Very interesting article. My thoughts go to how secure will Ru feel along the perimeter of her borders in the next decade or so as the consequences of their demographics fully unfolds?
According to Peter Zeihan, the main reason for the war is so Russia can get to a more defensible position. Go a little bit further, they can close 2 gaps armies can use to March into Russia. Which is NATO territory. Same reason they'd like to get the Baltic States back in the fold.
They'd like to, but I think the Russians understand the difference between Article V and non Article V, and they also understand the difference between places traditionally in their sphere of influence, and those that are historically more European. Luckily the far sighted Welles Declaration puts a stronger element of US guaranteed independence on those states than other small nations have.
If the Russians had managed to pull off Putin's 'short victorious war' in Ukraine I wouldn't have counted on them to observe Article V where the Baltic states are concerned. And looking at the way Poland is arming, it appears that they don't share your optimism in that regard.
I am familiar with his commentary on this and the evidence suggests that Russia closed those gaps along her southern border and is proceeding to do same along her western border. Ru still holds a huge military parade to celebrate the victory in The Great Patriotic War. Operation Barbarossa and what followed is seared into Ru minds (loss of 20 to 25 million of your own will tend to do that). I suspect NATO's eastward expansion and, our military "answer" to cleaving regions of the former nation of Yugoslavia into bits and pieces probably serves as a stark examples to Russia as to how any assurances from the West (as regards preserving Ru's territorial integrity) would be regarded in Moscow. I'm not excusing Ru's conduct here. I simply noting that achieving their aims and the remnant of what's left of child-bearing age males is not going to be pretty and I can only imagine their paranoia and fears will rise exponentially.
And I feel zero pity for such a messed up society. Until they wake up and start to clean up their own back yard instead of stealing new yards from better-off neighbors, it's not going to change. And they will not prosper.
The world endured decades of that abomination of the former Soviet Union's handiwork and eastern Europe existed with the Soviet boot to their throats for over 4+ decades. The evidence suggests Russia is a societal death spiral and I don't wish harm on others but they planted those seeds long ago so you sow... you reap.
HMSLion: Good point. Indeed, the bad blood between Russia and the region or country known as "the Ukraine, or "Ukraine" goes back much futher than 1918.
At some point there was no bad blood, because if you go back far enough you will find that Ukraine voluntarily joined the Russian Empire in return for protection from the Poles. The Poles were not always the "good guys".
That seems unlikely. I have no doubt that once there wasn't enough food is got distributed to better connected people, but the idea that Ukraine was starved on purpose doesn't make a lot of sense.
your first map has fertility, and shows that Euro-Russia has low fertility, but births are fertility x population density.
My point being, the high fertility areas, beyond being the most non Russian are also low density, and the high density Russian areas are uniformly low fertility.
2.1% fertility/replacement rate is hardly enough to sustain a nation, but then Russia has pretty much avoided the pandemic of gender confusion that is LGBTQ...nth. That might see them through this while Europe and the US fail. The "winners" with the super high fertility rates won't really be winners when the lights go out, though. Unless you factor in Mormons, Amish and Mennonites.
Very interesting. Reading the data I felt dirty. My thoughts on war have changed in the past few minutes, and I am unable to vocalize, or even arrange thoughts into something I can wrap my head around. I will have to read this again tomorrow.
Gonna be a real boon for smart folks investing in the mud hut housing industry. Or yurts, hovels, tents, teepees, lean-to's, repurposed 40 year old RV's, etc. Don't want to come across as too phobicky. Und ich war nicht derjenige, der zuerst "Lebensraum" gesagt hat, oder, Herr Jet? : )
They could have stopped it on Day 1 by simply closing Ukraine's skies. And now Johnson fiddles while Ukraine burns. They didn't start this war but they are not doing enough to end it.
The Wars of the Soviet Succession started in the early 1990s, and the West never really knew what it wanted. As the saying goes, when the West came to a fork in the road, they took it.
Sarotte's hagiography of NATO expansion "Not One Inch" documents the betrayal that the West felt with the violence of the first Russian attack into Chechnya. But Russia couldn't be expected to simply allow the complete breakdown of Russia, the Russian Federation, the historical imperial Russian project or some combination of the above, while they had combat power to stop it.
