Drugs & Crime

By Kim Iskyan

There's a reason for the popular perception that Russians like their drink: The average Russian citizen consumes 18 liters of pure alcohol per year, compared with about 11 liters per year in Western Europe. But if President Dmitry Medvedev's new anti-drinking campaign is a success, Russians will be toasting a lot less often.

Russian history is littered with failed attempts by imperious leaders with a social engineering streak to interfere in Russians' tippling habits. The most recent effort, the mid-1980s anti-drinking campaign spearheaded by Mikhail Gorbachev, was abandoned in part because it was hugely unpopular.

But the Kremlin has good reason to try again. Russia's drinking problem, which Medvedev has called a "national disaster," has long been cited as a key cause of Russia's ongoing demographic collapse. Alcohol abuse is a key reason why Russian men have a life expectancy of just 60 years, on par with North Korea and Papua New Guinea. In no small part due to alcohol abuse, the U.N. forecasts that Russia's population will fall from the current 142 million to 131 million by 2025, endangering economic growth and national security over the long term.

Medvedev has charged the government with developing an anti-drinking strategy by Dec. 1. Media reports suggest it may include new restrictions on advertising for alcoholic beverages; tightened regulations for low-alcohol content beverages; limitations on the times and locations at which alcoholic beverages can be sold; and price floors for and increased taxes on vodka. The plan will include additional measures to reduce Russia's gray alcohol market. The government is also contemplating whether to re-establish its monopoly on distilled spirits used to make vodka.

The campaign's chances of success may be better than previous Russian battles with the bottle. Some polls have suggested broad support for a temperance campaign. From a fiscal perspective, the relative contribution to the federal budget of alcohol taxation is a small fraction today of what it was during previous attempts to crack down on alcohol consumption, ensuring that lower consumption wouldn't dramatically decrease government revenue. It might even boost government coffers via higher taxes. Finally, the apparent success in the government's effort to eradicate legalized gambling -- as of July 1, all casinos and slot machine parlors operating outside four specified zones were closed -- reflects considerable political will to engineer positive social change, which could be channeled into an anti-alcohol effort.

Russia's anti-alcohol campaign is still in its very early stages. The politically powerful alcohol lobby, wary of higher taxes, could dilute the effort. And there are a lot more Russians drinking than gambling.

Kim Iskyan is a Europe and Eurasia analyst at Eurasia Group

ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images

by Ian Bremmer

In Afghanistan, even the good news isn't so good. The country managed to hold a presidential election in August, but there aren't many people inside or outside the country who considered it free and fair. It looks increasingly like Hamid Karzai will win without a second round, but his legitimacy will remain under a very large, very dark cloud. He'll face open revolt from Tajiks in the north, who overwhelmingly opposed his candidacy. And as evidenced by the significant recent expansion of terrorist bombings in Afghanistan's major cities and the assassination last week of the country's second-ranking intelligence officer, it will even become harder to secure Kabul. No one should have much confidence that a second round would do much to restore Karzai's credibility.

In addition, military operations against the Taliban inside Pakistan achieved some actual success this summer, but that has probably pushed some militants across the border into Afghanistan to harass coalition forces there. U.S. casualties have increased, though that's not surprising given the more aggressive operations of larger numbers of US troops. But last week's U.S. bombing on a Taliban target, which killed dozens of civilians, is just the latest in a series of setbacks for coalition military operations.

More worrisome: It's becoming increasingly clear that Afghanistan won't be able to stand on its own anytime soon. U.S. military officials report that the training of Afghan soldiers is well behind schedule. For the next two or three years, with coalition forces at their present levels, Afghan troops won't be nearly strong enough to maintain even the current level of security, let alone make any meaningful contribution to an aggressive counterinsurgency effort.

Inside Afghanistan, more locals than ever want the US out, whatever the cost. There's also dwindling support for the war in the United States, as the American media increasingly turns its attention from an economy beginning to improve toward the growing death toll in Afghanistan.

Within the Obama foreign-policy team, there looks to be a growing divergence of opinion on what to do next. There appears to be an internal consensus that the current strategy isn't working. But senior officials appear more divided on whether to "go long" or "go home." In the go long group, those who want more troops and more resources because "failure isn't an option," we see Secretary Clinton, envoy Richard Holbrooke, most of the generals on the ground, and most Republicans in Congress. In the go home camp, those who want to pull troops out before things get much worse, are Vice President Biden, most of Obama's political team, and a growing number of senior Democrats. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates appears to have grown much more skeptical.

In short, Afghanistan is becoming Obama's first lasting foreign-policy crisis. A major terrorist attack somewhere in the world carried out by militants trained in Afghanistan could shift international public opinion toward greater engagement. Short of that, U.S. public opposition to the war will likely grow steadily over the coming year, bringing the issue to a head just in time for U.S. midterm elections and driving a wedge between members of the president's own party.

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By Eurasia Group analysts Allyson Benton and Patrick Esteruelas

As the Mexican government continues to face serious public security problems caused by the nation's drug cartels, fears are mounting that investors may lose confidence. In Mexico's current economic climate, where GDP could contract by as much as 8 percent in 2009, according to the OECD, any potential downward pressure on the economy sets off alarm bells.

