It's Time to De-Russianize the BRICS

Russia isn't a great power anymore. It’s not rising in any meaningful sense of that word in international relations theory. Its population is contracting at a startling rate. The average lifespan is declining. Alcoholism is a uniquely terrible scourge. Infrastructure is a mess. Its bureaucracy has scarcely budged in 20 years. It has basically missed the globalization boat that has linked in the other BRICS to the US and western economies, and that has allowed them to export their way into the middle class. (Russia’s still not in the WTO, and who wants to invest there now?) It suffers from a terrible brain drain. Consider that those ‘mail-order’ Russian brides represent young, healthy, reasonably educated Russians so desperate to flee that they prefer shot-gun marriages to scarcely-known obese foreign guys, over staying in Putin-land. Holding constant the otherwise very disturbing ethical issues, that actually says a lot about the contemporary state of Russia if you think about it, because ‘bride export’ is common trait of third world states.