it remarkable? The problem is even worse in places like South Korea or Germany. It's now nearly as bad in the United States, itself, now that we have paired a deadly epidemic with a decade of "deaths of despair," our own remarkably poor health outcomes as a wealthy country, and the low-key bipartisan anti-immigration consensus! 3/ Lastly, the "Russia is a stagnating petrostate" line seems both exaggerated and overstated: If Russia is a petrostate... so is the UAE. And it's also disproportionately dependent upon other mineral extraction... just like Australia. Its exports to places like China are mostly oil and food... just like the United States'. Is this really such a terrible fate? In reality, Russia's economy is more complex: it has a higher percentage contribution of manufacturing than the US and the global average (14.5% vs. 12%). Its value-added services economy is no slouch, either, even with the (perhaps temporary) exodus of some highly-educated Russians who might invent the next Yandex. Russia is ranked pretty middling on the Global Innovation Index, but better than the likes of fast-growing middle-income Vietnam and Mexico, and about the same as Greece or Slovakia.
All of which is to say that Russia won't be "great," perhaps, but it will continue to be *good enough,* and with a scale of geography, resources, hard power, and population that most other countries cannot match. In our schadenfreude, we can tend to mistake our eagerness for adversaries to be basket cases ripe for collapse with the reality that they're just fine and will remain formidable. We indulge in patriotic triumphalism at our own peril.
Although China and Russia share a border, it's misleading to say they're "right next door". The majority of Russia's population is west and/or north of the Caucasus, while the majority of China's population is east and/or ssouth of Xi'an. The distance between the Caucasus and Xi'an is about the same as the distance between New York and Lima, Peru.
I mean, the US imports a tremendous volume of stuff across the whole Pacific Ocean arriving from China to the Port of Los Angeles. Most of that stuff doesn't stay on the West Coast, either. It's destined for the population centers to the East. Russia's situation is the opposite of this, importing stuff from China via sea or rail or truck in the East destined (mostly) for the population centers in the West.
True, but, either way, the transport costs are marginal. You're talking a few thousand dollars per container to anywhere in Russia via ship/rail/truck. Which is more than it costs to get something across the Pacific to Los Angeles.
1) To an extent they can. But less choice for trading partners means worse negotiating position. And while Russia's economic and demographic center of gravity is close to the EU, it is very far from India and China. In addition, being shunned by the West creates a lot of friction even if alternatives like grey imports exist.
2) The West has the chance to slow or reverse the demographic decline via immigration. Russia hasn't for economic and cultural reasons, and in fact suffers from brain drain itself.
Yes, I'm talking less about the delta between Russia's own revanchist image of itself and the reality and more about an objective assessment of its power projection abilities. Because, if we're talking about national delusions of grandeur, that's a pretty common malady. Former empires like France and the UK can't quite get used to their middle-power status, even after several generations removed from world power status. And even the (objective superpower) Untied States has a hard time fitting into the more multi-polar world of the 21st Century, with its relative power diminishment in comparison to that brief moment of total hyper-power dominance after the fall of the USSR, or, more generally, the post-WWII Pax Americana. Nobody can retain that kind of relative dominance for long. But even in a multi-polar world, there are geopolitical giants. And Russia is still one of them, especially within the context of its near-abroad. And I'm afraid that Americans are still a little too hubristic in underestimate our rivals and overestimate our own power. Which makes for bad policy and disastrous geopolitical miscalculations.
Has there ever been an international system that could deal with declining powers without war? A rising power can be 'invited to the table' of existing power structures, as the USA, USSR and China have been, not without friction or rivalry obviously, but plausibly without conflict. Declining powers, though, often don't see their decline and demand to be treated as though they had their former power. So either you humour them, which is unsustainable and costly, or they become revanchist, as Hitler's Germany or Putin's Russia, and try to reassert their power. Hitler almost succeeded, Putin has failed, but ultimately declining powers will reject the balanced order under which they're declining. I'm genuinely not sure how this can be managed at all.
My "selecting on the dependent variable" sense is tingling...is there broad evidence that declining powers are unusually belligerent, or is our attention just being grabbed by a couple of arbitrarily selected examples? A moment's thought suggests counterexamples like the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 while riding high off swollen oil prices, or Japan's pacific decline since its bubble popped.
