Comparing Putin With Mussolini

After devoting most of his Wall Street Journal column to a lengthy comparison of Russian President Vladimir Putin with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Walter Russell Mead summarizes:

Like Mussolini, Mr. Putin was fortunate to face an ungifted generation of Western leaders. Nobody will be expanding Mount Rushmore with sculptures memorializing any of America’s post-Cold War presidents, and the generation of European leaders that included figures like Gerhard Schröder and François Hollande will not long be remembered. Playing a weak hand aggressively, Mr. Putin managed to divide and confuse this motley crew long enough to threaten the Western order in Europe and reassert Russia’s place among the great powers.

But as Mussolini discovered, diplomatic and even military victories cannot make an impossible dream come true. Mussolini was unable to build an Italian economy that could support his ambitions or a military capable of rivaling the great powers like Germany and Britain. This is where the limits of Mr. Putin’s achievements also seem to lie. After 20 years in power, he has failed to equip Russia with either the economy or the military that a great power needs. And because his power rests on such narrow and unsatisfactory foundations, his foreign policy remains one of brinkmanship and adventurism that is always vulnerable should his adversaries call his bluff—or if he miscalculates and bites off more than he can chew.

The best way to think about Mr. Putin is as a gifted tactician committed to a strategic impossibility: for Russia to regain the superpower status once held by the Soviet Union. Such leaders are unappeasable because their goals can never be reached. The rise of China, Russia’s continuing demographic decline, and its continuing inability to create a modern and dynamic economy will not end because Russian flags fly over the ruins of Kyiv.

The part that caught my eye was “Russia’s continuing demographic decline, and its continuing inability to create a modern and dynamic economy”. Here’s what he means by “demmographic decline”:

The graphic above is from Macrotrends. But it’s his economic analysis that falls flat:

If Russia’s GDP per capita rises, the country will become more prosperous even as its population declines. That’s what’s happening in Japan.

To be sure Russia has serious problems impeding that growth, namely corruption and income inequality. Does that sound at all familiar to you?

Had the U. S. not had an enormous influx of mostly illegal immigrants over the last 50 years, we would be in “demographic decline” as well. Our problem is that, unlike pre-WWI immigrants, those immigrants are liabilities rather than assets. Their net contribution to U. S. GDP is negative for the simple reason that their earnings don’t make up for the enormous amount we need to spend to educate their children and on highways, sewer systems, and so on. If all of our immigrants were South Asians or East Asians with masters degrees who speak, read, and write English, we should take all we can get but that’s simply not the case. The majority of our immigrants are poorly educated non-English speakers and that will be true for the foreseeable future.

My point here is that the optimistic case for the future is one of “demographic decline”. That’s true not just for Japan and the U. S. but the entire world. The days of prosperity through an ever-increasing population are nearing an end.