An excessive rapprochement with growing China, which lacks resources of its own, may impose “allied obligations” on Russia, which can ultimately result in the limitation of its rights to its own resources and to territories where they are located. Moscow will be able to successfully defend its interests only by relying on the solidarity of countries of the North, which are in the same demographic boat with it.
The Soviet political shell has been crushed, but Russia is still wandering around amidst the scattered fragments of that shell, which remain hopeful that they will be put together again some day. They are hoping for a counter-modernization union, albeit with a non-Communist configuration.
In spite of all of its risks and challenges, immigration offers Russia a chance to survive and to carry out a kind of peaceful expansion. A strategy of diehard anti-immigration isolationism, on the other hand, will lead it nowhere.
The dramatic demographic changes in the world are creating an unprecedented challenge for all states, yet the problems confronting Russia, a country with a low birth rate and a very high death rate, are particularly acute.
Their solution will require a revision of many traditional views; however, neither the nation nor its leaders are prepared for that.
An excessive rapprochement with growing China, which lacks resources of its own, may impose “allied obligations” on Russia, which can ultimately result in the limitation of its rights to its own resources and to territories where they are located. Moscow will be able to successfully defend its interests only by relying on the solidarity of countries of the North, which are in the same demographic boat with it.
The Soviet political shell has been crushed, but Russia is still wandering around amidst the scattered fragments of that shell, which remain hopeful that they will be put together again some day. They are hoping for a counter-modernization union, albeit with a non-Communist configuration.
In spite of all of its risks and challenges, immigration offers Russia a chance to survive and to carry out a kind of peaceful expansion. A strategy of diehard anti-immigration isolationism, on the other hand, will lead it nowhere.
The dramatic demographic changes in the world are creating an unprecedented challenge for all states, yet the problems confronting Russia, a country with a low birth rate and a very high death rate, are particularly acute.
Their solution will require a revision of many traditional views; however, neither the nation nor its leaders are prepared for that.
When the Baltic countries entered NATO and the European Union a couple of years ago, many thought it was the end of the centuries-old "red line." Euro-Atlantic organizations had crossed into the former Russian and Soviet empires.
In September 2004, the Russian city of Novgorod hosted an international conference entitled Russia at the Turn of the Century: Hopes and Reality. Its organizers were the RIA Novosti news agency, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Russia in Global Affairs, and The Moscow Times.