by Peter Zeihan
Within that demographic catastrophe is yet another challenge. The Soviet/Russian educational system works on an apprenticeship program. After finishing college/tertiary school, would-be professionals apprentice to a skilled engineer for a few years before entering the workforce. However, funding for Russian technical education collapsed in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union entered its terminal slide. It never recovered enough to maintain Russia’s skilled labor force. As of 2015, the youngest population cohort that has experienced a full education is already fifty-one. The average age of male mortality in Russia is fifty-nine (or at least it was in the mid-2000s, which is when the last reliable demographic data escaped Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service). Russia won’t even be able to maintain what it has, much less reach for more, within a few short years.
Russia’s challenge is straightforward, if not simple: Its demographic decline is so steep, so far advanced, and so multivectored that for demographic reasons alone Russia is unlikely to survive as a state, and Russians are unlikely to survive as a people over the next couple of generations. Yet within Russia’s completely indefensible borders, it cannot possibly last even that long. Russia has at most eight years of relative strength to act. If it fails, it will have lost the capacity to man a military. To maintain a sizable missile fleet. To keep its roads and rail system in working order. To prevent its regional cities from collapsing. To monitor its frontier.
To delay its national twilight.
The most effective use of its time would be to attempt to reanchor in as many of Central Eurasia’s border regions as possible, allowing Russia to concentrate forces in the Hordelands’ access points. Success would doom Russia to a slow-motion demographic disintegration from within. Failure would leave Russia open to hostile forces along all of its borders while it is disintegrating from within. The first is a recipe for death over several decades. The second is a recipe for death over one or two.
It is extremely likely that Russia lacks the strength to plug all of the gaps in its frontier, so it will have to prioritize. Here is the order I see Russia acting to attempt to preserve its existence.
Russia’s single largest concern is Ukraine.
• Ukraine occupies the single most productive portion of the Russian wheat belt (the area farthest south and with the most reliable rainfall). As Russia’s manpower and capital shortages mount, maintaining a grip on the lowest-input, highest-output lands will become of increasing importance.
• Together with Moldova, Ukraine commands the Bessarabian Gap. Control of the gap would limit the ability of a resurgent Turkey (see below) to threaten Russia’s core territories.
• Ukraine holds the largest population of ethnic Russians outside of Russia (true even if one considers the Crimea part of Russia and not part of Ukraine). Their numerical inclusion into the Russian system would delay twilight a few more years.
• Eastern Ukraine’s industrial base is directly adjacent to Russia’s. Combining them would assist all portions of the Russian economy to last a bit longer.
• Ukrainian infrastructure transports nearly half of Russia’s oil and natural gas exports to Europe, making Ukraine an energy tool whose political leverage is nearly as valuable as its financial income.
• The Ukrainian border is only three hundred miles of wide-open flatlands from Moscow, making Ukraine—at a minimum—valuable as a buffer.
• The only truly navigable river of the former Soviet Union, the Dnieper, flows through Ukrainian territory, flows south, and allows Ukraine to integrate economically with the lands of the Black Sea, the Sea of Marmara, and the world beyond. The river not only makes Ukraine the most potentially capital-rich portion of the Hordelands, it also makes it the only portion that can perhaps seek a destiny independent of Moscow. Russia dare not let that happen.
• The Crimean Peninsula commands the mouth of the Dnieper and is home to Russia’s only truly warm-water naval base, Sevastopol. As long as Crimea and Sevastopol are in Russian hands, Ukraine cannot make a true bid for economic independence, and naval powers—most notably Turkey—cannot dominate the Black Sea. Russia’s efforts to reanchor started in the Crimea in early 2014. They will not end there.
In any form an independent Ukraine is a threat to Russia. But it is only the first threat Russia must address before 2020.
