|
|
|
Behind the Bluster, Russia
Is Collapsing
By Murray Feshbach
The bear is back. That's what all too many Russia-watchers have been saying
since Russian troops steamrolled Georgia in August, warning that the country's
strongman, Vladimir Putin, was clawing his way back toward superpower status.
The new Russia's resurgence has been fueled -- quite literally -- by windfall
profits from gas and oil, a big jump in defense spending and the cocky attitude
on such display during the mauling of Georgia, its U.S.-backed neighbor to the
south. Many now believe that the powerful Russian bear of the Cold War years is
coming out of hibernation.
Not so fast. Predictions that Russia will again become powerful, rich and
influential ignore some simply devastating problems at home that block any march
to power. Sure, Russia's army could take tiny Georgia. But Putin's military is
still in tatters, armed with rusting weaponry and staffed with indifferent
recruits. Meanwhile, a declining population is robbing the military of a new
generation of soldiers. Russia's economy is almost totally dependent on the
price of oil. And, worst of all, it's facing a public health crisis that verges
on the catastrophic.
To be sure, the skylines of Russia's cities are chock-a-block with cranes.
Industrial lofts are now the rage in Moscow, Russian tourists crowd far-flung
locales from Thailand to the Caribbean, and Russian moguls are snapping up real
estate and art in London almost as quickly as their oil-rich counterparts from
the Persian Gulf. But behind the shiny surface, Russian society may actually be
weaker than it was even during Soviet times. The Kremlin's recent military
adventures and tough talk are the bluster of the frail, not the swagger of the
strong.
ad_icon
While Russia has capitalized impressively on its oil industry, the volatility of
the world oil market means that Putin cannot count on a long-term pipeline of
cash flowing from high oil prices. A predicted drop of about one-third in the
price of a barrel of oil will surely constrain Putin's ability to carry out his
ambitious agendas, both foreign and domestic.
That makes Moscow's announced plan to boost defense spending by close to 26
percent in 2009 -- in order to fully re-arm its military with state-of-the-art
weaponry -- a dicey proposition. What the world saw in Georgia was a badly
outdated arsenal, one that would take many years to replace -- even assuming the
country could afford the $200 billion cost.
Something even larger is blocking Russia's march. Recent decades, most notably
since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, have seen an appalling
deterioration in the health of the Russian population, anchoring Russia not in
the forefront of developed countries but among the most backward of nations.
This is a tragedy of huge proportions -- but not a particularly surprising one,
at least to me. I followed population, health and environmental issues in the
Soviet Union for decades, and more recently, I have reported on diseases such as
the HIV/AIDS epidemic ravaging the Russian population. I've visited Russia more
than 50 times over the years, so I can say from firsthand experience that this
national calamity isn't happening suddenly. It's happening inexorably.
According to U.N. figures, the average life expectancy for a Russian man is 59
years -- putting the country at about 166th place in the world longevity
sweepstakes, one notch above Gambia. For women, the picture is somewhat rosier:
They can expect to live, on average, 73 years, barely beating out the Moldovans.
But there are still some 126 countries where they could expect to live longer.
And the gap between expected longevity for men and for women -- 14 years -- is
the largest in the developed world.
So what's killing the Russians? All the usual suspects -- HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, alcoholism, cancer, cardiovascular and circulatory diseases,
suicides, smoking, traffic accidents -- but they occur in alarmingly large
numbers, and Moscow has neither the resources nor the will to stem the tide.
Consider this:
Three times as many Russians die from heart-related illnesses as do Americans or
Europeans, per each 100,000 people.
Tuberculosis deaths in Russia are about triple the World Health Organization's
definition of an epidemic, which is based on a new-case rate of 50 cases per
100,000 people.
Average alcohol consumption per capita is double the rate the WHO considers
dangerous to one's health.
About 1 million people in Russia have been diagnosed with HIV or AIDS, according
to WHO estimates.
Using mid-year figures, it's estimated that 25 percent more new HIV/AIDS cases
will be recorded this year than were logged in 2007.
And none of this is likely to get better any time soon. Peter Piot, the head of
UNAIDS, the U.N. agency created in response to the epidemic, told a press
conference this summer that he is "very pessimistic about what is going on in
Russia and Eastern Europe . . . where there is the least progress." This should
be all the more worrisome because young people are most at risk in Russia. In
the United States and Western Europe, 70 percent of those with HIV/AIDS are men
over age 30; in Russia, 80 percent of this group are aged 15 to 29. And although
injected-drug users represent about 65 percent of Russia's cases, the country
has officially rejected methadone as a treatment, even though it would likely
reduce the potential for HIV infections that lead to AIDS.
And then there's tuberculosis -- remember tuberculosis? In the United States,
with a population of 303 million, 650 people died of the disease in 2007. In
Russia, which has a total of 142 million people, an astonishing 24,000 of them
died of tuberculosis in 2007. Can it possibly be coincidental that, according to
Gennady Onishchenko, the country's chief public health physician, only 9 percent
of Russian TB hospitals meet current hygienic standards, 21 percent lack either
hot or cold running water, 11 percent lack a sewer system, and 20 percent have a
shortage of TB drugs? Hardly.
On the other end of the lifeline, the news isn't much better. Russia's birth
rate has been declining for more than a decade, and even a recent increase in
births will be limited by the fact that the number of women age 20 to 29 (those
responsible for two-thirds of all babies) will drop markedly in the next four or
five years to mirror the 50 percent drop in the birth rate in the late 1980s and
the 1990s. And, sadly, the health of Russia's newborns is quite poor, with about
70 percent of them experiencing complications at birth.
Last summer, Piot of UNAIDS said that bringing Russia's HIV/AIDS epidemic under
control was "a matter of political leadership and of changing the policy." He
might just as well have been talking about the much larger public health crisis
that threatens this vast country. But the policies seem unlikely to change as
the bear lumbers along, driven by disastrously misplaced priorities and the
blindingly unrealistic expectations of a resentment-driven political leadership.
Moscow remains bent on ignoring the devastating truth: The nation is not just
sick but dying.
murray.feshbach@wilsoncenter.org
Murray Feshbach is a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars and a research professor emeritus at Georgetown University's School
of Foreign Service.
The Washington Post
Sunday, October 5, 2008; Page B03
|
|
|