Since he took office in 2006, President Felipe Calderon has pursued a twofold strategy against organized crime. The government has deployed the military to key drug trafficking regions in the north and along the west coast to root out cartels. It has also pushed important institutional reforms through congress to help make the country's police forces and judicial system more efficient. Nonetheless, the level of narcotrafficking violence has grown nearly threefold during Calderon's time in office, from an average of 2,195 deaths in 2006 and 2007 to an estimated 6,000 total deaths expected in 2009. In addition, drug traffickers appear to be moving into other illicit activities like extortion rackets and kidnapping rings, as the number of such reported crimes has risen dramatically in the past two years. These rising public security problems could suggest that Mexico is heading along the same path as Colombia, but there are some important distinctions to consider.

A few factors, in particular, make Mexico's state of affairs quite different from the situation in Colombia. First, the government still maintains control over its territory and has not ceded ground to narcotraffickers at any time. Second, although the fight against the cartels has resulted in higher rates of violence, the hostility remains largely contained in a few states and among narcotraffickers vying for improved positions within the cartels or between them. Third, Mexico's drug trafficking violence on a per capital basis remains significantly lower than Colombia's. Even after years of President Alvaro Uribe's successful hard-line security policy against Colombia's narcotraffickers, violence in this country remains quite high: There were a total of 16,000 reported homicides in 2008 in a country of 45 million people. In Mexico, in contrast, narcotrafficking related violence is expected to cause about 6,000 casualties in 2009, in a country of more than 100 million. Fourth, Mexico's narcotraffickers have not targeted civilians in order to support a campaign of fear against the government, even if they do continue to target public officials specifically involved in the fight against them.

In Colombia, in contrast, the nation's narcotraffickers embarked on a public fear campaign that targeted civilians and political elites, even if they had little to do with narcotrafficking or the fight against it. Finally, and most important, Mexico's narcotraffickers have no unifying political agenda. In contrast, Colombia's narcotraffickers -- in particular, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) -- originated out of a drive to see their left-leaning interests represented in the nation's political and party system, and they still claim to have such political aims. A unifying political agenda, however tenuous, helps reinforce the structural integrity and thus durability of groups when under pressure from the government.

In the end, the stark contrasts between Mexico and Colombia explain why investor confidence in Mexico does not appear to have waned as a result of the country's public security woes. As long as President Calderon stays firm in his stance against organized crime, investors will continue to base their judgments about Mexico on the government's capacity to push through badly needed fiscal and economic reforms rather than the level of narcotrafficking violence.

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By Eurasia Group analyst Philippe de Pontet

Last week's standoff between a handful of pirates and the U.S. Fifth Fleet had threatened to become a full-blown foreign-policy crisis before the dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips gave President Obama a clear political win. Pirates are now less likely to target U.S. ships, but the White House is well aware that this episode won't do much to deter piracy elsewhere in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

Just hours after Phillips's rescue, Somalia made headlines again. On Monday, Islamist insurgents in Mogadishu launched a mortar attack on a plane carrying Congressman Donald Payne (D-NJ), underscoring the multifaceted threats posed by state failure in that country. Piracy is one symptom of the problem; Islamic extremism is another. The attack by al-Shabaab fighters within 24 hours of the end of the piracy incident ensures that Somalia will remain on the Obama administration's front-burner -- and that the White House will face growing pressure to "get tough" on militants and pirates who use the failed state as a safe haven.

So, flush with its success and aware that the larger problem has not been solved, will the Obama administration up the ante by targeting pirates onshore in Somalia?

Probably not. It will likely focus instead on near-term efforts to bolster multilateral naval patrols (with more aggressive tactics) in the waters where pirates have attacked in the recent past, because the probable costs of onshore strikes would outweigh the likely benefits.

First, a direct, onshore U.S. strike on pirates would have only a limited impact on the broader piracy problem. Second, it could undermine efforts to contain Islamist militants by inviting them to tap into wounded Somali national pride, one of a very few forces that can unite divided clans. (Somali nationalism provided the Islamist movement with early legitimacy in the struggle to expel U.S.-backed Ethiopian troops from the country.) Third, it would weaken transitional President (and moderate Islamist) Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, a potential force for stability in a country that badly needs it.

African and Gulf governments and U.S. counter-terrorism officials are well aware that strikes could drive extremism in the region and help militants recruit local youth. But there's another risk: Pirates in Puntland, a region in Somalia's northeast where most of the pirates are based, have already threatened to kill some of the 270 hostages they now hold-hostages from countries all over the world, some of them key U.S. allies.

Targeted attacks remain under consideration. The UN Security Council approved a resolution late last year that would allow targeted military action against pirates on Somali territory. But for now, the Obama administration will likely opt for a lower-risk approach that keeps the focus offshore, while reviewing policy options and deepening intelligence on Somalia.

The pirates have now attacked enough private and commercial vessels to create a sense of vulnerability and frustration within many governments around the world. Washington will try to use this opportunity to ramp up multilateral patrolling operations in the Gulf of Aden, while giving U.S. warships greater latitude to launch offensive action against pirates at sea-including on identified "mother ships."

This policy carries risks of its own, including the creeping militarization of the Gulf of Aden and the waters of the Indian Ocean further from Somalia's shores. But this option will offer both security and political benefits while limiting the risk that another U.S. administration hits the rocks that lie just beneath Somalia's troubled waters. 

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