With half of Russia’s population today, these six nations in twenty-five years will have almost as many people, and the Russians will be older and grayer and these Islamic peoples younger and more virile. In the nineteenth century, immense, mighty, and populous Russia pressed down upon what the czars called “the sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire. By present projections, the populations of Turkey and Russia will be comparable in 2050. By 2100, there will be only eighty million Russians. Who will be the “sick man of Europe” then; who the predator and who the prey?