The borders of the Former Soviet Union were written for Soviet reasons. Often those are lost in the bureaucratic history of the Soviet Union. There isn't even much consensus on the basis of the 1954 Soviet Presidium decision to gift Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (along with other additions.) Yet, like the OAU decision to freeze African borders to the tune of the probable loss of millions of lives, we in the West all accepted the post Soviet borders are permanently immutable, even though practically, culturally and politically, there was next to nothing "historical" about them. For the most part, it was was where the NKVD and Red Army ended the war in 1945, be it the end of Bessarabia, the partition of the Kurils, the seemingly permanent incorporation of the Baltic states, etc.
With regard to the post Soviet space, it should be unsurprising the Russians were the own worst enemies. For the West, I often wonder how and why we didn't do better, because I don't know if we could have, with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, done worse.
I've always suspected that unreliable moles Bill and Hill Clinton found themselves without a master in '93 and decided to make bank, equally at the expense of our Republic.
Like geography, demographics, too, are destiny. It appears that the majority of 1st world countries have a below replacement birthrate. Even the Chinese, as prolific breeders as they are, have a crisis in the next couple of decades. The World is a changing, folks.
It’s unutterably saddening to see both Russia and Ukraine bleed. It’s like the First World War writ small with a generation decimated on both sides.
I understand why ukr sees it as a war of national survival. I think I understand why rus started the war in 2014, but I can’t see how the potential gain is worth the loss already suffered nor the future costs of that loss. It doesn’t matter if rus wins everything or loses, the Russian federation is doomed in the longer term.
(1) The claim that 80% of russia's population is ethnically russian is spurious at best. In Siberia, thre is a large proportion of what were once ethnic Ukrainians who were exiled there over the last 200 years. But otherwise, "ethnic russians" do not constitute 80% of the RF population. (2) The map showing that ethnic russians dominate all those regions beyond the Urals is also suspect. For russia to have 80% ethnic russians would mean about 105 million ethnic russians in the RF itself, which is patent nonsense given their significant diaspora outside the country, as this would make them one of the largest European ethnicities in the world... I suspect this data is based on the ethnicity written into individual passports, which has been a hefty fiction since soviet times. It was a handy way of diminishing other ethnicities, first among those Ukrainian, and of ensuring a better career ladder for all. (3) It's OBVIOUS that Putin has been concentrating on the non-Slavic, largely non-Christian, population that lives at great distances from Moscow for recruiting, so that any unrest is not felt or heard where the majority of ethnic russians live....
I suspect the Russians have a similar map of the United Staes showing how white southerners - the traditional source for recruits - are having fewer children which is why the U. S Army can’t meet its goals. They can even point to a senator who wanted to enlist illegal aliens.
Numbers play a role, obviously, but white Southerners do not like being told they are somehow a problem when they do a lot of heavy lifting in the US military (or at least they did). When they warrior ethic died and was replaced with marxist principles the expectations died. Defense of our country was honorable, defense of the Party is not. The Army, in particular, has bigger systemic problems than trying to recruit white soldiers from any part of the country. Illegal aliens is an absurd idea, didn't work well for the Romans. We need those white recruits if we're to be serious about defense.
White Southerners and corn-fed Mid-West boys don't like woke crap. It is no accident that there's a push to force-feed them that. People in DC think this is a good idea. Might be time to join up with your local neighborhood watch as doing that won't get you on the terror watch list like joining a militia might, yet. Yeah, I stockpile Reynold's Wrap. Hats don't last long since Reynold's outsourced.
I wish there was a reliable systems architecture to send Care Packages to Uke and Rus soldiers like we were able to do during the GWoT. There was little of that in Vietnam but a massive amount in Gulf War I. Frontline grunts on both sides in this war deserve foot powder, Imodium-AD, Handi-Wipes, paperbacks, primo candies and beef jerky.
My thoughts are that this recruiting strategy keeps the majority Slavic population - Putin's supporters - shielded from the realities of the war. Worse still, because of the sanctions, the insulated, well-to-do urban Russians have just shifted their buying habits from European luxury goods to Chinese. The longer the war persists, the better it is for the PRC's economy. To wit, look at Chinese car sales the past two years.
