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Implosion: The End of Russia and What It Means for America
Crises—political, social, and economic—run rampant within Mother Russia’s borders. Russian troops infiltrate the Crimean peninsula, the UN Security Council attempts to mediate concerning the conflict with Ukraine, and the United States pledges aid to former Soviet satellites—and civil war teeters on the brink of eruption. In the wake of the Sochi Olympics, it is Russia that is skating on thin ice, and Vladimir Putin’s autonomous regime looks shakier by the minute. Ilan Berman shows the future of the country as grim and on the fast track to complete ruination. Is the end in sight for this former superpower? In Implosion , Berman explains why Russia’s collapse is imminent and how this nation’s ultimate demise will vitiate the United States.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published September 17, 2013
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About the author
Ilan Berman
31 books6 followersIlan I. Berman is Vice President of the American Foreign Policy Council, a non-profit U.S. foreign policy think tank in Washington, DC. He focuses on regional security in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Russian Federation. Lou Dobbs of CNN described him as "one of the [U.S.]'s leading experts on the Middle East and Iran.
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October 21, 2014
Russia is a sick country. It has been a country on a downward spiral in terms of all aspects of human and social development for decades. The collapse of the Soviet Union only accelerated those trends, and the recent spate of relative calm and prosperity only slowed down the decline. However, the country remains very badly run and destined for further decay. A total implosion is only a matter of time.
In “Implosion” Ilan Berman gives a fascinating account of the current state of Russia’s national health. He gives a well-documented account of some of this nations greatest political, demographical, and economic problems – undiversified economy that is heavily dependent on exploitation of natural resources, abysmal birth rates and even more disastrous mortality rates (especially for men), rapidly rising and assertive minorities (especially Muslims), and encroaching threat of Chinese territorial pretensions in the Far East. Any one of these problems would be almost insurmountable to overcome for any nation on its own. Their combination does seem to forebode very difficult days ahead.
One issue that I have with this book is that it feels too journalistic and fragmentary in its approach. The book reads like a series of well-informed and interesting articles. However, there is a lack of the sense of coherence and the overall picture of Russia that is portrayed here never raises above the sum of different parts. Many points are repeated throughout the book. I would have in particular liked a more detailed and comprehensive prediction of what the nature of the upcoming “implosion” will be like, and the consequences it will have on Russia and the rest of the World.
In the light of this book, one can see that the recent Russian military aggressiveness and adventurism stems more from the sense of weakness and vulnerability, than confidence of an ascending power. This, if anything, makes Russia’s actions even more unpredictable and dangerous. It is very likely that Russia’s coming implosion, if it indeed transpires, will have devastating consequences on geopolitical stability. This should make all of us worried and this makes “Implosion,” despite its shortcomings, an immensely important book to read.
In “Implosion” Ilan Berman gives a fascinating account of the current state of Russia’s national health. He gives a well-documented account of some of this nations greatest political, demographical, and economic problems – undiversified economy that is heavily dependent on exploitation of natural resources, abysmal birth rates and even more disastrous mortality rates (especially for men), rapidly rising and assertive minorities (especially Muslims), and encroaching threat of Chinese territorial pretensions in the Far East. Any one of these problems would be almost insurmountable to overcome for any nation on its own. Their combination does seem to forebode very difficult days ahead.
One issue that I have with this book is that it feels too journalistic and fragmentary in its approach. The book reads like a series of well-informed and interesting articles. However, there is a lack of the sense of coherence and the overall picture of Russia that is portrayed here never raises above the sum of different parts. Many points are repeated throughout the book. I would have in particular liked a more detailed and comprehensive prediction of what the nature of the upcoming “implosion” will be like, and the consequences it will have on Russia and the rest of the World.
In the light of this book, one can see that the recent Russian military aggressiveness and adventurism stems more from the sense of weakness and vulnerability, than confidence of an ascending power. This, if anything, makes Russia’s actions even more unpredictable and dangerous. It is very likely that Russia’s coming implosion, if it indeed transpires, will have devastating consequences on geopolitical stability. This should make all of us worried and this makes “Implosion,” despite its shortcomings, an immensely important book to read.
