Investor's Business Daily, September 13th, 2007
Geopolitics: Mother Russia detonates the father of all bombs as Vladimir Putin shuffles his government to stay in power behind the scenes. Meanwhile, a provincial governor shows that Moscow may be running out of time -- and people.
An increasingly assertive and belligerent Russia dropped two bombs the other day.
The first was the dissolution of his government by Putin and his appointment of unknown bureaucrat Viktor Zubkov to be prime minister, passing over the expected successor, deputy prime minister and former defense minister Sergei Ivanov.
Putin is obligated under Russia's constitution to step down after elections next March. But observers think he's reluctant to retire as Russia, flush with energy revenues, rebuilds its military and flexes its muscles as Putin literally did in front of the camera on a recent trip to Siberia.
His surprise selection of Zubkov, the head of the country's financial monitoring service, the equivalent of the GOP nominating Alan Greenspan for president, suggests Putin is less interested in grooming a successor than he is in keeping the seat warm for a possible return to power in 2012. Ivanov, a key player in Russia's military resurgence, would have been more of a rival.
The second bomb, another example of that military resurgence, was dropped out of a TU-160 strategic bomber, and is perhaps the most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever detonated. While containing "only" 7.1 metric tons of high explosives compared with 8 tons for the U.S. MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast), the Russian bomb's blast radius is twice that of the American bomb.
The MOAB is a descendant of the BLU-82 Daisy Cutter used in Tora Bora against the Taliban in 2001. According to Gen. Alexander Rushkin, the Russian deputy chief of staff, Moscow's smaller bomb packs a bigger punch because, due to nanotechnology, the temperature at the epicenter of the blast is twice as high. This suggests that Russia is regaining its technological edge.
"Test results of the new airborne weapon have shown that its efficiency and power is commensurate with a nuclear weapon," he said. In case Al Gore was paying attention, Rushkin said that because no radiation was released, the bomb was environmentally friendly.
While Putin and the Russian military prepare for the future, the governor of Ulyanovsk province, some 560 miles southeast of Moscow, is working to ensure that Mother Russia has a future by producing enough bouncing baby Bolsheviks to stabilize and reverse Russia's recent population decline.
Sergei Morozov urged couples to stay home on Wednesday which he dubbed "Family Contact" day, but which others have called "Conception Day." The special day for encouraging procreation was selected, according to a Morozov spokesman, so that mothers "ideally should give birth on June 12," Russia's Constitution Day.
And in case a little vodka and some soft music isn't enough, one of the lucky couples will win a new apartment. This year a couple in the birthplace of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin won a jeep after their fourth baby was born on the holiday. A record 78 babies have been born this year in the region's main hospital.
Russia is seeking to reverse a trend in which the population is shrinking by about 700,000 people a year. Neutral population growth requires an average 2.1 live births per couple. Russia's current birthrate is less than 1.6 -- below replacement level. Russia also has one of the world's shortest life spans at 66.6 years.
It appears that Russia, which sits on as much as a third of the world's petroleum and natural gas reserves, is concerned not only with NATO's expansion and American missile defense in Europe, but also with an energy-hungry China to the south with 10 times as many people.
As the Chinese saying goes, Russia, and the U.S., are living in interesting times.
