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Terrorism in Turkey – who sent Ecevit Sanli?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On February 1, Ecevit Sanli, a Turkish suicide bomber, blew himself up at the entry to the US Embassy compound in Ankara.   He also murdered a Turkish guard and wounded several other people who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sanli turned out to belong to a far left Turkish organization – called the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front - which first appeared in the 1970s when left and right political extremes engaged one another in pitched gun-battles on city streets.  

At that time, Turkey’s parliamentary government was weakening by the day until September 1980 when the country's generals stepped in and stopped the violence that was wreaking havoc on the population.  Life for normal citizens had been difficult enough during the preceding years so that most welcomed a return to stability imposed by the country’s historically well respected military:  gas lines had extended for blocks – even coffee was in short supply - the internecine violence designed to destabilize the regime had just worsened the already bad situation. Locally grown produce was the mainstay sold in the markets.  The Turkish lira had become worthless in the international marketplace as a result of the political instability, domestic unrest and weak economy.

Leftwing terrorism

That this small illegal terrorist organization had gone through several reincarnations and name changes since its beginnings in the 1970s and Sanli had previously served time in jail for committing acts of terrorism makes one wonder about its reappearance.  This was not a half-crazed man operating alone.  Nor was Sanli an Islamic militant. Far from it.  The group had introduced suicide bombers to its repertoire about ten years ago. So what were Sanli’s motives, what was the purpose of the attack and who was the instigator lurking in the shadows?

From the scanty evidence thus far, it’s pretty clear that Sanli was dispatched on his last mission by someone looking to publicize a cause, to embarrass or frighten the Turkish government or the US – a NATO ally which had recently brought Patriot antimissile systems into country’s south to help protect the Turks and the Syrian refugees flowing across the border from the civil war raging next door.

Or could the bombing have been to register negative reaction to the Turkish government’s recent arrests of nearly 100 people accused of having ties to the outlawed Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front and in protest of the government’s harsh anti-terrorism laws?    What kind of message was attached to this human detonator?  Was the reason for his actions purely home grown – or not?

Conspiracy theories and spy stories

Speculation, of course, covers the gamut.  Turkey is part of the Middle East where conspiracy theories run rampant and spy stories have natural homes but the real question is who or which country, countries or groups were behind this recent incident and why.  Terrorism of this sort comes cheaply – particularly when the individual in question is deranged to begin with. But what exactly does a one-off suicide of this sort represent in the larger picture of Turkish or Middle Eastern politics in 2013?    

Employment claims prove inaccurate and misleading

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

12 Feb 2013.  Statistics readily accessible through the Office of National Statistics (ONS) prove government & BBC claims concerning monthly employment statistics are misleading and/or inaccurate.  

Claims

ONS released its latest monthly estimates of employment on 29 January.  On  30 January Prime Minister David Cameron claimed once again during Prime Minister’s Questions that the economy under his government's policies had generated 1 million new private sector jobs.   

Whirled View previously published ONS' written disavowal of the claim, a claim allegedly based on ONS reported net gain in employment over a year’s period of time. I pointed out the ONS standard for counting one person as “one person in employment” is the person worked at least one paid hour per week.  I also pointed out the figures are estimates not audited actuals. 

The day the first article published I brought it directly to the attention of the Twitter accounts of Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Labour Leader Ed Miliband, Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, BBC News and others. 

Subsequently, I brought it to the attention of Liberal Democrat Party President Tim Farron, the Vice Chair of the British Competition Commission and others.  

Mr. Farron and the Vice Chair discussed the figures with me but I argue even the public figures  who did not should be considered “on notice” when I contacted their Twitter account.   

BBC (unlike the Prime Minister) adjusted their account. BBC described the ONS “headline” figure as a 556,000 net overall increase in employment. But BBC described it as a 556,000 net growth in employment over the course of last year, as if 556,000 jobs of equal value to the economy had been newly created.  BBC also “analyzed” these figures as  “good news” "indicative" of a “strengthening” economy. The presenter expressed puzzlement how an economy that flat lined could have produced so many jobs, but affirmed it had. 

BBC itself undercut that story 6 Feb with a report on the growing category of “Independent Contractor.”   BBC explained that a large number of people, especially men over 50 who have lost their regular jobs but cannot afford to retire, set up their own businesses. For many their “business” is gardening or other light work more designed to take advantage of a marginal benefit to tax credits over benefits. BBC explained this increase in raw numbers is not necessarily evidence of earnings or good news to the economy.   