The second most critical region is the Northern European frontier, home to Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic trio of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Collectively these five states command Russia’s exposure to the North European Plain as well as the Baltic coastline and the fate of Russia’s second city, Saint Petersburg. Russia must at a minimum neutralize this region, but in this faces extreme challenges. Poland and the Baltic trio are pathologically hostile to Russia, with extremely good reason: The Russians/Soviets occupied all of them for two generations. The four not only collaborate closely to resist Russian influence but are also increasingly partnering with two other countries historically famous for doing so with more success: Denmark and Sweden. In dealing with this frontier, Russia’s key advantage is Belarus, which suffers from a culture cringe that is somewhat similar to Stockholm syndrome. Belarus suffered under Soviet times just as much as the other occupied peoples, but the Belarusians are the only former Soviet people who actually want to be Russian. They do not see partnership with—or occupation by—Russia as necessarily a negative. A Russian-Belarusian partnership/merger doesn’t unilaterally solve Russia’s North European Plain problem, but it is a great leap toward a solution.
The third target is lightly populated Kazakhstan. While large portions of the Russian wheat belt lie in Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan’s role in Russia’s future is primarily as a buffer region. It exists in a sort of no-man’s-land between Russia’s more densely populated European territories and the Turkic peoples of Central Asia to the south and the Chinese to the east. Moscow doesn’t need Kazakhstan to be robust or even to be a successful state, it just needs it to continue existing. So long as there is an independent Kazakhstan, then there is no one breaking down Russia’s back door.
Finally there is the Caucasus, perhaps the world’s most unforgiving crucible of ethnic hostility. Imagine the pain of the Balkans, but inject it with the gentle mercies of the Huns, Persians, Mongols, and Russians and then let it fester for a few centuries. Even a brief overview of the region would take up at least a book,1 so I won’t dive into it here. Suffice it to say that Russia (rightly) fears that Turkish and Persian influence (or worse) will penetrate through the mountains and turn Russia’s various Turkic/Muslim peoples against it. Sound far-fetched? Think again. This is in essence what happened with the Chechen wars in the 1990s.
The Caucasus is a fractured and fractious region, and maintaining control would require precisely the sort of manpower-heavy effort that Russia will find increasingly difficult. So, yes, Russian troops will certainly be used, but Moscow will use what money, technology, weapons, and intelligence it has to bolster multiple allied forces throughout the Caucasus region, the Armenians, the Abkhaz, and the Ossetians in particular. And as hostile influences and forces push into the region, the Russians will beat a fighting retreat behind the bodies of its falling allies.
The specific order in which Russia addresses these concerns will likely be determined by the level of European and American nondiplomatic opposition. At the time of this writing the Russians have already used their centuries-old propaganda tactic of “protecting minorities” to seize the Crimea and spark rebellions in the eastern Ukraine. While ever-shifting economic, political, and military pressure pries the Ukrainian state apart, the Russians will begin work on the Caucasus, Belarus, and Kazakhstan—targets that generate far less concern in the West. Once those areas are pacified the Russians will return to Ukraine, “rescuing” those in the Russified east and south who “ask for help.” In the western Ukraine invasion (accompanied by appropriate propaganda, of course) will be necessary. After that will come the true challenge: the EU/NATO members of Poland, Romania, and the Balt
ic States.
Turkey: An Ancient Power Awakes
For most of the past two millennia, the Sea of Marmara was the richest spot on the planet because it was the crossroads. Most land-borne trade between Europe and South Asia passed through the pair of double peninsulas that bracket the Sea of Marmara, while any waterborne trade between the Danube and Black Sea and the Mediterranean passed through the Sea of Marmara itself. For the many fortress cities of the Middle East, Istanbul was the fortress that managed to somehow be rich and cosmopolitan rather than starving and parochial. For the often overrun peoples of the eastern Balkans, Marmara was eternal—the epitome of secure civilization. Whether under the Romans, Byzantines, or Ottoman Turks, Marmara was the world’s jewel.
