Is Russia Collapsing?

Murray Feshbach in the Washington Post:

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.

Does it matter? It certainly matters to Russia, but our national leaders have perhaps not been clear about what it might mean to the United States and to other nations near and far. In the recent elections, John McCain made war-like and nationalistic hay out of the Russian invasion of Georgia, though he let the matter slide as it became clearer to those who took an interest that our client in Georgia had probably been tacitly encouraged to take stupid risks on the border regions with Russia. Russia behaved badly, but so did Georgia and the United States, though not in equal measure.

But the challenge to the next president is not merely rhetorical. Russia is a nuclear power, perhaps more dangerous to the world when it is collapsing than during the long stalemate of the Cold War. It will be interesting to see how diplomatic and public rhetoric are managed in the presidency of Barack Obama.

By a strange turn of associations, I was in Moscow in December 1991, the month the Soviet Union collapsed. I had been asked to travel there to consult with the Soviet Academy of Sciences--which became the Russian Academy of Sciences in the days we were there. Peter Olenik of Princeton and I were sent by the Carnegie Foundation and IREX to encourage the institutes of the Academy to install computers with modems that could connect their scholars to each other and especially to other countries. Not only the Soviet state but also the Soviet economy were collapsing. The ruble was nearly worthless and hard currency was simply not available to buy books, journal subscriptions, or plane tickets to international conferences. Carnegie had funded a project led by Michael Cole of University of California, San Diego, to experiment with person-to-person email connections between Russia and the United States, and our visit was part of the transition of that effort as Russia emerged from the rule of Communism and the Soviet empire. The idea was to form a culture of open cooperation and mutual trust.

It is very sad to see what has happened since those optimistic days.

Murray Feshbach, "Behind the Bluster, Russia Is Collapsing," Washington Post, 5 October 2008.