The government claimed the ONS figures indicate that their management of the economy is “on the right track.” BBC reported that claim without an in depth analysis that compared claims to facts. 

Available statistics debunk the claims  

BBC’s regular reports have been misleading although arguably technically accurate as far as they go. The Prime Minister’s claims were and are both misleading and inaccurate. The facts that could give an appropriately nuanced view have been available all along.  There is an abundance of statistics that could put the raw increase in “in employment” into appropriate perspective.  

ONS publishes on its web site data which hardly paints a picture of a strengthening economy.  Particularly useful is a graphic representation of the relationship between employment and overall population.  Even in headline form, the ratio of UK employment to UK population remains stubbornly below pre-recession levels.  That is neither cause for celebration as good news or an indicator of a strengthening economy. 

In a follow up FOI request I asked ONS for clarification.  On 12 February 2013 ONS replied.   

Comparing September through November 2012 to September through November 2011, ONS reports 552,492 net more people “in employment.” This ties roughly with the BBC headline figure. But significantly, of the 552,492 in employment, 67,607 were in government supported training and employment programmes, 239,282 were employed part time and 30,013 were “self-employed working part time.” Less than half - a total of 254,097 - worked as full time employees. The largest percentage increase was among part time self employed. The rate of increase in full time employment was only 1.4% on the year.  

ONS does show a 1 million increase in private sector employment in the three years since 2010 but at least 196,00 of that is due to the reclassification of public jobs. Over 150,000 is attributable to Labour according to the Vice Chair of the Competition Commission. More importantly, the headline figure disguises what the detailed data shows.

ONS also publishes an Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. Its "headline" shows an average plus 1% Median increase for 2012 among full time employees.  Sometimes Press  cite this figure as if the small annual increase in the wages of Full Time Employees applies across the board.  But the figure for Part Time Employees, found in the detail tables, is a .3% increase in Median wages.  Median Earnings were £155 a week for Part Time employees. That is less than one pound in a year. Median Earnings for Full Time employees were £548 per week for women, £556 for men. Moreover the highest earning salaried employee category dropped.

As the Conservative cookie crumbles

By: John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

8 Feb 2013. Conservative Party Unity slips along a definable fault line.  

The Cookie Crumbles

What's in a Marriage?

After a 6 hour debate the House of Commons approved gay marriage on a vote of 400 to 175. This overwhelming overall majority could nevertheless not disguise the major fault opening up beneath the feet of the Conservative Party.  Prime Minister David Cameron championed the policy but over half his Conservative MPs either voted against the bill or abstained.   

The Referendum in the bushes

The Prime Minister’s loss of face on Gay Marriage was even more numerically significant than his earlier 25 October 2011 loss of face over Britain’s relationship to the European Union, considered at the time politically significant. Since that time the Prime Minister has scrambled in one measure after another to look tough on Europe as more and more of the Conservative base switched to UKIP.   

The Conservative Party hasn’t yet recovered in the polls from the steady erosion of its base to UKIP, although it received a transient bounce following the Prime Minister’s highly publicized and long awaited speech on his position on the European Union in which he promised would institute an “in and out” referendum on British involvement in the European Union.  The temporary nature of the bounce is no surprise. As pointed out by the Independent, polls suggest Europe is an issue of priority for only 6% of the electorate.  For those for whom it is important, the Prime Minister’s contingent promise to conduct a referendum in 2017 if elected and only after he has negotiated as yet to be negotiated “repatriation of powers” from Europe was hardly inspiring coming from the man who claimed the NHS and the strength of National Defence were safe in his hands. By 3 Feb one respected poll had Conservatives the furthest behind Labour at 15 percent. The next poll showed 11 percent but the actual is more likely between 11 percent and 15 percent than 11 percent. 

Meanwhile, 8 Feb a Prime Minister now painted into a corner struggled to deliver "a victory" on his ultimatum demanding cuts to the EU budget. After intensive negotiations the Prime Minister claimed victory. But the deal capped the EU budget not cut British contributions as deeply as the Prime Minister sought. At an afternoon press conference the Prime Minister was challenged to explain how Britain's contribution "not rising as much as expected" is the cut he promised.  Also the EU Parliament must approve. Early indications are that may be difficult. 

Other blows have gone a little less noticed but are no less real. 

