I thought we won the Cold War?

In 1992 the Soviet Union finally collapsed. And so did life expectancies for Russian men. Between 1990 and 1994 life expectancy at birth for males fell by 5 years, plummeting to less than 60 years.

Why?

The collapse of the Soviet Union caused tremendous (momentous!) social and economic disruption. Workers, places and firms were thrown from a predictable planned economy into the open water of free-market capitalism. It was sink or swim – and many sank. The death rate for employment-age men shot up, driven by cardiovascular disease, drug and alcohol consumption, accidents, homicides, and suicides. This collapse in male life expectancy cost 2.5-3 million lives. I want to restate that for everyone. If death rates had stayed what they were under the Soviet Union 2.5 million deaths would have been avoided.

And what does this pattern of deaths look like? It looks like rusting out Russian factory towns dying on the vine, like millions of men thrown out of work and dropping out of the labor force, and like thousands of factories shuttering- unable to compete in a global economy. And all alongside millions of men dying quiet deaths of despair. It looks like country where since 1992 the number of drug addicts has risen 9-fold, where the rate of HIV infection has doubled every year since 1992, where today 6% of the population are drug users, a country that has a GDP per capita less than a quarter of the United States' but is home to as many billionaires per capita than the United States.

This is what it meant for Russia to lose the Cold War.

So why does that story sound so familiar to Americans? Why does Magnitogorsk remind me of Youngstown? Is this what winning means?

Why has America been plagued by “deaths of despair”. Why is it that, for the first time since the end of WWII, life expectancy at birth declined in 2015, driven by suicides and drug use? Why have rates of opiate addiction and death increased sharply? Why has male labor force participation declined and not recovered? Why are Americans more depressed than the citizens of other developed countries? Why is our infant mortality rate so high, why are our bridges falling down, why this, why that, why the other?

Didn’t we win the Cold War?

I can’t answer those questions. That’s a project for a whole pack of scholars. Some of those links try to. But I want to ask the big question, the fundamental question, for myself and for anyone who’s reading this. For 60 years the United States was locked in a titanic, life-or-death, global struggle with the Soviet Union that repeatedly threatened the world with nuclear annihilation. Both made massive investments, and implicitly and explicitly, massive sacrifices, to pursue that struggle. The Soviet Union lost. But looking at these statistics, at America, I have to ask: did we win?

Because this is not what success looks like. Where is our peace dividend? All the sacrifices we made, the resources we spent, the civilian projects and peaceful goals once sidelined to confront the Soviet Union –  was this all that was gained, waiting out the Red colossus until it collapsed under its own weight? Why haven’t we enjoyed the fruits of peace? To ask the question it to express my disappointment (this cynic is ever disappointed, but seldom surprised) and anger that this has come to pass. The United States of America does not have to resemble – should not resemble! - a broken-down, declining superpower, limping along with a legacy nuclear arsenal, run by a regime of authoritarian oil-loving kleptocrats, plagued by corruption, drug addiction, and violence.