I think unfortunately we have to rely a bit on a priori thinking and anecdotes here because the idea of peaceful/balanced world orders is fairly new. I think in past centuries, when war was much more accepted as a legitimate form of power competition, a declining power would be more likely to be _attacked_ by someone trying to take advantage. Russia leaving Siberia this exposed, for example, would be seen as a huge vulnerability in past centuries
And you can even argue if a revanchist power is rising or declining, was post-WW1 Germany a declining power from the German Empire, or was Germany a rising one from the Weimar Republic? Regardless, I think revanchism is the problem, and revanchism needs a decline or perceived decline, although it's possible for declining powers to just accept it, as post-WW2 Germany did. These powers need to break the order to break the trajectory, which I think is problematic for rules-based orders in general. I do admit that it's hard to assess this with any kind of data.
Sad but inevitable when a huge number of Russians (including a huge number of Russian elites) still have an imperialist mindset.
It turns out that the idea of being an imperial empire is hard for many people to give up. The French had to suffer through bloody debacles in Vietnam and Algeria (the latter mess almost destroyed the home country). The English had a slightly better experience though Ireland wasn't so great and they were humiliated (along with the French) at the Suez), and they may not be finished decolonizing. The Germans and Japanese needed their home country utterly destroyed due to imperialist ambitions to give those up.
Good description of Russia under Putin. However, the last paragraph left me a little puzzled.
It's true that China became the leading producer of cobalt, rare earth metals, and batteries, as well as solar panels and windmills. This only happened because China had some cost advantages, coupled with a willingness to subsidize export industries. What, exactly, does Noah think the US and Europe should have done to prevent this? Should we have subsidized our own domestic producers, or made it easier to import from places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Should we have undermined the WTO and enacted domestic content rules?
And, what exactly is the cost? Would it really be difficult to restart domestic production if Chinese supplies were cut off?
Great point, I also wonder how much of this "advantage" was a willingness to accept lower environmental (as well as safety) standards?
Certainly, massive subsidization played a major role, but a western unwillingness to get our hands dirty (even if the ultimate damage to the environment would have been less) probably played a role in ceding some of these industries. On the Republican side the (at the time) overly cozy, some might say pandering, attitude toward big business, combined with a Democratic desire not to get beat up for engaging in harmful environmental activities (even if this did more damage in the long run) created some of this issue. I have no idea how much of this issue was driven by political concerns overriding common sense but I think it likely that this was a least a substantial part of the problem.
"A country that lets itself be led around by the marginal logic of comparative advantage will end up with short-term economic gains, but these gains may be offset by the loss of deeper technological capabilities."
I've been teaching international trade to my civics & econ students for the last 2 weeks and this was exactly how I summarized it to them. 3 weeks straight you and I agree on something major. Remarkable. :-)
When comparative advantage is primarily latitudinal and climactic, it's geographically fixed. But comparative advantage is primarily technological and educational, it's quite changeable over time. *(In both directions.) It's ironic that as Smith and Ricardo were devising anti-mercantilist theories for their agrarian world, the world was industrializing underneath them and rendering many of those theories less accurate.
While you're correct, it misses the point. You can't "intentionally" change your latitude and climate. You can "intentionally" change your technology, infrastructure, and education. From a trade perspective, it is the intentionality that matters.
I'm not as worried about the US being over reliant on certain imports and falling prey to "comparative advantage-itis"
Unlike Russia, America has an incredible array of best in the world economic activities and attributes that are desired by both our own citizens and other countries.
I believe our recent foray into industrial policy is motivated by short term politics, not long term economic strategy. And industrial policy is where we have a comparative disadvantage.
I wrote the below brief post, specifically about our CHIP policies, motivated in part by Noah's own post yesterday morning.
It is interesting that Russia decided to become a petropower as the rest of Europe decided to shift to clean alternative energy sources. Not only did Russia take up the slack as Europe mothballed its North Sea oil fields, but it welcomed Europe exporting its environmental problems to Russia. Europe could continue to use hydrocarbons without the messy job of extracting and refining. Russia was making a living off being Europe’s petrochemical sewer, a convenient means of offshoring environmental damage.
As Noah’s post points out, it is economic suicide to trade short term gains for long term declines. Russia rode an opportunistic wave for a short while and squandered it on this foolish war in Ukraine. Europe will bite the bullet and accelerate its transition away from petroleum dependency and China is leading the way in Asia to do the same. The writing is on the wall yet Russia persists in repeating past mistakes. Perhaps China can sort it all out after this next collapse. There is not much worth saving here and it is likely to be a total tear down. The toxic cleanup is likely to take decades. It is little wonder that Russia’s best talent is heading for the borders.