September 29, 2019
Russia is a menace because it's too strong - no, because it's too weak! Or because it's too authoritarian; or too lawless. Because it's too reactionary, or too radical, to live with. One suspects the real reason Russia is a danger is . . because . . . it's Russia. As David Foglesong outlined in his "The American Mission and the `Evil Empire,' " Russia has served as a projection screen for Westerners' alter egos for well over a century. Ilan Berman's work here continues that tradition. As a chief wonk of the American Foreign Policy Council, Mr. Berman presses the official neo-con line, and it would be too easy to just dismiss his book as think tank propaganda. He presents an intelligent rationale according to his lights, so it deserves counter-argument at some length.
All the cold war hawks and post-Soviet vultures are lined up behind Berman's hopeful apocalypse, from the preface by Newt Gingrich to the jacket blurbs by Reaganite triumphalists. The book's spin reflects their collective longing for the final collapse of Russia as a political and economic entity. Berman's own angst may be understandable: as the son of Soviet Jewish refuseniks his family and others like it were on the bad end of the Muscovite stick. Russia's "implosion" would seem, to them, a fitting judgment as well as a cost-effective way of deconstructing a major nuclear power. But the analysis is one-sided, and more in danger of implosion than its subject.
That "other Russia" of potential democracy in a "normal country" may have been killed off, in Gingrich's words, by apparatchiki turned crony capitalists, KGBists, and generals; but it was a murder begun in the Yeltsin years, not in Putin's, with the shelling of the Russian Parliament and "500 Days" shock therapy, cheered on without reservation by Western economic and political advisors. It was Yeltsin who appointed Putin as his successor. Putin has been squaring that circle ever since, but he did not begin its roll. As a figure from Russian history, Putin resembles Alexander Kolchak, the White Russian Admiral who overthrew the rearguard democracy of Siberia and tried to make himself Supreme Leader of Russia during the civil war. That Kolchak's biography became the most expensive picture made under Putin is revealing; and ironic, in that Kolchak's dictatorship received the full backing of the West.
The derzharnost - statism -of which Berman writes was the passion of pro-Westerners like Paul Milyukov, Pyotr Stolypin, and Peter the Great, as well as Stalin. It was the engine to uplift Russia from poverty to "modernization," however defined: a threat, perhaps, to those who'd rather this Eurasian land mass remain a submissive appendage of outside powers and interests. One cannot expect its native rulers to agree. While Russia has many problems, they are no more so than the crises gripping the EU in its near-meltdown, or for that matter the malaise in the US or Israel. Berman's projections apply so equally to his own readership it reads like a conscious parody.
The Muslim menace in Russia, of rising militancy, alienation, and illegal immigration is a mirror to the US' own problems with its Mexican border, and Israel's Palestinian dilemma. I expect to see Israel implode from its own failure to deal with the Muslims in and around it before Russia; and to see Western Europe gripped by xenophobic violence as vicious as Russia's. Berman's howler on p. 33 - that "the United States largely assimilates its immigrants" - must surely be news to conservatives whose greatest fear is an "open border" and linguistic conquest. Russia is not the only home, to judge from American polls, "of a citizenry that has given up on their government as a steward of their needs and protector of their rights and freedoms" (p. 25).
And on it goes. The Russian Orthodox Church's illiberalism is seen as proof of Russian social decay; yet the same resurgent forces in the US are signs of "cultural strength." The Russian Church has returned to its roots of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Motherland," as Solzhenitsyn and other anti-Soviets always yearned, but even here there's been outside help. The gay-bashing legislation pushed by the Church owed much of its inspiration to American religious conservatives, who vetted the Russian Patriarch on his US visits on how to strengthen Russia's Christian core. Russia's clerical medievalism is a mirror image of what the US will look like if these same forces have their way in deconstructing America's "secular humanism." Like American economic advice of the 1990s, perhaps such counsel was offered with the hope of "proving" after the fact that Russia is too decadent for equal treatment among nations.
