Photo by True Russian Vodka on Flickr, licensed under the Creative Commons
Turns out a hard night’s drinking can be as detrimental for a nation as it is for the health of its individuals. And Russia’s dealing with more than just a headache—its entire body is deteriorating.
The nation’s reputation as one big drinking hole is well-deserved; Russians annually drink double what the World Health Organization considers a ‘health threat’ (whereas Americans are just under the benchmark.) By 2007, Russians were drinking three times as much as they had in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell.
This isn’t a new problem, but it’s now causing even more damage. Male life expectancy is just 60 years, thanks in large part to outrageous rates of alcoholism. While many Asian countries have to implement controls against overpopulation, Russia faces a projected 20 percent population drop by 2050. Alcohol is cited as a perpetuating factor in high unemployment and crime rates. Maybe more importantly, the country is in dire fiscal straits, and Russia’s nasty habit isn’t helping.
President Medvedev is now faced with every parent’s nightmare—confronting their child’s alcoholism. When Gorbachev instituted a near prohibition on alcohol in the 1980s, he got impressive results, but Russians reacted so strongly that most of his measures had to be overturned. Medvedev wants to decrease alcohol consumption by 25 percent by 2012. Pretty ambitious, considering his plan focuses on everything but Russia’s biggest vice: vodka.
While Vodka has long been the country’s favorite, beer is also rising in popularity, especially among young people. This new campaign, kicked off in September, reportedly aims to delay young people from drinking until the legal age of 18 (most start at around 13 now). Medvedev’s proposed plan enforces stricter penalties for selling to minors, and employs an intensive media blitz.
The government strategy’s third prong is a quadrupled tax increase on beer by 2012. Many question the decision to focus on beer, citing the state’s self-interest as the true explanation. Given the failed history of anti-alcohol measures targeting vodka, it makes sense that the Kremlin is scared to reprise that effort, fearing repercussions from the public. But as one Russian reader wrote to the New York Times, “The main harm comes from vodka, especially fake vodka and other surrogates. If beer becomes less accessible, people will drink more low-quality alcohol and death rates will increase.”
Since Medvedev & Co. are hesitant to take away anyone’s precious clear liquid, it follows they would target the next-worse thing. And bottom line, they need the money—Russia’s economy shrank by seven percent in the first quarter of 2009. The measure is expected to raise over 2 billion dollars, and ‘sin taxes’ are some of the least controversial ways to garner funds. Most of the brewers serving Russia are at least partially foreign-owned, whereas the vodka industry is completely domestic. This tax wouldn’t hurt local industry, but could be advocated for as a real push to clean up Russia’s act.
No one thinks it will be easy to change Russians habits, and many believe the government doesn’t really want to. As one citizen explained, “Every 10 to 15 years another ‘struggle’ that never gives any results, and sometimes worsens the situation, has to be announced. The authorities have to shrug their shoulders, with routine phrases like ‘such are the people.’ The reasons are obvious: it is easier to take wealth from a drunken people and sell it to the Chinese and to Europe.”
To many, this seemingly concerted effort seems more like a ploy to garner revenue. Until there are results, it’s hard to trust the Kremlin is “doing the right thing.”
So how does the United States measure up? Although alcoholism is a serious problem at home, we are leaps and bounds from Russia’s consumption catastrophe. The U.S. population is holding steady, even increasing slightly. And as panicked as our nation is regarding the economy, things seem to be on the upswing.
Yes, there is a recession, and yes, college seniors are struggling in the job market. But most realize it’s probably not wise to drink your sorrows away. Not only could you wake up with little recollection of last night’s antics, you could force the government to create a higher excise tax on beer—we wouldn’t want that now, would we?
President Sarkozy, what were you thinking?
Not only did he get drunk with former Russian President Putin and subsequently gave a G8 speech presumably drunk; he became known for his divorce from long-term wife Cecilia Ciganer-Albeniz and subsequent marriage to Carla Bruni. Given her impressive dating record, some have referred to Miss Bruni as the famous man’s concubine, but I like to think of her as a beautiful woman who just happens to be compatible with rich and powerful men. More recently, Sarkozy also managed to insult one of the largest world religions, calling Islam a backward faith that is incompatible with French values.
To top off Sarkozy’s record of shameful conduct, the Economist published an article discussing the moral crisis that seems to have ensued in the ranks of Sarkozy’s conservative right-wing party. Sarkozy’s colleague and former French President Mitterrand admitted to soliciting “boys” for sex during his vacations in Thailand. Around the same time, he exclaimed that he found the arrest of Roman Polanski, an America filmmaker charged of unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl in 1977, “absolutely appalling”.
