About three months ago I had a notion. I thought I'd write a story with a headline similar to the one above. It would be a story of Russia and the problems that Russia's President Putin was having managing the country. After all, wouldn't Russia be much more efficient if it were just a little smaller.
And heck, it has a precedent. The Alaska territory. Faced with financial and border problems in the 1850s, Tsar Alexander II sold that property to the United States. He made a bundle. Took the Americans to the cleaners. It was called "Steward's folly" in the U.S.
Ok, so Siberia's a little larger than Alaska. I read that Siberia, if separated from Russia, would be the second largest country by area in the world. Only Canada would be larger.
Now I was going to make a kind of spoof out of the whole thing. I even had a real estate purchase contract in mined. The U.S. would again be the purchaser. It would purchase Siberia, but Russia would retain mineral rights to much of Siberia's riches. However extraction and production of the minerals would be left to the owner of the property (the U.S.). Russia would be paid royalties and could raise additional money through production taxes.
I thought it was a fine plan...as a spoof. Of course, perhaps a good story. But also a fantasy. A joke.
Wait. Now the suggestion has actually been made. Mark Steyn, the noted conservative author, has written "The Death of Mother Russia". Now Steyn is a serious man. His articles originate mostly out of the respected newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times. But he also writes for a number of other fine publications such as National Review, The Spectator, The Jerusalem Post, The Sunday Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal and others.
Russia has economic problems. It has been called "the sick man of Europe". Putin has problems with oligarchs (Mr. Khodorkovsky for example), his own uniformed ministries or "Silovoki" (staffed by buddies from his KGB days), the Chechnya war and attendant terrorists problems, an Aids epidemic, environmental problems and a host of other serious and distracting difficulties. Further, he's finding his democracy needs to be "managed", and that is compounding his problems.
Steyn points out other difficulties such as the population crisis. Russia may by 2015 have only about 130 million people, down from today's 148 million. Further, by mid-century it is likely to be down to 50 or 60 million population. Major factors in this decline include a fertility rate of only 1.27 (about 2.05 or so is required to maintain a stable population), a breakdown in the healthcare delivery system, the aforementioned Aids epidemic (soon to be of African proportion in certain areas of the country), and migration out of the country.
Steyn talks of other serious issues. A major one he feels is the 2000 miles of Russo-Chinese border. Russia has always felt a need to expand to protect its borders. But how can Russia even contemplate protecting a Chinese border with a population of a 100 million or so against a Chinese population of 1.2 billion and growing.
Well, Russia has a nuclear arsenal. But can it afford to maintain it? No, the problems go the other way; it is decaying and constitutes a threat to the country in and of itself. Also, the Chinese are building their own more modern arsenal and can afford to do so.
Russia's wealth from oil, gas, metals and timber accounts for eighty percent of its exports. But, where is much of that wealth going? It accrues to the few and much of it leaves the country.
Individual Russians appear all over the world these days. Their wealth is evident in other countries, frequently quite ostentatiously.
What about the non-Slavic peoples of Russia? Many of the republics and territories are Muslim, non-Orthodox. Many of these republics have their own stores of great wealth. Do they not constitute a threat to the Russian Republic? What do they gain by joining in association with Slavic Russia? What about the possibility of a Sino-Muslim alliance? Which is more likely in a "push", a Sino-Muslim alliance or a Sino-Russian one? Why would China need Russia? That long 2000-mile border will be a future problem. China controlling more of it and pushing outbound leads China to areas having more mineral wealth. China can use the territory for a growing population.
In the 19th and 20th centuries the empty spaces on the Siberian Plains were opened up for exploration. The Trans-Siberian Railroad was completed in 1905. Vladivostok became a large city and an active Russian port. What country will that city be a part of later in the 21st century?
Russia's relations with the West haven't been so good of late. Putin dallies with Iran. He deals for financial gain for his country by trading in nuclear proliferation. NATO expansion is a source of irritation. Russia is allowed to be a member of the G-8. Its seat carries little weight, and it shouldn't.
Maybe this is somewhat off-theme, but I choose to digress to the enormous problems of corruption in Russia. No one there making great wealth, largely through this corruption, seems to really give a damn about Russia. Some do, perhaps even Putin. But of those that do, my guess is that they are not among the wealthy who continue to steal the assets of the Russian state. I suspect that many of the wealthy, the corrupt few who have acquired so much of the Russian state's wealth, will in the future look out for their own ill-gotten assets and their own a**es in places beyond the borders of present-day Russia. They and their wealth with be found in places that have names such as London, New York and Paris.
A further digression. I think too of Ukraine. Not quite so many, but it has similar problems to those of Russia. Ukraine will not suffer ignominy as a loser of an empire, a loss of influence and power on the world's stage, or great-nation status. It has never been or ever had them. But the problem of corruption will continue to hold Ukraine back. Attitudes similar to those of the Russian wealthy and powerful exist in Ukraine. Witness the faltering of the Orange Revolution. Watch the powerful few as they now go back to re-organize in order to better divide the spoils, the wealth of Ukraine. Recently, they managed to grant immunity from prosecution to thousands of lower-level bureaucrats. In this, they make mockery of the Rule of Law.
Why did they do it? Well it does create value for those smaller positions of power. Now they can be bought like the higher, more important positions. Now they have value. Like a seat in the Rada. So, a pyramid has been expanded. Maybe someday, like the famous Ponzi, it will fail. But my guess is by then most of the wealthy, along with their riches, as in Russia, will have escaped to better climes.
Back to Russia and the sale of Siberia. Granted, Mark Steyn was illustrating the serious problems facing Russia and calling attention to the problems that Russia's failures can create for the West. But, he was not writing whimsically.
Russia did sell Alaska. The Russia of the times had serious problems. Russia's leaders recognized that the Alaskan territories might be lost to Great Britain or France anyway. They could not defend the territory. They cut the best deal possible.
As for Ukraine? Maybe it could be operated as a conservatorship. A trustee or conservator appointed? Isn't that what happens when bad management causes financial crisis, whether through mistake or corruption?
Just funning.
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