Interesting data. I do believe that non-Russian troops paid a major part in WW II on the eastern front., replacing the troops killed/captured in the initial Nazi offensives. Also, I wonder how much of the "Shortage" of Russian troops is due to draft evasion, which I gather is endemic these days in Russia.
I've studied their demographics for years professionally. They do have a problem, not unique to them. Putin has made no secret of his ambitions, driven by the inevitable before it becomes manifest. Neither Russia or Ukraine have come close to replacing their pre-1941 populations yet here they are, fighting to the last man, evidently. The Eastern Front redux requires manpower for those outdated tactics. For Russia, this optional loss of manpower is significant. I am among those who believe their offensive capabilities are degraded and do not currently pose much of a threat to Europe. That's not to say someone miscalculates and does something foolish...again.
Very interesting article. My thoughts go to how secure will Ru feel along the perimeter of her borders in the next decade or so as the consequences of their demographics fully unfolds?
According to Peter Zeihan, the main reason for the war is so Russia can get to a more defensible position. Go a little bit further, they can close 2 gaps armies can use to March into Russia. Which is NATO territory. Same reason they'd like to get the Baltic States back in the fold.
They'd like to, but I think the Russians understand the difference between Article V and non Article V, and they also understand the difference between places traditionally in their sphere of influence, and those that are historically more European. Luckily the far sighted Welles Declaration puts a stronger element of US guaranteed independence on those states than other small nations have.
If the Russians had managed to pull off Putin's 'short victorious war' in Ukraine I wouldn't have counted on them to observe Article V where the Baltic states are concerned. And looking at the way Poland is arming, it appears that they don't share your optimism in that regard.
Maybe, but that's highly speculative. We demonstrably deterred the Russians for doing that prior to 2020. Why do you think that is?
Actually look to the religious affiliations. Is it orthodox Christianity or does it look to Rome?
I am familiar with his commentary on this and the evidence suggests that Russia closed those gaps along her southern border and is proceeding to do same along her western border. Ru still holds a huge military parade to celebrate the victory in The Great Patriotic War. Operation Barbarossa and what followed is seared into Ru minds (loss of 20 to 25 million of your own will tend to do that). I suspect NATO's eastward expansion and, our military "answer" to cleaving regions of the former nation of Yugoslavia into bits and pieces probably serves as a stark examples to Russia as to how any assurances from the West (as regards preserving Ru's territorial integrity) would be regarded in Moscow. I'm not excusing Ru's conduct here. I simply noting that achieving their aims and the remnant of what's left of child-bearing age males is not going to be pretty and I can only imagine their paranoia and fears will rise exponentially.
And I feel zero pity for such a messed up society. Until they wake up and start to clean up their own back yard instead of stealing new yards from better-off neighbors, it's not going to change. And they will not prosper.
The world endured decades of that abomination of the former Soviet Union's handiwork and eastern Europe existed with the Soviet boot to their throats for over 4+ decades. The evidence suggests Russia is a societal death spiral and I don't wish harm on others but they planted those seeds long ago so you sow... you reap.
Are you talking about Russia or the West?
Russia always wants just a little more buffer zone, then a buffer zone to protect the old buffer zone, and then another.
Their version of "We need to stop them over there so we don't have to stop them over here".
"From the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started again in 2022...."
The war began in 2014 and never ended. The killing never stopped. Putin simply widened it in 2022.
I'd argue it began in 1918...and never completely stopped. The Soviets never forgave Ukrainian resistance to the Communist jackboot.
I think you can make a case for that. Things did quite down after Stalin reconquered Ukraine, but the maltreatment and discrimination never ended.
HMSLion: Good point. Indeed, the bad blood between Russia and the region or country known as "the Ukraine, or "Ukraine" goes back much futher than 1918.
At some point there was no bad blood, because if you go back far enough you will find that Ukraine voluntarily joined the Russian Empire in return for protection from the Poles. The Poles were not always the "good guys".
The " Holdomor " wasn't by accident either.
That seems unlikely. I have no doubt that once there wasn't enough food is got distributed to better connected people, but the idea that Ukraine was starved on purpose doesn't make a lot of sense.
your first map has fertility, and shows that Euro-Russia has low fertility, but births are fertility x population density.
