Sioux Falls Argus Leader, SD
Friday, September 21, 2007
Demography’s destiny
Population shifts are certain to change the balance of
power in the world
By Patrick Buchanan Jr.
Creators Syndicate
Comment Print Email PUBLISHED: September 21, 2007
In Russia’s Ulanovsk region, Sept. 12 is Conception Day.
Workers are given the day off and encouraged to go home and do their
best to conceive a new Russian. The hope is to have a bumper crop of
babies on Russia’s national holiday, nine months off.
Conception Day has occasioned much mirth and ribald humor. But for
Mother Russia, the issue of her children is no laughing matter.
Two decades ago, the Soviet Union was three times the size of any of
the other giant nations – the United States, Canada, China, Brazil –
and the third most populous, with almost 300 million people. Came then
the great crackup of 1990-91.
The Baltic republics – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – broke free
first. Next were Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova in the west; Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus; and Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in Central Asia. These
amputations removed a third of the territory and half the population
of the Soviet Union. Yet the remnant, Russia, remained twice as large
as any other nation and still boasted a population of 150 million.
Since the 1990s, however, Russia has been losing population at a rate
of 750,000 a year – not to emigration, but to death. By one count, the
Russian population is down to 143 million. President Putin has
predicted that only 124 million Russians will be alive in 2015. In
2000, the United Nations projected that, at its present birth rate, by
2050 Russia’s population would fall to 114 million.
In a 2005 study, the United Nations estimated that, together, Ukraine
and Russia will lose 50 million people – 25 percent of their combined
populations – by midcentury. The Slavs are dying out, and the
geostrategic implications are enormous. In a few decades, Turkey,
which seeks entry into the European Union, will become Europe’s most
populous nation. Like Xerxes’ bridge of boats across the Hellespont,
Turkey will be the Asian land bridge into Europe, the Bridge of The
Prophet into the homeland of the Christians.
As critical, the vast majority of Russians live west of the Urals
while east of Novosibirsk (New Siberia City), all the way to
Kamchatka, the tiny Russian population is departing or dying out. Yet
in timber, oil and minerals, this is the most resource-rich region on
earth. And south of Siberia lies the most populous and resource-hungry
nation on earth. American children born today might have Chinese for
neighbors across the Bering Strait from Alaska.
Nor is it only the Slavic peoples who are expiring. So, too, are the
native-born populations of Western and Southern Europe as the empty
nurseries of Europa fill with bawling Muslim babies.
Americans of European ancestry also are declining as a share of the
U.S. population, down from almost 90 percent in 1960 to 66 percent
today. Anglos, as they are called now, are now minorities in our two
largest states, Texas and California, and, by 2040, will be a minority
in the nation that people of British and European stock built. Last
month, the Census Bureau projected the U.S. population would grow by
167 million by 2060, to 468 million.
And immigrants and their children will constitute 105 million of that
167 million. That would be triple the 37.5 million legal and illegal
immigrants here today, which is itself the largest cohort of
foreigners any nation has ever taken in. With the 45 million
Hispanics here to rise to 102 million by 2050, the Southwest is likely
to look and sound more like Mexico than America. Indeed, culturally,
linguistically and ethnically, it will be a part of Mexico.
Like Russians, Americans of European ancestry are failing to
reproduce. Yet a closer look reveals that population growth remains
healthy among the religiously devout – evangelical Christians,
Catholic traditionalists, Muslims and Mormons. Among the secularists,
however, birth rates are far below zero population growth – and the
possibility of extinction looms.
One recent study found that the Jewish population in the United States
fell by 6 percent in the 1990s, from 5.5 million to 5.2
million. Orthodox Jews, however, are known for families of five, eight
or 10 children. "And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and have dominion
… over every living creature." So reads Genesis. And so European Man
once preached and practiced. But having lost his empires along with
his faith, European Man no longer sees himself as commissioned by God.
Indeed, he no longer believes in God. Among our best and brightest are
many whose purpose is to enjoy life to the fullest and to end it, when
the time comes, as painlessly as possible. Which seems to suit the
rest of the world – China, India, Islam, Africa, Latin America – just
fine, as all look forward to a magnificent inheritance.
If demography is destiny, the West is finished.
And, if so, does it really matter all that much who rules in Baghdad?
To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, visit the Creators Syndicate
Web page at
www.creators.com.