Why did I get blocked on Noahpinion's Twitter today for citing the CBS story that more than half of weapons donated to Ukraine have gone unaccounted for? Due to pressure from multiple government officials, CBS has altered their report. Still not grounds to block people.
We might also just be starting to realize the cost of deglobalization, Trump’s trade war, Trump’s and now Biden’s self-flagellating tariffs costing taxpayers $250,000 annually for every steel union job saved according to the peterson institute and hiking up prices in the midst of high inflation, immigration quotas and a decline in foreign labor making inflation much worse by overheating the jobs market. Or Biden’s industrial policy. Our attempts to transition to clean energy which involves cutting down on oil production and paying fossil fuels out of existence with massive subsidies for semiconductor and electric vehicle domestic manufacturing. And “Friendshoring.” You make the point that there will be costs for exposing ourselves to the chinese in terms of manufacturing critical technology. That’s true. But there are arguably bigger and broader risks that with our trade protectionism we are actually moving towards that autarky you just described as weakening and perhaps dooming Russia’s economy. It’s much more disturbing than critical technology exposure, that we’re just scrapping international trade rules to save the god damn planet and protect steel jobs, or gratify partisan sensitivity to incoming immigration. Or our ballooning deficit largely because of our unchecked spending on entitlements which we desperately need to cut and reform but it risks great backlash that is if you look at what’s happening in France. Forget about critical technology. If we can’t get our finances in order, and if we can’t get politicians to actually lead and do so and put down the ridiculous culture war for a minute, it won’t even matter if China has an edge on us in terms of microchips or AI, which they don’t and they won’t, because China is economically screwed in their own way. Indeed China is screwed if the party just acquires more and more authority and they can’t escape the middle income trap. China is no match for the free world as long as the free world remains free
>"dependent on a temporary burst of immigration from countries with rapidly shrinking, aging populations"
What? Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan - main sources of Russian migrant labor - are in 2.9-3.2 TFR range. They aren't shrinking or aging yet.
Many people did think of Putin as a sort of Basil the Macedonian for Russia, but instead he was like each other Basileus who followed a long reign of decline. A brief flourishing, then more withering
Controlling people's short term economic interest is difficult in the best of times. The richer the country, the more likely it is to take its eye off of a potential danger, especially if it enriches its supporters.
Heh, I love your work, but the comment that communism "did manage to hold down inequality" is the kind of insight I expect from ChatGPT ;)
Like that should only come up in discussions about why inequality isn't always that big a deal, to point out how ridiculous it has been when countries pursued low inequality without concern for the overall standard of living.
so upfront, I am paranoid about the rise of the young communists in the US, and I worry they will take that little snippet and run with it. But a lot of this is about baseline comparisons.
If people do click through to the linked tweet in the post ( https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1229111868070842368 ) then they WILL grasp that communism did a bad job of delivering the goods during a time of great progress in Western nations. So that holding down of inequality was BADLY DONE, but you only get the comparison if you click through.
Then, I worry this makes it sound like there was an opportunity to just keep the USSR rolling along. That's not the baseline! It collapsed because it was collapsing, and I don't want the youths to pin poor outcomes of the bottom 50% on the turn to capitalism. Bad things were going to happen there. (Though also, the turn to capitalism could have been WAY better executed. But it wasn't. "We hoped for the best but it turned out like always" - such a great Russian quote.)
Communism was bad while it was running and ugly to exit. Zero stars, avoid at all costs.
The standard of living of post-Lenin Russia was considerably higher than during the Czars. Especially for the poorest Russians. Many brutal, feudal era dictatorships were overthrown by Marxists. Many colonies freed from themselves from their oppressors too. It’s not a great economic philosophy but it’s pretty good technique to use to throw off a certain kind of tyranny.
hrrrm, I'd agree on the merits of overthrowing dictators and oppressors, but there's no particular advantage to supporting communism as a motivation in that fight. But at some point we're going to hit a philosophical bedrock that's like "I believe in the liberal values of individual freedoms" and maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Famines under the czar happened very frequently and in one case caused the loss of 1/3 of the population of Russia. There have been no famines since 1947. Surely that is an improvement. Communism seems to be a stop along the way to liberalization, though the evidence is inconclusive. Looking at China’s experience with Communism reinforces this.
Dictatorship -> liberal democracy is preferable but not very common.
well that's just saying there were no more famines after the THIRD Soviet famine ended in '47! An amusing way to slice the data! And when it comes to Communism, let's not forget to give props to the Great Helmsman. Mao caused extraordinary famine! And along the way Stalin and Mao caused plenty of other death, deprivation, and misery. That's communism for you.