Leveson taken from Prime Minister's hands

The House of Lords, frustrated by the pace of progress in the Prime Minister’s implementation of Leveson, voted 272 to 141 in favour of an amendment to the Defamation Bill before it. The amendment would implement a key feature of Lord Leveson’s report, the establishment of a low cost arbitration service for ordinary citizens who feel they have been defamed by the media. It was the second biggest defeat for the government in the House of Lords since 2010. Conservative rebels included some major Tory heavy hitters, including former lord chancellor Lord Mackay, Lord Ashcroft, and former foreign secretary Lord Hurd.  

 The not so electric eletrification of the ring fence

On 21 December the Tyrie special Commission on Banking Standards, prompted by the LIBOR scandal, issued its report. The Commission, headed by serious Conservative figures, criticized the government’s planned banking standards as not enough, not fast enough. They argued the government’s “ring fence” proposals needed to be “electrified” (IE, given teeth if banks tried to finesse the ring fence).  Chancellor Osborne adopted the terminology but not the essence of the Commission recommendations.  In doing so he pleased neither those who support the Tyrie Commission’s view nor the City, whose bankers reportedly feel “betrayed.” 

 The ever popular "if" moves on to defence

On 31 January the Prime Minister promised to “ring fence” defence spending. But a key newspaper for the Conservative base, the Daily Telegraph, highlighted the illusory nature of the promise.  Like the European Union Referendum, he promised to do so after the election in 2015 if he is elected.  But worse for the Prime Minister, within hours his Defence Secretary was “clarifying” that the pledge only applied to hardware, not personnel. A promise obviously intended to address the concerns of a base rocked by the announcement of further losses of “thousands” of Defence personnel and the Coast Guard. This became a slippage in the strained fault lines within the Conservative Party.

Fault lines 

What divides a Party sometimes is at least as telling as what unites it. The Conservative Party is deeply divided on lifestyle issues, grass roots nationalism vs neo-liberal trans nationalism, traditional conservative values of integrity and financial responsibility vs a politician’s fealty to those who pay the bills (The City donors).  These divisions now affect the Conservative Party on other issues, for instance spilling over into bipartisan criticism of the Department of Work and Pensions and ATOS of the disabled, including former military personnel disabled in combat.  

Polls show the public recognizes the internal division. And the division itself further erodes support for the Conservative Party.  

The future extends an unknown highway into fog for an unforseeable period

It is less clear what all this means for the future.  

The polls reflect no clear winner from the turmoil. Labour, whether standing on 42% or 45% as recently polled or even 1 standard deviation higher does not appear poised to represent a majority of the electorate even if it wins a majority of seats in the House of Commons.  Hence one cannot be clear that a switch in leadership from Coalition to Labour will produce short term much less long term a fundamental shift away from Coalition policies.  The Conservative rebels itch to dump their Coalition Partners, but even were they to win over 100% of UKIP voters they cannot, as it stands now, expect to win a majority in the House of Commons much less control policy.  It is unlikely that a Liberal Democrat Party still firmly in the grasp of the Orange block’s economic liberalism and reeling from the downsides of Coalition could combine with Miliband’s “One Nation” economic pluralism. But the tectonics opening up under the Conservative Party suggest a direction that leads away from renewed Coalition with Liberal Democrats even were the Liberal Democrats, smarting from what Coalition has meant to their credibility, to entertain the idea of entering a Coalition with anybody ever again.  Nor does it appear even a tarnished “New Labour” model could now deliver Liberal Democrat voters.   

It would appear that the only certainty - at least for a time - is uncertainty for the social, economic and political direction of the United Kingdom.  One day no doubt pundits will look back on this period and claim to have seen the direction in which these forces of change will lead, but I will confess right here, right now, it isn’t clear to me. It isn’t even clear that traditional British moderation and national identity will once again reassert itself against either neo-liberal transnationalism on the one hand or the forces of extremism so prevalent in the rest of the West on the other.

Wish Britain luck in the journey ahead.

Legal Reasoning Must Not Be Secret

By Patricia Lee Sharpe and Patricia H. Kushlis

CNN reports that “the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning will receive a classified document that seeks to justify the administration's policy of targeting Americans overseas via drone attacks.”   Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein seems to be satisfied.  We are not. We can see no justification for classifying such a document.