But all ages end. The rise of deepwater navigation greatly diminished the land-borne trade routes by opening up cheaper, faster, and safer routes that bypassed Persia and the Hordelands. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 eliminated what land-borne trade remained. The death blow for waterborne commerce came shortly thereafter, courtesy of the Soviet rise. With the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe in the final months of World War II, the great navigable rivers of the Black Sea, the Danube and Dnieper, became internal Soviet waterways. Trade linkages that dated to antiquity disappeared behind an iron wall of ideology, and the Sea of Marmara quite literally became a backwater.
The military defeats of the century leading up to the Soviet rise were in many ways just as painful for the Turks. They had lost control of every province of their once-sprawling empire that was worthy of the term. Egypt, Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia had been stripped from them along with the Levant and the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. They still held Marmara itself—having fought bitterly and successfully for it at Gallipoli—but their only remaining territory was the rugged, arid mountain knot of Anatolia, a land that had been useful as little more than a buffer zone so long as there had been civilization in Marmara. In the short course of only three generations, the Turks had fallen from one of the great powers to little more than a regional satrapy.
Rather than attempt to play a great game in which they would be crushed, the Turks chose retreat. They fortified their borders—all of which were now uniformly hostile—walling their culture off from the world. After World War II, they fell under direct Soviet pressure, forcing them to stiffly accept membership in the rising Americans’ security and economic systems in order to maintain independence.
Membership in Bretton Woods ended European preying upon what was left of Turkish lands and allowed them access, albeit with restrictions, to the European market. Between that income and the locally generated capital from Marmara, the Turks set about developing the near-useless lands of rump Anatolia. Over the decades, road and rail snaked into the highlands, turning villages into towns and towns into manufacturing centers. In many ways, life in Turkey between 1950 and 2000 was a preview of the developing world’s experience of 2000–2010: capital from a rich area flooding into substandard lands because there were no other options.
Turkey didn’t awaken from some ninety years of geopolitical slumber on its own. Once again, it was the Russians who forced a change of Turkish circumstances, only this time it was the Soviet collapse rather than the Soviet rise. In 1992, Soviet forces simply dissolved, and Turkey’s entire eastern, northern, and northwestern horizons opened at once. History restarted, and the Turks, having been allowed to obsess about internal issues for three generations, were unprepared. Just as they are unprepared for the coming end of the free trade era.
All of the above leaves the Turks at the heart of one of the world’s most mutable regions. Working clockwise from Turkey’s southeast:
• Iraq will become the region’s wild card. Either it will become a loose satellite under Iranian influence, or it will reconsolidate under a harsh, Saddam Hussein–style militarized dictatorship. Either way, the southeast will be Turkey’s most problematic border.
• To the south, Lebanon and Syria will collapse as modern states, devolving into a shatterbelt of poor and competing city-states. The only country in the region with the capacity to install order will be Turkey, but there will be little in the Levant of meaningful interest. Turkey will be able to pick and choose its friends, its enemies, and its issues.
• To the west, Greece will revert from being a country to being a geographic expression and cease being a drain on Turkish defense planning.
• To the northwest, the countries of Bulgaria and Romania were under Soviet occupation, then brought into NATO and the EU, and now face being cast out again as the free trade order breaks down. They are likely to see the Turks as a rare bastion of stability in an otherwise degrading Europe.
• To the north, Russian power will surge into Ukraine, opposed by an ad hoc coalition of Poland, Romania, and Sweden. As part of the Russian logic is to expressly limit Turkish options, Ankara will have little choice but to join the fluid competition.
• To the east, the culturally ancient but politically neophyte countries of Armenia and Georgia face collapse, both due to internal political and military weakness and to overwhelming pressure from Iran and Russia. And likely Turkey as well.
It is a lengthy, daunting list of changes and challenges, but unlike for most countries in the new era, there are many opportunities for Turkey as well. When countries have options, it is very easy to put them into the “successful” category, but harder to predict specifically what it is that they will do. The natural thing for the Turks to do would be to expand. Turkey has been experimenting in the past decade with extending its diplomatic and economic footprint in the Arab world, but has discovered that there is little there worth taking and what’s there is a whole lot of trouble.