From an American perspective, the behavior of Sarkozy and Mitterrand would be unacceptable. Imagine President Obama leaving Michelle for a younger woman and giving press conferences under the influence, or if Joe Biden came out publicly endorsing prostitution.
When evaluating Sarkozy’s behavior, however, we have to step outside the (American) box. French society holds values that, in some ways, differ vastly from commonly held convictions in the United States. Take the subject of love. Romantic relationships in France take place in the private as well as the public setting. During my time in Paris, I grew more comfortable with couples publicly displaying their affection through excessive tongue action. The French more openly and publicly embrace love in all its dimensions, ranging from physical affection to marriage and sexual preference. With that in mind, Sarkozy’s openness about his divorce and remarriage appears more commonplace than unusual. In the same way, Mitterrand’s personal contribution to Thai sex tourism, while morally still objectionable, may not result in the kind of political suicide we would expect in the US.
Yet at the end of my discourse on French morality, I cannot help but wonder whether we in the US are all that different. Just because our presidents do not openly insult Islam, does it mean that they don’t hold significant prejudices against the Muslim community? Plenty of Muslims in this country could tell you about the misunderstandings and discrimination they encountered after 9/11. And just because we don’t like to see presidents get divorced or have extramarital affairs- even though many have revered the likes of JFK and FDR who have had less than clean slates-should we hold them to superhuman standards? Until we have answered these and other questions adequately, we may have to admit that French politicians are just a little more daring- daring to be imperfect.
Former NJIA editor and current staff editor at The Atlantic reflects on what to do in Afghanistan.
I wade into the Afghanistan debate with trepidation. I’m going to begin with something that’s customarily antithetical to American foreign policy: A dash of humility.
I have never published an Afghanistan paper in Foreign Affairs. I have never sat with an Afghanistan military general. I have never stepped on Afghanistan soil, much less spilled my blood on it. Being a part of one of those groups might grant me greater authority on the subject, but it wouldn’t necessarily grant me greater certainty about what we should do. After all, within each of these groups – the academics, the frontline reporters, the soldiers – there is a wide variety of opinion about the proper course in Afghanistan. Reasonable people, as they say, can disagree. But at least in the Washington tradition, their disagreement divides into two camps. They are the counterinsurgency camp and counterterrorism camp.
The counterinsurgency camp – sometimes called COIN – holds that the United States needs up to 40,000 additional troops to help defeat the terrorists and build a stable government, quell the rogue parts of Afghanistan and construct a civil society. The counterterrorism camp has more limited goals. It sees nation-building in Afghanistan as a pipe dream and instead seeks to limit America’s “footprint” in a land we’ve been trying to nation-build for the better part of this decade.
At least some of the momentum behind COIN comes from the perceived success of The Surge in Iraq. The Surge worked, I think, but not simply because we increased our troop levels. It worked because the United States found a partner against terrorism in the Sunnis. It won because the military spent its prodigious sums bribing tribal leaders. Some military strategists call the Afghanistan war an investment. But each year for the past seven years, we’ve spent between two and three times the GDP of Afghanistan for the purpose of saving it. As Nicholas Kristof wrote, Afghani nationalists have good reason to mistake that kind of “investment” for a hostile takeover.
Our financial advantage in Afghanistan has not brought military victory but we can use it to buy civic order. While maintaining a light footprint and relying on unmanned drones to patrol terrorist hot spots, we should start buying the support of tribal leaders outside of Kabul to do what the corrupt and incompetent Karzai government cannot: Incentivize cooperation against the terrorist fringe of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It will not be wholly moral. We will deal with horrific people. Progress will be slow. There will be set-backs and risks to creating an alliance whose glue is American money. But this represents our best and most realistic chance to salvage our mission in Afghanistan.
We don’t know what we’re going to get from a massive build-up of troops. We don’t know what we’re going to get from pursuing a status quo strategy, or a strategy of bribery. Here’s what we know. A build up is going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars we cannot afford. It will require partnering with a regional ally we do not have. It will risk thousands of American and Afghani lives for a war Americans don’t believe in and Afghans don’t want.
A final note about the flurry of op-eds you’ll read from experts much wiser than me arguing for a more ambitious strategy: When you’re reading these pretty polemics, ask yourself what the author means by “victory” in Afghanistan. Ask whether he uses the phrase “America must” because the ends are self-evidently crucial or because his argument requires the crutch of alarmism. Ask whether a country that can hardly afford medicine for its citizens can afford to build a nation in Asia. Ask what this war is for in the first place. As for me, my response to the elegant and ambitious arguments of the other side is simply this: Your words are too easy, and this war is too hard.