If the Obama administration and its successors are to be given the right to assassinate Americans abroad,  we must know the legal reasoning so that we the people may judge whether such actions can be  justified under U.S. and international law and so that the perpetrators themselves may be prosecuted if and when they overstep or misapply their authority.  Of course, such jeopardy may be what the Obama administration is deeply afraid of.  Although we are not convinced that the U.S. Constitution can be twisted to allow execution without trial,  we cannot see how any such actions can ever be immune from independent judicial review.  As others have noted, neither the use of lethal force by ordinary American troops nor by police confronting violence at home is beyond the reach of judicial review.  In matters of life and death transparency and accountability are essential.

Even assuming we might be persuaded that assassination is constitutional and might sometimes be the best course of action, we and many others believe that the U.S. public deserves to know, in detail, ahead of time, how those targeted for assassination will be selected. The criteria must be public.  For one thing, to keep these criteria secret is to put countless angry Americans in jeopardy.  A legally defensible definition of terms like “imminent danger” is in order lest  Americans traveling or resident abroad be unable to speak out honestly when they are critical of the U.S.  This is a freedom upon which we Americans have always prided ourselves. Others have admired us for our candor.  They have envied our freedom.   Clear definitions of what crimes are to be punished by instant, silent, arbitrary death are absolutely essential, lest innocent people find themselves in the cross-hairs of distant drone pilots. We’ve all said stupid, violent, angry things.  Many of us have allied ourselves briefly with foolish causes.  Are we all to be assassinated?

Some might object that understandable definitions will make it possible for villains to go on spreading poison.  Since when are Americans punished for words rather than deeds?  This is a very dangerous trajectory, and its venomous results are already being felt at home in the use of manipulative entrapment targeting justifiably angry young Muslims and the compiling of don’t-fly lists which impede people’s freedom of movement without giving them expeditious access to possibly wrongly applied criteria. We might note that  Ezra Pound, whose critique of U.S. capitalism was vicious in the extreme,  was spared the death penalty after cooperating with the Axis during World War II, and the U.S. was stronger for it. 

Others will object that targets with knowledge of the criteria may change their habits, modify their pronouncements, and thus live to rant another day.  That surely would be a good thing.  The goal, we would have thought, was to prevent violent acts.   

We understand that the details of any properly justified operation must always be held closely.  The publication of relevant legal doctrines, however,  will not endanger any actual operation or any U.S. agent who acts within the bounds of the law.  

Diplomacy still works – or does it?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

(The following speech by Patricia H. Kushlis on the future of Diplomacy was delivered at OASIS (Albuquerque, NM) on Monday, February 4, 2013)

On Thursday, January 24^th John Kerry sailed through his hour long hearing in front of former colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in his quest to become this country’s next Secretary of State.  Five days later, Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State by the full Senate with a vote of 97-3. Friday was Hillary Clinton’s last day in that position and on Saturday – Kerry was sworn in as the State Department’s new chief.

He will take over a troubled department in a difficult post 9/11 era when far too often America’s approach has been to strike first and consider the consequences later.  He will also follow super-star Hillary Clinton in a position that – with the notable exception of Benghazi – was a far smoother ride for her than for either Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice, her Bush administration predecessors. 

Already a celebrity as the wife of former president Bill Clinton and Senator from New York, Clinton was blessed by serving under a president who was popular in most parts of the world simply because he saw the world through a very different and more finely differentiated prism than had his predecessor. 

This obviously does not mean that our foreign affairs travails disappeared January 2009 but it does mean that we have been far more willing to deal with international issues in coordination with allies and friends using a wider range of tools at our disposal.  Often one size or one implement does not fit all – and this is the greatest decision a president faces – what to use, what mix to use – and when to apply it.  A political realist will say that the most effective foreign policy rests on the choice of tools, the people who use them and the timing of their use.   

It’s a truism that diplomacy is war by other means.  Diplomacy is also politics on a grand stage.             

Soon after 9/11/2001, the US government under George W Bush launched two major wars in Asia determined to use military force to resolve two very different foreign policy challenges.  The first – for which much of the rest of the world was supportive - was the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden, the financier and instigator of the murder of over 3,000 people – Americans and foreigners who happened to be at the wrong spot at the wrong time - through the audacious destruction of New York’s World Trade Center and a part of the Pentagon.

The second was the decision to invade Iraq to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction based on the premise that this would simultaneously solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because - according to the invasion’s brains, protagonists and propagandists - the road to Jerusalem went through Baghdad.  The US learned the hard way that it didn’t, it doesn’t and it won’t.