If corruption and maladministration of funds were enough to bankrupt a nation, the US would be in smoking ruins by now. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost in Washington as well as Moscow that could have been invested in healthcare, education and infrastructure (p. 72.) This loss was consumed not only by a financial "mafia" on Wall Street, but an endless ongoing war against the "Islamic threat." (To say nothing of the conscious gutting of "entitlements.") Russia's dire straits, as outlined by Berman, puts the Federation in good company on the road to global ruin.
Moscow's "misunderstanding" of Islam (chapter 7) is a charge coming with ill grace from a country embroiled in a counter-jihad with much of the Islamic world, now sliding into its second decade with no forseeable end in view. Moscow has its enemies and friends in the Muslim "Bloc", as does every other outside power. All of these "understand" Islam according to their own interests - rarely in the interests of Muslim countries or peoples themselves. Here also Russia stands in good company: and at least it has not sent assassination squads or drones half way across the world to whack those perceived to be hostile to said interests. Nor has Russia funded Israel's regional jihad, to add gratuitous enmity onto itself. It's not Russia that so many Muslims perceive as their Number One global enemy. The hedging conclusion of his final chapter - that "decades hence" Russia might evolve into "the world's first majority-Muslim nuclear superpower with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (p. 124) - is too patently absurd. The only way for "the Muslims" to "take over" as described would be through such a complete meltdown as to leave no Russia left for the taking. The US is as likely to become a Spanish-speaking state (more likely, some would opine) with Cinco de Mayo an official Federal holiday. I fear Mr. Berman has put all his eggs of radical Islam and a resurgent Evil Empire in Moscow in one basket of horror that is "not assured" (p. 124) but patently implausible.
Cataloguing Russia's new hostility to the West only begs his question. Why does Russia have to be either a "true [sic] partner of the West or a mortal danger to it?" (p. 120.) Why does every independent policy, by Russia or anyone, from the Western economic-military nexus always have to be ramped into an existential threat? The Russian state has "imploded" before, first in 1917, then under external conquest after 1941, and came close to it again after 1991. Always it re-emerged, even if in somewhat altered form. I do not foresee the dire Russian future Berman seems to relish; but even if much nastiness lies around the corner, one can't assume it will be that last, yearned-for grand finale after all else that's transpired. In fact, Russia is not the same primitive society of 1917, nor even 1945. There are tens of millions of university-educated citizens, hence a real middle class, with too much to lose from the kind of apocalypse he and his assistants have scraped together and interpolated here in a white-hot rush.
To sum it up, he hasn't made his case. Even the current Ukrainian crisis - which seems at first blush to confirm the theory of Putin's "necessary" pan-Slavic imperialism - wouldn't be occurring if not for Western help to the Maidan insurgents, in overthrowing the Ukraine's delicate non-alignment. Russia has its problems, but they seem no greater (and much less than) many other places whose meltdowns would cause more immediate concern to America: Israel, Mexico, or Egypt, to name a few. Read this book as a guide to how the neo-cons are trying to inflame a new East-West cold war; but keep your eyes between the lines.
All the cold war hawks and post-Soviet vultures are lined up behind Berman's hopeful apocalypse, from the preface by Newt Gingrich to the jacket blurbs by Reaganite triumphalists. The book's spin reflects their collective longing for the final collapse of Russia as a political and economic entity. Berman's own angst may be understandable: as the son of Soviet Jewish refuseniks his family and others like it were on the bad end of the Muscovite stick. Russia's "implosion" would seem, to them, a fitting judgment as well as a cost-effective way of deconstructing a major nuclear power. But the analysis is one-sided, and more in danger of implosion than its subject.
That "other Russia" of potential democracy in a "normal country" may have been killed off, in Gingrich's words, by apparatchiki turned crony capitalists, KGBists, and generals; but it was a murder begun in the Yeltsin years, not in Putin's, with the shelling of the Russian Parliament and "500 Days" shock therapy, cheered on without reservation by Western economic and political advisors. It was Yeltsin who appointed Putin as his successor. Putin has been squaring that circle ever since, but he did not begin its roll. As a figure from Russian history, Putin resembles Alexander Kolchak, the White Russian Admiral who overthrew the rearguard democracy of Siberia and tried to make himself Supreme Leader of Russia during the civil war. That Kolchak's biography became the most expensive picture made under Putin is revealing; and ironic, in that Kolchak's dictatorship received the full backing of the West.