It's not like there were American or European famines since 1947 either.
Re communism as a stop on the way to liberalization, I'm not convinced we have sound data or an explanatory theory. Being a trifle biased, I'm hearing a story where no matter what path nations take, they end up as a liberal democracy because liberal democracies are the best :) But I cannot prove that.
Most of all, Putin and his cronies seem preoccupied with the demographic decline of Russia. Correctly predicting that this is the number one reason for Russia's declining geopolitical fortunes.
Russia's demography is actually worse than the numbers suggest. It is true that Putin has succeeded in keeping the population sort of stable by lowering mortality and welcoming immigrants from post-Soviet nations. But the main problem, low fertility rates, are still there.
These low fertility rates contain a demographic bomb of sorts. The end of the Soviet Union meant a collapse in Russian fertility. The number of births in Russia halved between 1987 and 1993. I know of no other advanced country at peace that has experienced something similar. The bomb here is that the girls born in 1987 are still adding to the birth numbers of Russia while the girls from 1993 are only now entering motherhood in force. Halving the number of potential mothers will of course wreak havoc with birth numbers.
All this is known to Putin and his government. Most probably, demographic considerations have played a part in recent Russian foreign policy. When unable to manufacture new Russians themselves, Russia is simply conquering Russians from neighboring countries that have some to spare.
The inevitable decline of Russia suggests to me that a containment strategy is better than a maximalist strategy. We don't sit around calling Eisenhower a tankie because he took the armistice in 1953, I think this is a comparable situation (assuming things stay like they are for awhile).
It's weird to me how some of the same people can say on Tuesday that if Ukraine doesn't retake Crimea before we start a peace negotiation, Russia will be emboldened to rearm and fully invade and occupy Ukraine in a few years, and then from there will roll into... NATO countries next? Like they wouldn't be smoked in 5 minutes if they tried that?
Then on Wednesday, the same commentators will say Russia is in steep economic and demographic decline and is destined to become a minor country in 10 or 20 years, and possibly even split apart. If they're so pathetic, isn't time on our side if we bunker up and play strong defense?
Not including you in that list of commentators, but it's a definite disconnect I've seen in some people.
I don't know who these commentators are, but I think a sober analysis of the situation points to the need for the West to help Ukraine more, precisely because it is very unlikely that Russia will disappear. Also, helping Ukraine regain territory is a containment strategy, I don't know why one would think otherwise, the West's help would literally be containing Russia to its own territory, and thwarting its ambitions for territorial expansion.
Some points:
1. I think Crimea is negotiable. I think the Ukrainians are planning to use Crimea in a negotiation. Yes, they are publicly saying that they want to retake Crimea, but before that they were saying that they would negotiate if Russia returned to pre-February lines, and I suspect this is still objective, just not publicly.
2. The danger of leaving Russia with Ukrainian territory, especially post-February, is that Russia will use that territory to launch new invasions of Ukraine. Is there any sane person who really wants to be here again in ten years? Of course, a safeguard against this would be to include Ukraine in NATO, but this is highly unlikely, so Ukraine's vulnerability is a serious issue for Ukraine in the future. That's why the Ukrainians are not just negotiating now and giving Russia all their new more modest goals. If the Ukrainian state cannot show that it can protect its citizens, with Western help, then it will be difficult for it to explain why its citizens should stay in the country awaiting the next Russian invasion.
3. In the scenario of Russia having conquered Ukraine, then other countries including NATO countries would be in danger. A Russia that showed military prowess and conquered Ukraine would be much bigger and much more arrogant, a perfect recipe for more war, even with NATO countries. Obviously this scenario did not occur, however, one has to assume that not only will Russia not disappear, but that they will learn some lessons from this war and build a better military in the future. The Poles are certainly assuming this, in addition to taking into account the fact that NATO guarantees are not 100% guaranteed forever, so they are building a huge military and military industry of their own.
The Ukraine War is not very much about Russia or even Ukraine. Rather it is about the post-WWII world order. It is but a small exaggeration to say that the entire UN-centered rules-based order is on the line. To defend that state of affairs Russia needs to be visibly losing. Which Russia (or rather its leadership) cannot accept. Therefore stalemate.
Russia declining while continuing to pose a military threat from its presence in Crimea is a plausible scenarios.
Russia will continue to have demographic problems and slow technological development, but a lot of its defeats came from a dysfunctional army organisation and bad preparation.
Imagine in 2030, Russian army has been reformed and its resources are concentrated on land forces, instead of the unfocused mess it was in 2022.