The tracking down and killing of Osama bin Laden a decade later, did not take hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground – not even thousands – but it did require a first class intelligence effort on the part of the CIA and its execution by a couple of helicopters and a small crew of special forces.

One thing we should have learned, however, is that torture and water boarding of prisoners did not provide the information needed or used to find Bin Laden – thus what is purported otherwise to be a thought-provoking but controversial new movie – “Zero Dark Thirty” about his capture perpetuates and propagandizes an unnecessary falsehood.

Iraq Invasion Effects

No good case can be made for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq for which we continue to pay dearly.  It was based on false premises, built on false information – premises and information which many of you here in New Mexico know our weapons laboratory scientists, the CIA, the Department of Energy and State Department analysts questioned at the time. 

To compound the credibility problem, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s false accusations at the United Nations not only destroyed his personally illustrious international career but also called into question the veracity of America’s voice in the world.

But if the largest, best financed and equipped military in the world can’t protect America’s security alone what about its diplomats? How can just a few thousand people – fewer than the number of musicians in military bands – do the job? (15,150 including generalists and specialists; about 6200 generalists in 2004 and the total is not that much larger now) What is the job that needs to be done and what are the characteristics needed to do it?

What is diplomacy how is it practiced?

Let’s begin with definitions of diplomacy and diplomats. Is a diplomat a representative of a government sent abroad to lie for his or her country? Is diplomacy naturally duplicitous – or is Colin Powell’s “misstatement” about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction at the UN not representative of what American diplomacy can or should be? Or is diplomacy synonymous with the world’s second “oldest profession,” that is spying – or information collecting through surreptitious means?  

Is diplomacy a way to solve problems? Is it to avoid wars? Who practices diplomacy?  Who is a diplomat? Is it a briefcase-carrying man in a pinstriped suit? Is it jazz or hip hop musicians performing in other countries under US Embassy auspices? Or traveling privately? Where does diplomacy happen? Is it in conference rooms? Is it on basketball courts or golf courses? What does diplomacy help solve? Does it help resolve disagreements between countries? Quell world hunger and disease?  What does diplomacy do, who does it and why?    

A Hillary Clinton Report Card

 By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Now is the time to praise, deride or simply to try to assess Hillary Clinton’s contributions to American diplomacy as Secretary of State. Did she improve our standing in the world? Did she deepen Americans’ understanding of what diplomacy is, which would make it easier to judge her fairly and competently? Did she make us better respected and more likely to be followed? Did she evolve a distinctive doctrine to guide us in these troubled times? Was her energetic globe-circling an anachronistic self-indulgence in a world networked by twitter, Facebook and e-messaging of all sorts or is person-to-person diplomacy still essential? Did she made any progress in steering us away from the over militarization of American foreign policy?

Estimates Now Are Preliminary

Some of the last week’s commentary is too ideological to bother with, some is too shallow and personality-driven, some is better informed and more thoughtful. All commentary has to be more or less tentative, despite the best efforts of Wikileaks to deprive U.S. diplomacy of the secrecy that is not always excessive or unneeded, and because time and distance are critical to fully understanding complex events. Clinton herself has not dropped any farewell bombshells.  What's more, she’s answered questions about the future mostly with vague comments about needing a little rest, which it’s generally thought she’s earned.

When that (probably) short hiatus is over, she’ll be able to write her own ticket at the top of any number of respected organizations. Her approval rating is above 70%. Despite demurrals, she hasn’t sworn on a stack of Bibles that she won’t run for president again either. Still, the question I’d ask her in this context is this: "When can we expect your next book to appear, the one that covers that last four years?" Then we’ll be closer to being able to answer those questions I began with.

Context Matters

Meanwhile, however, I’d like to make a stab at putting her tenure at State in context. One of the harsher, most frequently repeated criticisms is that Hillary Clinton hasn’t put her name on a new and novel foreign policy doctrine. She’s been a worker bee, a mere team player, who’s carried out the President’s policy. Funny thing about the team player concept. When only men are involved, descriptions make a team seem like a gang of buddies, of equals. Add a woman, and the undertones suggest she’s the one fetching coffee for the boss. In fact, what all cabinet secretaries are supposed to do is carry out policy, not make it.  When they have ideas or disagree with the President, they’re supposed to be discrete about it—whispering, not shouting—as Hillary evidently has done, sometimes winning the point, sometimes losing.  In fact, Hillary's record of influence isn't so bad under President Obama, who's known to be a control freak. We’ll learn more about this when the book comes out. Even so we can expect discretion. Clinton hasn’t come as far as she has by burning bridges.