The derzharnost - statism -of which Berman writes was the passion of pro-Westerners like Paul Milyukov, Pyotr Stolypin, and Peter the Great, as well as Stalin. It was the engine to uplift Russia from poverty to "modernization," however defined: a threat, perhaps, to those who'd rather this Eurasian land mass remain a submissive appendage of outside powers and interests. One cannot expect its native rulers to agree. While Russia has many problems, they are no more so than the crises gripping the EU in its near-meltdown, or for that matter the malaise in the US or Israel. Berman's projections apply so equally to his own readership it reads like a conscious parody.
The Muslim menace in Russia, of rising militancy, alienation, and illegal immigration is a mirror to the US' own problems with its Mexican border, and Israel's Palestinian dilemma. I expect to see Israel implode from its own failure to deal with the Muslims in and around it before Russia; and to see Western Europe gripped by xenophobic violence as vicious as Russia's. Berman's howler on p. 33 - that "the United States largely assimilates its immigrants" - must surely be news to conservatives whose greatest fear is an "open border" and linguistic conquest. Russia is not the only home, to judge from American polls, "of a citizenry that has given up on their government as a steward of their needs and protector of their rights and freedoms" (p. 25).
And on it goes. The Russian Orthodox Church's illiberalism is seen as proof of Russian social decay; yet the same resurgent forces in the US are signs of "cultural strength." The Russian Church has returned to its roots of "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, and Motherland," as Solzhenitsyn and other anti-Soviets always yearned, but even here there's been outside help. The gay-bashing legislation pushed by the Church owed much of its inspiration to American religious conservatives, who vetted the Russian Patriarch on his US visits on how to strengthen Russia's Christian core. Russia's clerical medievalism is a mirror image of what the US will look like if these same forces have their way in deconstructing America's "secular humanism." Like American economic advice of the 1990s, perhaps such counsel was offered with the hope of "proving" after the fact that Russia is too decadent for equal treatment among nations.
If corruption and maladministration of funds were enough to bankrupt a nation, the US would be in smoking ruins by now. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been lost in Washington as well as Moscow that could have been invested in healthcare, education and infrastructure (p. 72.) This loss was consumed not only by a financial "mafia" on Wall Street, but an endless ongoing war against the "Islamic threat." (To say nothing of the conscious gutting of "entitlements.") Russia's dire straits, as outlined by Berman, puts the Federation in good company on the road to global ruin.
Moscow's "misunderstanding" of Islam (chapter 7) is a charge coming with ill grace from a country embroiled in a counter-jihad with much of the Islamic world, now sliding into its second decade with no forseeable end in view. Moscow has its enemies and friends in the Muslim "Bloc", as does every other outside power. All of these "understand" Islam according to their own interests - rarely in the interests of Muslim countries or peoples themselves. Here also Russia stands in good company: and at least it has not sent assassination squads or drones half way across the world to whack those perceived to be hostile to said interests. Nor has Russia funded Israel's regional jihad, to add gratuitous enmity onto itself. It's not Russia that so many Muslims perceive as their Number One global enemy. The hedging conclusion of his final chapter - that "decades hence" Russia might evolve into "the world's first majority-Muslim nuclear superpower with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (p. 124) - is too patently absurd. The only way for "the Muslims" to "take over" as described would be through such a complete meltdown as to leave no Russia left for the taking. The US is as likely to become a Spanish-speaking state (more likely, some would opine) with Cinco de Mayo an official Federal holiday. I fear Mr. Berman has put all his eggs of radical Islam and a resurgent Evil Empire in Moscow in one basket of horror that is "not assured" (p. 124) but patently implausible.
Cataloguing Russia's new hostility to the West only begs his question. Why does Russia have to be either a "true [sic] partner of the West or a mortal danger to it?" (p. 120.) Why does every independent policy, by Russia or anyone, from the Western economic-military nexus always have to be ramped into an existential threat? The Russian state has "imploded" before, first in 1917, then under external conquest after 1941, and came close to it again after 1991. Always it re-emerged, even if in somewhat altered form. I do not foresee the dire Russian future Berman seems to relish; but even if much nastiness lies around the corner, one can't assume it will be that last, yearned-for grand finale after all else that's transpired. In fact, Russia is not the same primitive society of 1917, nor even 1945. There are tens of millions of university-educated citizens, hence a real middle class, with too much to lose from the kind of apocalypse he and his assistants have scraped together and interpolated here in a white-hot rush.