My point being, the high fertility areas, beyond being the most non Russian are also low density, and the high density Russian areas are uniformly low fertility.
The US has a similar, if inverted, issue when it come to fertility. Racial and ethnic minorities comprise about 20% of the population in rural counties but closer to 45% in urban counties. Overall, Hispanics have the highest fertility rates across all groups followed by those of African descent. But if you look at fertility rates by county, rural is higher than urban. https://www.usnews.com/object/image/00000166-7e85-dc07-a9ee-ffad38700000/181016hcbirthchart-graphic.S._Counties_Rural_Small_or_medium_metro_Large_metro_chartbuilder.png
2.1% fertility/replacement rate is hardly enough to sustain a nation, but then Russia has pretty much avoided the pandemic of gender confusion that is LGBTQ...nth. That might see them through this while Europe and the US fail. The "winners" with the super high fertility rates won't really be winners when the lights go out, though. Unless you factor in Mormons, Amish and Mennonites.
meanwhile, in china…and the U.S…..
Very interesting. Reading the data I felt dirty. My thoughts on war have changed in the past few minutes, and I am unable to vocalize, or even arrange thoughts into something I can wrap my head around. I will have to read this again tomorrow.
Well, here is the Lebensraum for the new African diaspora/s.
Gonna be a real boon for smart folks investing in the mud hut housing industry. Or yurts, hovels, tents, teepees, lean-to's, repurposed 40 year old RV's, etc. Don't want to come across as too phobicky. Und ich war nicht derjenige, der zuerst "Lebensraum" gesagt hat, oder, Herr Jet? : )
Two nations, being bled while by the evil corrupt men in charge. With evil, corrupt men in the West urging the war on, because they benefit from it.
They could have stopped it on Day 1 by simply closing Ukraine's skies. And now Johnson fiddles while Ukraine burns. They didn't start this war but they are not doing enough to end it.
Not. Our. War.
It will be.... if it isn't already.
MRT's Haircut: Not a war, comrade. A business opportunity.
Oh right. I guess I should be looking more at my portfolios and less at history and my personal principles.
The Wars of the Soviet Succession started in the early 1990s, and the West never really knew what it wanted. As the saying goes, when the West came to a fork in the road, they took it.
Sarotte's hagiography of NATO expansion "Not One Inch" documents the betrayal that the West felt with the violence of the first Russian attack into Chechnya. But Russia couldn't be expected to simply allow the complete breakdown of Russia, the Russian Federation, the historical imperial Russian project or some combination of the above, while they had combat power to stop it.
The borders of the Former Soviet Union were written for Soviet reasons. Often those are lost in the bureaucratic history of the Soviet Union. There isn't even much consensus on the basis of the 1954 Soviet Presidium decision to gift Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (along with other additions.) Yet, like the OAU decision to freeze African borders to the tune of the probable loss of millions of lives, we in the West all accepted the post Soviet borders are permanently immutable, even though practically, culturally and politically, there was next to nothing "historical" about them. For the most part, it was was where the NKVD and Red Army ended the war in 1945, be it the end of Bessarabia, the partition of the Kurils, the seemingly permanent incorporation of the Baltic states, etc.
With regard to the post Soviet space, it should be unsurprising the Russians were the own worst enemies. For the West, I often wonder how and why we didn't do better, because I don't know if we could have, with the benefit of 30 years of hindsight, done worse.
I've always suspected that unreliable moles Bill and Hill Clinton found themselves without a master in '93 and decided to make bank, equally at the expense of our Republic.
Like geography, demographics, too, are destiny. It appears that the majority of 1st world countries have a below replacement birthrate. Even the Chinese, as prolific breeders as they are, have a crisis in the next couple of decades. The World is a changing, folks.
Perhaps in the realm of unintended consequences the Chinese killed a remarkable number of daughters with their one child policy
Liked, but not liked.
It’s unutterably saddening to see both Russia and Ukraine bleed. It’s like the First World War writ small with a generation decimated on both sides.
I understand why ukr sees it as a war of national survival. I think I understand why rus started the war in 2014, but I can’t see how the potential gain is worth the loss already suffered nor the future costs of that loss. It doesn’t matter if rus wins everything or loses, the Russian federation is doomed in the longer term.