Besides Hillary isn’t one for flamboyant displays of egomania and grandiose promises. Look how the former First Lady went about becoming and being Senator. Despised at first as a carpetbagger from outside the state of New York, she got to know the people she planned to represent by thoroughly criss-crossing the state. She introduced herself to ordinary people as well as local leaders, king makers and money bags.   In the Senate she adjusted to her junior status without being mousy. By the time she resigned to run for president, she had the respect and affection of her colleagues and constituents, who would have voted her in for another term. She was, after all, a worker bee.

Pressing the Flesh Works

I’d like to put Clinton’s much criticized global travels into a similar context. As Secretary of State, one’s constituency is the world, and Clinton logged almost a million miles in the air getting to know, as directly as possible, the friends and allies, the fragile places and the already troubled places, the competition and the dependencies, giving comfort, delivering admonitions, all to gain the influence and personal experience (in addition to all the second hand briefings, reports, books, advice, etc. a Secstate can  count on) so as to be able to make up her own mind in tricky, risky situations and and also to better advise the President.

The Incredibly Shrinking Russian Population and its Potential International Consequences

By Patricia H. Kushlis

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Russian Federation was and is still the world’s largest country.  Geographically that is.  It stretched and still stretches from Murmansk to Vladivostok but lost its soft-underbelly – the Central Asian republics which the Czar had incorporated into his expanding empire by the end of the nineteenth century.  These republics were also the locus of the Soviet Union’s highest birthrates. 

When Vladimir Putin became president in 1999, he warned his countrymen that the Russian Federation’s population was declining by approximately 750,000 people per year. In reality, the drop has only been a loss of about 337,000 people annually according to Rosstat, the Russian statistical agency.  A larger potential drop was mitigated by immigration of Russians (and others) from other Soviet republics especially in the turbulent years of 1991-2.  Nevertheless the overall decline has been relentless.  Last year, Russia seemed to have reversed the downward drift for the first time, but demographers warn that the upswing is a short term blip on Russia’s overall population projection radar screen.

Unless something changes dramatically, the same thing will happen to the Russian Federation that happened to the Soviet Union – an overall decline in Russians which can only be altered, according to Tony Wood in The London Review of Books, with increased immigration from former Soviet Republics.  Since most ethnic Russians have already left –sometime fled – those other republics this means Central Asians willing to do the work Russians will not and at a lower price. Yet they are too often viewed with distain by the Russians in the cities to which they come to do their dirty work.   

By the end of the Soviet Union, Russians had become a minority in their multiethnic empire.  After the break up, however, Russians composed 81.5% of the new federation’s population giving them a comfortable majority for a change. That percentage remains stable over twenty years later.  Much of the domestic population growth – such as it is - is concentrated in the troubled North Caucasus where Russians fight a continued civil war with Chechen separatists and among a few other disaffected minority groups.  Yet their numbers are too small to matter.

Does a nation’s population decline equate to diminished national stature internationally or do demographics even matter in the larger scheme of things?

The Russian population is still large – the ninth largest in the world (142.9 million in 2010) but its wellbeing and consequent longevity and productivity – especially for males – remain a disaster for too many.  Or do Russia’s nuclear weapons arsenal and the continuing high price for its’ primary commodities – oil and gas – on the world market rank far more importantly in international games of power and influence than numbers of its people?    

In short, what do the demographic realities mean for the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin on the world stage? 

That Russia is punching above its weight is obvious. It’s been doing this for a long time. Putin’s grandstanding may play well in the countryside today but it grates abroad and draws backlash in the major cities. But what are the international implications? Should the Russian government think about changing its image, its  approach as well as negotiating style to reflect better today’s reality? Easier, of course, said that done - and advice likely resented especially from an outsider.

Will Moscow need to keep an eye over its shoulder at increasing Chinese migration into Russia territory in the Far East and possibilities of a challenge to Russia’s long term national sovereignty over these vast under populated parts of Asia with their incredible natural resources? How influential can an ever demographically shrinking Russia expect to be internationally and how will the Russian government best play its hand abroad?