The US is led by isolationist republicans, while Russia has replenished its stockpiles with domestic and Chinese production. Ukraine is not part of explicit alliances due to the unclear status of Crimea. A very uncomfortable scenario for Ukraine..
Before the war, Ukraine and Belarus must have had at least 45 million people, probably more, but at least that, so conquering both would add 45 million East Slavs with high human capital to Russia's population. Russia would then go from 145 million people to 190 million people, which would mean that at purchasing power parity Russia's economy would become Europe's largest economy, and probably a larger economy than Japan, almost immediately.
That's why Putin invaded Ukraine. This is the material reason that gave life to ideological irredentism. Everything else is silliness, distractions, and at best, marginally relevant stuff. Some pro-Ukraine people will say that Putin invaded Ukraine because he feared a thriving democracy in his neighborhood, that's nonsense, Ukraine was a terrible mess, no one was holding their breath for Ukraine prosperity, and Putin in particular obviously didn't think very highly of the capacity of the Ukrainian state.
Low TFR is a problem in almost all high-income countries, and even many middle-income countries now, but the thing is that most high- or middle-income countries don't have pretensions to being great powers and vying for influence with the US, well, at least not by themselves. You could argue that the EU has some of these pretensions, but they are a collection of various countries.
Having 190 or 200 million people wouldn't have allowed Russia to beat the US, but Russia doesn't have to. The US is on another continent and the US has China to worry about, Russia just needs to be strong enough to establish dominance over its own region, which includes Eastern Europe, and then the rest is extra. Close to 200 million Russia would have a much easier time doing this.
One crucial element that I think you miss is the impact of outward migration, which saw many of Russia’s best and brightest go to Israel and the US (and even a few to Australia). This has now accelerated again.
I mentioned it, but perhaps I should have highlighted it more! It is important.
You did mention it, but I think the quality of the people lost will be hard to replace.
Netanyahu might be not everyone favorite, but he believes in meritocracy and markets. His administration oversaw dramatic improvement of Israel economy and technology
Putin on other hand is old kgb apparatchik, who keeps the screws tight while allowing his cronies ( and only them) to bleed the country dry
Israel looks like a mess now, but the scale of the protests, and their freedom to do so, makes any comparison between Bibi, much as I detest him, and Putin, simply laughable.
The difference is in the populace.
This counter-thesis against the Russia-is-great-because-Putin is substantiated, but there's a too-ready dismissal of factors that could go just fine or even well for Russia: 1/ Why *can't* Russia just replace any US or EU imports with Chinese (or other East Asian) ones? China is a more relevant exporter of manufactured goods than either, all the way up and down the value chain! China's right next door and it wants exactly the stuff that Russia is selling: energy, minerals, and agricultural commodities. And Russia is still managing right now to import many Western goods by circumventing sanctions, anyway. How many times in the last year-plus have we heard that their war machine will run out of fuel immanently, when it appears that it's actually ours that's dangerously depleted, owing to our "efficient" industrial base that's hardly fit as the any Arsenal for Democracy in near-peer fights like in Ukraine? 2/ Russia's own looming demographic collapse is bad, yes, but it's the exact same demographic collapse that is happening in the entire developed world, so why is it remarkable? The problem is even worse in places like South Korea or Germany. It's now nearly as bad in the United States, itself, now that we have paired a deadly epidemic with a decade of "deaths of despair," our own remarkably poor health outcomes as a wealthy country, and the low-key bipartisan anti-immigration consensus! 3/ Lastly, the "Russia is a stagnating petrostate" line seems both exaggerated and overstated: If Russia is a petrostate... so is the UAE. And it's also disproportionately dependent upon other mineral extraction... just like Australia. Its exports to places like China are mostly oil and food... just like the United States'. Is this really such a terrible fate? In reality, Russia's economy is more complex: it has a higher percentage contribution of manufacturing than the US and the global average (14.5% vs. 12%). Its value-added services economy is no slouch, either, even with the (perhaps temporary) exodus of some highly-educated Russians who might invent the next Yandex. Russia is ranked pretty middling on the Global Innovation Index, but better than the likes of fast-growing middle-income Vietnam and Mexico, and about the same as Greece or Slovakia.
All of which is to say that Russia won't be "great," perhaps, but it will continue to be *good enough,* and with a scale of geography, resources, hard power, and population that most other countries cannot match. In our schadenfreude, we can tend to mistake our eagerness for adversaries to be basket cases ripe for collapse with the reality that they're just fine and will remain formidable. We indulge in patriotic triumphalism at our own peril.
Although China and Russia share a border, it's misleading to say they're "right next door". The majority of Russia's population is west and/or north of the Caucasus, while the majority of China's population is east and/or ssouth of Xi'an. The distance between the Caucasus and Xi'an is about the same as the distance between New York and Lima, Peru.
I mean, the US imports a tremendous volume of stuff across the whole Pacific Ocean arriving from China to the Port of Los Angeles. Most of that stuff doesn't stay on the West Coast, either. It's destined for the population centers to the East. Russia's situation is the opposite of this, importing stuff from China via sea or rail or truck in the East destined (mostly) for the population centers in the West.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_the_United_States
Mexico and Canada trade more with the US than China in spite of their much smaller economy.
It turns out that it’s easier to cross the ocean than the land!
True, but, either way, the transport costs are marginal. You're talking a few thousand dollars per container to anywhere in Russia via ship/rail/truck. Which is more than it costs to get something across the Pacific to Los Angeles.
1) To an extent they can. But less choice for trading partners means worse negotiating position. And while Russia's economic and demographic center of gravity is close to the EU, it is very far from India and China. In addition, being shunned by the West creates a lot of friction even if alternatives like grey imports exist.
2) The West has the chance to slow or reverse the demographic decline via immigration. Russia hasn't for economic and cultural reasons, and in fact suffers from brain drain itself.
Yes, I'm talking less about the delta between Russia's own revanchist image of itself and the reality and more about an objective assessment of its power projection abilities. Because, if we're talking about national delusions of grandeur, that's a pretty common malady. Former empires like France and the UK can't quite get used to their middle-power status, even after several generations removed from world power status. And even the (objective superpower) Untied States has a hard time fitting into the more multi-polar world of the 21st Century, with its relative power diminishment in comparison to that brief moment of total hyper-power dominance after the fall of the USSR, or, more generally, the post-WWII Pax Americana. Nobody can retain that kind of relative dominance for long. But even in a multi-polar world, there are geopolitical giants. And Russia is still one of them, especially within the context of its near-abroad. And I'm afraid that Americans are still a little too hubristic in underestimate our rivals and overestimate our own power. Which makes for bad policy and disastrous geopolitical miscalculations.
Has there ever been an international system that could deal with declining powers without war? A rising power can be 'invited to the table' of existing power structures, as the USA, USSR and China have been, not without friction or rivalry obviously, but plausibly without conflict. Declining powers, though, often don't see their decline and demand to be treated as though they had their former power. So either you humour them, which is unsustainable and costly, or they become revanchist, as Hitler's Germany or Putin's Russia, and try to reassert their power. Hitler almost succeeded, Putin has failed, but ultimately declining powers will reject the balanced order under which they're declining. I'm genuinely not sure how this can be managed at all.
My "selecting on the dependent variable" sense is tingling...is there broad evidence that declining powers are unusually belligerent, or is our attention just being grabbed by a couple of arbitrarily selected examples? A moment's thought suggests counterexamples like the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 while riding high off swollen oil prices, or Japan's pacific decline since its bubble popped.
I think unfortunately we have to rely a bit on a priori thinking and anecdotes here because the idea of peaceful/balanced world orders is fairly new. I think in past centuries, when war was much more accepted as a legitimate form of power competition, a declining power would be more likely to be _attacked_ by someone trying to take advantage. Russia leaving Siberia this exposed, for example, would be seen as a huge vulnerability in past centuries
And you can even argue if a revanchist power is rising or declining, was post-WW1 Germany a declining power from the German Empire, or was Germany a rising one from the Weimar Republic? Regardless, I think revanchism is the problem, and revanchism needs a decline or perceived decline, although it's possible for declining powers to just accept it, as post-WW2 Germany did. These powers need to break the order to break the trajectory, which I think is problematic for rules-based orders in general. I do admit that it's hard to assess this with any kind of data.
I'll repost from elsewhere on the thread:
Sad but inevitable when a huge number of Russians (including a huge number of Russian elites) still have an imperialist mindset.
It turns out that the idea of being an imperial empire is hard for many people to give up. The French had to suffer through bloody debacles in Vietnam and Algeria (the latter mess almost destroyed the home country). The English had a slightly better experience though Ireland wasn't so great and they were humiliated (along with the French) at the Suez), and they may not be finished decolonizing. The Germans and Japanese needed their home country utterly destroyed due to imperialist ambitions to give those up.
Good description of Russia under Putin. However, the last paragraph left me a little puzzled.
It's true that China became the leading producer of cobalt, rare earth metals, and batteries, as well as solar panels and windmills. This only happened because China had some cost advantages, coupled with a willingness to subsidize export industries. What, exactly, does Noah think the US and Europe should have done to prevent this? Should we have subsidized our own domestic producers, or made it easier to import from places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Should we have undermined the WTO and enacted domestic content rules?
And, what exactly is the cost? Would it really be difficult to restart domestic production if Chinese supplies were cut off?
Great point, I also wonder how much of this "advantage" was a willingness to accept lower environmental (as well as safety) standards?
Certainly, massive subsidization played a major role, but a western unwillingness to get our hands dirty (even if the ultimate damage to the environment would have been less) probably played a role in ceding some of these industries. On the Republican side the (at the time) overly cozy, some might say pandering, attitude toward big business, combined with a Democratic desire not to get beat up for engaging in harmful environmental activities (even if this did more damage in the long run) created some of this issue. I have no idea how much of this issue was driven by political concerns overriding common sense but I think it likely that this was a least a substantial part of the problem.
"A country that lets itself be led around by the marginal logic of comparative advantage will end up with short-term economic gains, but these gains may be offset by the loss of deeper technological capabilities."
I've been teaching international trade to my civics & econ students for the last 2 weeks and this was exactly how I summarized it to them. 3 weeks straight you and I agree on something major. Remarkable. :-)
When comparative advantage is primarily latitudinal and climactic, it's geographically fixed. But comparative advantage is primarily technological and educational, it's quite changeable over time. *(In both directions.) It's ironic that as Smith and Ricardo were devising anti-mercantilist theories for their agrarian world, the world was industrializing underneath them and rendering many of those theories less accurate.
I would love it if you did a deep dive into S. Africa as well, which has also completely imploded. I've seen political commentators talking about it (https://thepsmiths.substack.com/p/review-south-africas-brave-new-world), but I would love a serious economist's take on it.
Agreed. There is a VERY long term Russian bull case hidden in climate change, I guess.
In the immortal words of the Spartans: "IF"
While you're correct, it misses the point. You can't "intentionally" change your latitude and climate. You can "intentionally" change your technology, infrastructure, and education. From a trade perspective, it is the intentionality that matters.
I'm not as worried about the US being over reliant on certain imports and falling prey to "comparative advantage-itis"
Unlike Russia, America has an incredible array of best in the world economic activities and attributes that are desired by both our own citizens and other countries.
I believe our recent foray into industrial policy is motivated by short term politics, not long term economic strategy. And industrial policy is where we have a comparative disadvantage.
I wrote the below brief post, specifically about our CHIP policies, motivated in part by Noah's own post yesterday morning.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/chips-a-few-brief-thoughts
It is interesting that Russia decided to become a petropower as the rest of Europe decided to shift to clean alternative energy sources. Not only did Russia take up the slack as Europe mothballed its North Sea oil fields, but it welcomed Europe exporting its environmental problems to Russia. Europe could continue to use hydrocarbons without the messy job of extracting and refining. Russia was making a living off being Europe’s petrochemical sewer, a convenient means of offshoring environmental damage.
As Noah’s post points out, it is economic suicide to trade short term gains for long term declines. Russia rode an opportunistic wave for a short while and squandered it on this foolish war in Ukraine. Europe will bite the bullet and accelerate its transition away from petroleum dependency and China is leading the way in Asia to do the same. The writing is on the wall yet Russia persists in repeating past mistakes. Perhaps China can sort it all out after this next collapse. There is not much worth saving here and it is likely to be a total tear down. The toxic cleanup is likely to take decades. It is little wonder that Russia’s best talent is heading for the borders.
Why did I get blocked on Noahpinion's Twitter today for citing the CBS story that more than half of weapons donated to Ukraine have gone unaccounted for? Due to pressure from multiple government officials, CBS has altered their report. Still not grounds to block people.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-military-aid-weapons-front-lines/
We might also just be starting to realize the cost of deglobalization, Trump’s trade war, Trump’s and now Biden’s self-flagellating tariffs costing taxpayers $250,000 annually for every steel union job saved according to the peterson institute and hiking up prices in the midst of high inflation, immigration quotas and a decline in foreign labor making inflation much worse by overheating the jobs market. Or Biden’s industrial policy. Our attempts to transition to clean energy which involves cutting down on oil production and paying fossil fuels out of existence with massive subsidies for semiconductor and electric vehicle domestic manufacturing. And “Friendshoring.” You make the point that there will be costs for exposing ourselves to the chinese in terms of manufacturing critical technology. That’s true. But there are arguably bigger and broader risks that with our trade protectionism we are actually moving towards that autarky you just described as weakening and perhaps dooming Russia’s economy. It’s much more disturbing than critical technology exposure, that we’re just scrapping international trade rules to save the god damn planet and protect steel jobs, or gratify partisan sensitivity to incoming immigration. Or our ballooning deficit largely because of our unchecked spending on entitlements which we desperately need to cut and reform but it risks great backlash that is if you look at what’s happening in France. Forget about critical technology. If we can’t get our finances in order, and if we can’t get politicians to actually lead and do so and put down the ridiculous culture war for a minute, it won’t even matter if China has an edge on us in terms of microchips or AI, which they don’t and they won’t, because China is economically screwed in their own way. Indeed China is screwed if the party just acquires more and more authority and they can’t escape the middle income trap. China is no match for the free world as long as the free world remains free
Thanks for the article! I did not realize how high the homicide rate and how low the mortality rate was in russia in the mid 90s.
Do you think that Russian attitudes towards Ukraine is due to how much of the manufacturing sites they have developed?
Ugh, there is one mistake i just cannot pass:
>"dependent on a temporary burst of immigration from countries with rapidly shrinking, aging populations"
What? Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan - main sources of Russian migrant labor - are in 2.9-3.2 TFR range. They aren't shrinking or aging yet.
And that immigration is still ongoing.
Many people did think of Putin as a sort of Basil the Macedonian for Russia, but instead he was like each other Basileus who followed a long reign of decline. A brief flourishing, then more withering
Controlling people's short term economic interest is difficult in the best of times. The richer the country, the more likely it is to take its eye off of a potential danger, especially if it enriches its supporters.
Heh, I love your work, but the comment that communism "did manage to hold down inequality" is the kind of insight I expect from ChatGPT ;)
Like that should only come up in discussions about why inequality isn't always that big a deal, to point out how ridiculous it has been when countries pursued low inequality without concern for the overall standard of living.
His point is that the increase in inequality has actually driven down standard of living, rather than raising it.
so upfront, I am paranoid about the rise of the young communists in the US, and I worry they will take that little snippet and run with it. But a lot of this is about baseline comparisons.
If people do click through to the linked tweet in the post ( https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1229111868070842368 ) then they WILL grasp that communism did a bad job of delivering the goods during a time of great progress in Western nations. So that holding down of inequality was BADLY DONE, but you only get the comparison if you click through.
Then, I worry this makes it sound like there was an opportunity to just keep the USSR rolling along. That's not the baseline! It collapsed because it was collapsing, and I don't want the youths to pin poor outcomes of the bottom 50% on the turn to capitalism. Bad things were going to happen there. (Though also, the turn to capitalism could have been WAY better executed. But it wasn't. "We hoped for the best but it turned out like always" - such a great Russian quote.)
Communism was bad while it was running and ugly to exit. Zero stars, avoid at all costs.
The standard of living of post-Lenin Russia was considerably higher than during the Czars. Especially for the poorest Russians. Many brutal, feudal era dictatorships were overthrown by Marxists. Many colonies freed from themselves from their oppressors too. It’s not a great economic philosophy but it’s pretty good technique to use to throw off a certain kind of tyranny.
hrrrm, I'd agree on the merits of overthrowing dictators and oppressors, but there's no particular advantage to supporting communism as a motivation in that fight. But at some point we're going to hit a philosophical bedrock that's like "I believe in the liberal values of individual freedoms" and maybe we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Famines under the czar happened very frequently and in one case caused the loss of 1/3 of the population of Russia. There have been no famines since 1947. Surely that is an improvement. Communism seems to be a stop along the way to liberalization, though the evidence is inconclusive. Looking at China’s experience with Communism reinforces this.
Dictatorship -> liberal democracy is preferable but not very common.
well that's just saying there were no more famines after the THIRD Soviet famine ended in '47! An amusing way to slice the data! And when it comes to Communism, let's not forget to give props to the Great Helmsman. Mao caused extraordinary famine! And along the way Stalin and Mao caused plenty of other death, deprivation, and misery. That's communism for you.
It's not like there were American or European famines since 1947 either.
Re communism as a stop on the way to liberalization, I'm not convinced we have sound data or an explanatory theory. Being a trifle biased, I'm hearing a story where no matter what path nations take, they end up as a liberal democracy because liberal democracies are the best :) But I cannot prove that.
Good Assessment.