Free America Alone by Mark Steyn

stretch their legs. China is resourcepoor; the Russian east contains 80 percent of that country's resources. Given that even alcoholic Slavs with a life expectancy of fifty-six will live to see Vladivostok return to its old name of Haishenwei, Moscow might as well flog it to Beijing instead of having it snaffled out from under. Facing extinction, Moscow doesn't have much to barter with--except dangling the Chinese an offer that could solve several of their structural problems. In fact, Russia might offer a solution to the People's Republic's most distinctive structural flaw: the most gender-distorted demographic cohort in global history, the so-called guang gun--"bare branches." Since China introduced its "one child" policy in 1978, the imbalance between the sexes has increased to the point where in today's generation there are 119 boys for every 100 girls. The pioneer generation of that male surplus is now in its twenties. Unless China's planning on becoming the first gay superpower since Sparta, what's going to happen to those young men? As a general rule, large numbers of excitable lads who can't get any action are useful for manning the nuttier outposts of the jihad but not for much else. So, given Russia's own imbalance--between sickly men of low life expectancy and longlived robust women--it's not hard to see some mutual advantage in a bilateral mass hook-up for Slav women and Chinese men, even if the boys are a bit callow and the chicks somewhat long in the tooth.
    That's not the death whimper of their Tsarist/Communist dreams most Russian nationalists would have predicted. But then they've never been shrewd assessors of their own defects. One reason why al Qaeda seriously thinks it can destroy the West is because it believes that in Afghanistan, it--and not the United States--brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union. It will be Russia's fate to have large chunks of its turf annexed by the Islamic world, and much of what's left fall to the Chinese.
    That's the danger for Washington--that most of what Russia has to trade is likely to be damaging to U.S. interests. In its death throes, it could bequeath the world several new Muslim nations, a nuclear Middle East, and a stronger China. In theory, America could do a belated follow-up to the Alaska deal and put in a bid for Siberia. But Russia's calculation is that sooner or later we'll be back in a bipolar world and that, in almost any scenario, there's more advantage in being part of the non-American pole. If a Sino-Russian strategic partnership has a certain logic to it, so, in a darker way, does a Sino-Russo-Euro-Muslim alliance of convenience. I get a surprising amount of mail from Americans who say, aw, we're too big a bunch of politically correct blue-state pussies to kick Islamobutt but fortunately the Russkies and the ChiComs have their own Muslim wackjobs and they won't be as squeamish as us wimps when it comes to sorting them out once and for all. Maybe. One day. But right now they figure the jihad is America's problem and it's in their interest to keep it that way. Hence, Russo-Chinese support for every troublemaker on the planet, from Iran's loony president to Hugo Chavez in America's backyard.
    So a combination of factors is bringing about a remarkable event: the death of a great nation not through war or devastation but through its inability to rouse itself from its own suicidal tendencies. As Mrs. Thatcher likes to say, "The facts of life are conservative." The America Alone

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    nation that tried to buck those facts of life the most thoroughly is falling the fastest. Churchill didn't know the half of it: Russia is a vacuum wrapped in a nullity inside an abyss. LES FEUILLES MORTES
    Demographic origin need not be the final word. In 1775, Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Joseph Priestley suggesting a mutual English friend might like to apply his mind to the conundrum the Crown faced:
    Britain, at the expense of three millions, has killed 150