| Submit your comments on this article |
| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Russia's hudna with the Muslim world |
| 2007-02-20 |
| It is maddening to contemplate the denizens of Washington sipping white wine and debating the final triumph of liberal democracy and free markets in the vaunted "end of history". Russia's tragedy is beyond their comprehension. For three generations, the communist system rooted out and extirpated any soul intrepid enough to show thought or initiative. By the early 1990s, Russia's European population was a passive, sullen rabble incapable of asserting its rights; the cleverest and most adventurous emigrated. Demoralization manifested itself in high rates of alcoholism, drug use and venereal disease. Life expectancy fell from 70 years in 1990 to 65 years today. It will take two or three generations before Russians acquire the courage and the sense of civil society to determine their own destiny after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxon countries. The only leadership left in Russia by the terrible adverse selection process of the communist system was the former secret guardians of the state, men whose unique position required them to live by their wits. The former secret-police official Vladimir Putin is the only sort of man who could rule Russia in the wake of its 20th-century tragedy. There is nothing to like about the man, but there is something to respect. Russia is fighting for its life against the odds, and there is no one left to fight for Russia but the bloody-handed fighters of the old regime. Safe in their own continent, with a Muslim population of no more than 2 million to 3 million, composed to a great extent of educated immigrants, the Americans are incapable of understanding what Russia now faces. Yet Russia is a natural ally of the United States for the remainder of the 21st century, perhaps the only natural ally the US will have. Europe does not have the stomach to resist its gradual assimilation in the Islamic world. But Russia will resist, and it will do so ruthlessly. America's cookie-cutter approach to nation-building has been a disaster; Washington stands to learn a great deal from the tragic history of the Russian Empire. The demographic catastrophe facing Russia is about as brutal as the current regime, but I think Spengler may be on to something. I'm currently re-reading Barbara Tuchmans's A Distant Mirror and the parallels between Russia's civil disintegration and the effects of the 14th century's Black Death outbreaks are startling. |
| Posted by:mrp |
| #2 Spengler is wrong that there are no entrepreneurial, independent Russians left. Those that were capable of it have gone to work for the foreign companies that set up in Russia starting in the 1990s, and have done quite well for themselves, as have those who did the same throughout the former Soviet empire. So there is a core capable of making things happen, as soon as the corrupt system is cleaned up just a little. in the meantime, it's still very much like Prohibition Chicago, and Mr. Wife won't take me with him because he doesn't trust me to not get kidnapped or something by the Mafiasky. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-02-20 16:31 |
| #1 Spengler is worth the reading & sometimes is a lot of fun. All his columns can be accessed here. One of his key points I have adopted is this one: "No one today cares if Sunnis kill Shi'ites in Iraq or Lebanon, or Hamas and Fatah fight to the bitter end in Gaza - provided, of course, that US aircraft carriers keep the oil flowing through the Persian Gulf." His starkest view: The present conflict in the Middle East is not between Arab and Jew, but between Arabs and Jews who seek their way in the modern world on the one hand, and Arabs and Persians who reject the modern world on the other. The latter have nothing to lose and are prepared to fight to the death; how else do we explain the unlimited supply of Muslims who are prepared to die to murder Muslim civilians? |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-02-20 13:49 |