Still, some of Turkey’s options (and challenges) seem more feasible (and more pressing). I see Turkey focusing its efforts in three primary directions.
First, Bulgaria and Romania are a slam dunk. Whether outright conquering, an Ottoman-style suzerainty relationship, or a more traditional alliance, a formalized relationship with the two Danubian peoples would solidify Turkish control over both the eastern Black Sea and the lower Danube, end any possible chance of food shortages, and put a plug in Russia’s ambitions.
Second, Turkey must secure some oil supplies. Luckily, Turkey’s needs are moderate—it only requires about 700,000 bpd—and it has some options. Northern Iraq is home to the Kirkuk oil fields, which are capable of producing more than enough for Turkey as well as its Bulgarian and Romanian relations. Additionally, Kirkuk already has infrastructure linking it to Turkey, specifically a series of pipelines that terminate at Ceyhan, Turkey’s southern energy hub and superport. Control of northern Iraq would also give Turkey direct overlordship over the largest Kurdish community not located in Turkey already, allowing the Turks to better smother Kurdish separatism.
Of course, control over northern Iraq will not come easily. Kurds aside, Turkey will be entering into direct and unrelenting competition with Iran. In terms of direct military competition, the Turks hold the clear advantage: Their army is better equipped, better trained, and actually skilled at military operations rather than domestic pacification. They also, unlike the Iranians, have an air force eminently worthy of the name. For their part, the Iranians have a far superior intelligence network and will delight in using it to spawn endless militant activity among Turkey’s minority groups, first and most violently the Kurds—both the preexisting Turkish Kurds in Turkey and the new ones in northern Iraq.
Option two is equally viable from an economic point of view, but is far more strategically circumspect: Azerbaijan. Like Kirkuk, Azerbaijan’s offshore energy complex is capable of seeing to Turkey’s needs, and like Kirkuk there is already infrastructure bringing Azerbaijani crude to Ceyhan. Additionally, the Azerbaijanis are actually Turkish ethnically and so would be far more likely to welcome Turkish engagement than Iraq’s Kurds. However, getting to Azerbaijan presents problems. Georgia, a country that is for all intents and purposes a failed state ev
en before the free trade rubric dissolves, is in the way. It isn’t so much that Georgia will resist meaningfully—based on how Turkey’s efforts are packaged, it may even welcome outright occupation—but moving into Georgia in force will put Turkey at the very top of Russia’s shit list.
Which brings us to the third theater that the Turks are likely to engage: Ukraine. This is not a must; Turkey can choose to play the imperial game in Ukraine. Turkey would vastly prefer that Russia remain an unanchored power in the Hordelands, without a purchase in the Carpathians. Such a vulnerable Russia will start breaking up from within a decade or two. In particular the Turks would like to reprise their strategy from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries and get a grip on the Crimean Peninsula, as it would put the Russians on the defensive without the Turks having to expose themselves to the dangers of the Hordelands themselves.
But rather than help shove the Russians into oblivion, the Turks may allow themselves to be bribed into neutrality.
Turkey doesn’t need Ukrainian wheat, or really even Ukrainian trade. What it needs is natural gas. Ukraine doesn’t have any, but it does control infrastructure that could bring it natural gas… from Russia. Russia may be able to offer the Turks recognition of Turkish supremacy in the lower Danube, in exchange for some good deals on natural gas exports. If the deals are exceedingly good, the Russians and Turks may even be able to find a means of working around each other’s interests in the Caucasus as well.
Should the Russians fail to make an offer that is sufficiently lucrative from the Turks’ point of view, then the Turks will be able to eject the Russians from the Caucasus wholesale and hugely complicate Russian efforts in Ukraine. The Turks are as young and vibrant as the Russians are old and sickly. Unlike most of the developing world, they boast a large and growing market that is not overly dependent upon external capital, or even external demand.