(1) The claim that 80% of russia's population is ethnically russian is spurious at best. In Siberia, thre is a large proportion of what were once ethnic Ukrainians who were exiled there over the last 200 years. But otherwise, "ethnic russians" do not constitute 80% of the RF population. (2) The map showing that ethnic russians dominate all those regions beyond the Urals is also suspect. For russia to have 80% ethnic russians would mean about 105 million ethnic russians in the RF itself, which is patent nonsense given their significant diaspora outside the country, as this would make them one of the largest European ethnicities in the world... I suspect this data is based on the ethnicity written into individual passports, which has been a hefty fiction since soviet times. It was a handy way of diminishing other ethnicities, first among those Ukrainian, and of ensuring a better career ladder for all. (3) It's OBVIOUS that Putin has been concentrating on the non-Slavic, largely non-Christian, population that lives at great distances from Moscow for recruiting, so that any unrest is not felt or heard where the majority of ethnic russians live....
I suspect the Russians have a similar map of the United Staes showing how white southerners - the traditional source for recruits - are having fewer children which is why the U. S Army can’t meet its goals. They can even point to a senator who wanted to enlist illegal aliens.
Numbers play a role, obviously, but white Southerners do not like being told they are somehow a problem when they do a lot of heavy lifting in the US military (or at least they did). When they warrior ethic died and was replaced with marxist principles the expectations died. Defense of our country was honorable, defense of the Party is not. The Army, in particular, has bigger systemic problems than trying to recruit white soldiers from any part of the country. Illegal aliens is an absurd idea, didn't work well for the Romans. We need those white recruits if we're to be serious about defense.
We're already doing a lot of other things that didn't work well for the Romans; why stop?
White Southerners and corn-fed Mid-West boys don't like woke crap. It is no accident that there's a push to force-feed them that. People in DC think this is a good idea. Might be time to join up with your local neighborhood watch as doing that won't get you on the terror watch list like joining a militia might, yet. Yeah, I stockpile Reynold's Wrap. Hats don't last long since Reynold's outsourced.
"White Southerners and corn-fed Mid-West boys don't like woke crap." Roger that, Dale. Them, too.
Imagine having to import tin foil hats from China.
Meanwhile the entire British Army could be seated in Wembly Stadium with room for the RN and RAF.
Somehow I don’t think a Ukrainian soldier on the frontline will take much comfort in this analysis
I wish there was a reliable systems architecture to send Care Packages to Uke and Rus soldiers like we were able to do during the GWoT. There was little of that in Vietnam but a massive amount in Gulf War I. Frontline grunts on both sides in this war deserve foot powder, Imodium-AD, Handi-Wipes, paperbacks, primo candies and beef jerky.
My thoughts are that this recruiting strategy keeps the majority Slavic population - Putin's supporters - shielded from the realities of the war. Worse still, because of the sanctions, the insulated, well-to-do urban Russians have just shifted their buying habits from European luxury goods to Chinese. The longer the war persists, the better it is for the PRC's economy. To wit, look at Chinese car sales the past two years.
"The longer the war persists, the better it is for the PRC's economy"
Perhaps we've found why the US Government Establishment is so focused on ensuring it lasts as long as possible
Interesting data. I do believe that non-Russian troops paid a major part in WW II on the eastern front., replacing the troops killed/captured in the initial Nazi offensives. Also, I wonder how much of the "Shortage" of Russian troops is due to draft evasion, which I gather is endemic these days in Russia.
I've studied their demographics for years professionally. They do have a problem, not unique to them. Putin has made no secret of his ambitions, driven by the inevitable before it becomes manifest. Neither Russia or Ukraine have come close to replacing their pre-1941 populations yet here they are, fighting to the last man, evidently. The Eastern Front redux requires manpower for those outdated tactics. For Russia, this optional loss of manpower is significant. I am among those who believe their offensive capabilities are degraded and do not currently pose much of a threat to Europe. That's not to say someone miscalculates and does something foolish...again.
Europe is doing a good job wrecking itself without Russian help.
Absolutely.
That’s what happens when you allow snake oil Carney’s in the form of WEF supranational’s steal your sovereignty.