Russian Decline.

As the West looks with great concern at a resurgent Russia and seeks ways of coping with its power projection, it is worth looking at the medium- and long-term perspective as well as the immediate and definitely sizable challenges we are facing. [...]

Still, Russia is a giant on feet of clay, demographically speaking. Russia is a country in such steep decline that it is estimated by demographers to decline to 99 million by 2050. Some even predict the figure as low as 77 million. By then the United States, whose population growth continues unparalleled among developed nations, will have an estimated 419 million people. Which nation do you think will be more powerful in shaping the 21st century? The reasons for this rather hopeful state of affairs - looked at from an American point of view, of course are explored in a new study, recently published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and authored by Richard Jackson and Neil Howe, "The Graying of the Great Powers: Demography and Geopolitics in the 21st Century." Russia's demographic decline has been the subject of demographers like Nicholas Eberstadt at American Enterprise Institute for some time, but predictions of this kind have only far more recently been a subject more broadly of interest in the political debate. Neo-Malthuseans of the 1970s and 1980s used to persuade politicians and scholars in the West that human beings themselves were the problem. Adding more therefore was far from desirable.

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