Is Hillary Really the Smartest Woman in the World?

By Rich Kozlovich

Life is about paradigms and demographics.  Demographics create paradigms and paradigms create demographics.   Let's explore this. 

On September 23, 2016 Molly O'Toole recently posted an article entitled, From Reset to Realpolitik, Clinton's New Hard Line on Moscow, in Foreign Policy stating:

Before leaving the State Department in early 2013, Hillary Clinton wrote President Barack Obama a final note on Russia. The hoped-for “reset” with Moscow, she said, was in the end a setback. She urged Obama to set a “new course” by taking a harder line against Russian President Vladimir Putin.......Clinton cautioned Obama that the relationship between Washington and Moscow would “likely get worse before it got better,” and he had to be “realistic” about the danger Putin posed to both his neighbors and the world order, she wrote in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, which was published before her campaign for president — her second — this year.

As usual - Hillary Clinton - supposedly the smartest woman in the world - is as dumb a dirt.

Putin isn't attempting to upset the "world order" -  whatever that is - he's merely following what has been Russian foreign policy since the days of the Czars - create buffer states between ethnic Russians and their enemies. 

Russia, is a hordes land country, having few natural defensive barriers.  They have seven defensive gaps they must man and now only have enough manpower to man three of them and two of them are around the Ukraine.  Russia is breeding itself out of existence and by 2040 ethnic Russians may be a minority in their own country.  And they're facing a dynamic demographic just to their South - a potentially resurgent natural and historical enemy - Turkey.  This is why Putin is attempting to control the Ukraine.  "Ukraine and Moldova control the Bessarabian Gap" to which a Turkish army could pour though. 

The Ukraine's "infracture transports nearly half of Russian oil and natural gas to Europe and has the only truly navigable river of the old Soviet Union, the Dnieper, which flows through Ukrainian territory, integrating the lands of the Black Sea, the Sea of Mrmara and the world beyhond economically for Russia.  The Crimean Peninsula commands the mouth of the Dnieper and his home to the Russia'a only truly warm water naval base, Sevastopol." 

Although Russian elite forces are extremely good at what they do the vast majority of their military is just a little short of being nothing but warm bodies.  They don't have the financial wherewithal to build large ships any longer and their building techniques are dated.  They are capable of small short term strikes but they're incapable of sustaining any conflict that may require long periods of time or resources. 

Russia is a land riddled with poverty and hunger.  This is a "huge" nation that "combines a large population with low capital generation and the result is limited funds for infrastructure, education and market formation, restraining everything from the productivity of the labor force to the effectiveness of the army."  

The country is riddled with "HIV and milti-drug resistant tuberculosis,with most of the cases concentrated in the fifteen to thirty five age group: the age group most likely to have children".  And to make matters worse - Russians are killing themselves with alcohol.

 "Russians 16 and older drink the equivalent of roughly four gallons of pure alcohol per capita each year, almost twice the amount of their American counterparts.  Russia currently has 2 million alcoholics. The number of Russian children aged 10-14 who drink alcohol exceeds 10 million.  Roughly 500,000 Russians die annually from alcoholic-related accidents, crimes, and illnesses.   Alcohol poisoning kills more than 23,000 Russians each year."

So after putting Russia's demographic disaster in focus I think it's important to ask: What rational, intelligent and only partially informed person has to come to the conclusion -  this is a formula for destabilizing the "world order"?  Of course - who said Hillary was rational, intellligent or ever partially well informed? 

What Putin's doing  is just trying to delay Russia's "national twilight" - and most importantly - keep himself in power.  For if that changes he might not survive.

My final thought.  Could someone name just one smart thing Hillary ever did? 

Source information for much of this article came from Peter Zeihan's The Accidental Superpower.