To sum it up, he hasn't made his case. Even the current Ukrainian crisis - which seems at first blush to confirm the theory of Putin's "necessary" pan-Slavic imperialism - wouldn't be occurring if not for Western help to the Maidan insurgents, in overthrowing the Ukraine's delicate non-alignment. Russia has its problems, but they seem no greater (and much less than) many other places whose meltdowns would cause more immediate concern to America: Israel, Mexico, or Egypt, to name a few. Read this book as a guide to how the neo-cons are trying to inflame a new East-West cold war; but keep your eyes between the lines.
July 16, 2016
An extremely interesting book detailing the numerous socio-political problems Russia faces today and in the years to come, and how these problems if left unchecked, will impact the United States and the world at large.
The book covers many pressing issues, such as Russia's declining Slavic demographic, the increase in Islamic terror and separatist groups within the nation, crumbling infrastructure, and Chinese migration and increased influence in the Russian Far East. The latter half of the book explains how these issues effect the United States and the world, giving various hypothetical scenarios of what a future Russia may look like, and how it may act to the outside world.
One note I would like to make, the book came out in 2013, a year before the Crimea annexation and the fighting in Ukraine, so some of the information regarding Russian military and foreign policy is slightly outdated. However, the majority of the points and issues raised are still relevant in 2016.
Overall, this was a quick, fascinating read. I highly recommend for anyone interested in Eastern European studies or current affairs.
The book covers many pressing issues, such as Russia's declining Slavic demographic, the increase in Islamic terror and separatist groups within the nation, crumbling infrastructure, and Chinese migration and increased influence in the Russian Far East. The latter half of the book explains how these issues effect the United States and the world, giving various hypothetical scenarios of what a future Russia may look like, and how it may act to the outside world.
One note I would like to make, the book came out in 2013, a year before the Crimea annexation and the fighting in Ukraine, so some of the information regarding Russian military and foreign policy is slightly outdated. However, the majority of the points and issues raised are still relevant in 2016.
Overall, this was a quick, fascinating read. I highly recommend for anyone interested in Eastern European studies or current affairs.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 22, 2013
This book is a must-read for anyone who's interested in Russia's recent history and possible future trajectory. Ilan Berman makes a compelling argument that Russia is likely to destabilize in the relatively near future, given the social upheaval, demographic changes, and belligerent stance of its leaders. The author's actual argument is concise and almost too brief, though he also includes translations of two significant public documents promulgated by the Russian government--one on its plans with regard to Arctic territory, the other its overall plan for rebuilding the country. Both have elements that should give pause, especially as Berman points out that Russia's leaders still regards Europe and especially the US as its natural enemies.
March 4, 2016
Brief argument for why Russia is collapsing. The facts hold, but it feels short and simplistic. Good for new people though.
December 3, 2013
The cover and title of the book is misleading—a title, it seems, designed to appeal to the anti-Russian sentiment. The book is a very quick read and the interior isn't reflected by the cover graphics and title. It points out the many challenges that Russia faces in the future. Yet there is a kind of sense in the book that everything else in the world will stay status quo while Russia morphs into something else. For example, the extreme demographic problem that Russia faces (the Muslims being the only ones increasing in population while the rest are having a demographic winter) is pretty common throughout nearly all of Western Europe. Just look at what is happening in France, for example!
Still, the dialogue of the difficult tasks of Russia are articulated clearly and simply. To me it seemed like a rehash of things already garnered during my three years over there, but it was a good reminder of Russian's particular challenges—though it fails to mention any of Russia's particular and sometimes formidable strengths.
Still, the dialogue of the difficult tasks of Russia are articulated clearly and simply. To me it seemed like a rehash of things already garnered during my three years over there, but it was a good reminder of Russian's particular challenges—though it fails to mention any of Russia's particular and sometimes formidable strengths.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews