Professor Igor Panarin of the Russia Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, has predicted for a decade that the United States is facing a crisis of moral and financial instability that will lead to civil war and a break up of the nation into six pieces by 2010.

If this is true, Barack Obama will be the last US President and the US dollar is finished as a global currency.

According to Professor Panarin, there is now a 75% chance that doomsday will arrive in less than a year.

Igor Panarin’s book on the collapse of the US is a best seller in Moscow and his theories have been carried by major US media, from CNN to Fox News to the Wall Street Journal.

Crack-pot or visionary?

When I first heard of Professor Panarin’s theory of the collapse of the US, in January 2009, his ideas seemed preposterous — a crack-pot fantasy of a weird Russian nationalist indulging in wishful thinking after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Wall Street Journal had this to say about Panarin’s forecast:

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

“When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise,” he remembers.

Here is Professor Panarin’s map of the disintegrated United States:

Does the KGB understand capitalism or US history?

Here are some reasons to dismiss Professor Panarin’s predictions out of hand:

1. Unrealistic breakup pattern: When the Soviet Union broke into pieces, the new republics went their own ways, seeking independence, rather than join up with some foreign power. Furthermore, areas like the Ukraine, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, which had been bound together by the Soviet dictatorship, had strong historical and cultural reasons to form independent countries when the opportunity arose, often based on language or religion. The pattern of breakup predicted by Professor Panarin for the US is ludicrous. Why would anyone think that Tennessee and Kentucky would join up with New York and Vermont, rather than with Georgia, Florida, and Texas? Why would Arizona put its lot in with California, rather than Texas? Why should Kansas join up with Canada, rather than with Texas? Maybe the Professor’s computer had a GIGO problem.
2. Economic stress does not usually lead to the political breakup of democracies.: Countries have often faced severe economic stress (like Indonesia in 1997 and Brazil in the 1980s) without breaking up into smaller nations. Although composed of a mishmash of national origins, races, and cultures, The United States is far more homogeneous than Professor Panarin seems to realize. The Constitution is the binding force, not geographic proximity.
3. It is easier to vote Congress out of office, than to break up the US: If all the states are pissed off at Washington, as Professor Panarin predicts (not unreasonably), it would seem that the likely solution would be to kick out the incumbents using the ballot, rather than civil war and secession. The rapid growth of the Tea Party movement in the first half of 2009, indicates that this seems to be still true.

Does the KGB know something about Obama that Americans don’t?

When Igor Panarin first put forth his theories of the break-up of the United States, Barack Obama was totally unknown to most Americans.

However, this does not mean that Barack Obama was unknown to the Russian intelligence services in the early 1990s.

No person has ever become President of the United States with less known about his background than Barack Obama, nor with less executive experience.

Obama’s handlers have assiduously blocked all attempts to reveal details about his past — usually with charges of racism.

Every thing about Barack Obama inspires conspiracy theories — at a level beyond anything seen with prior US Presidents.

This is now magnified by thousands of blogs and independent investigators on the Internet, seeking to explain:

A large part of the explanation, of course, is simply that Barack Obama is a person of well-above average intelligence whose mother, father, and step father were intelligent, studious people with advanced academic training, with views that focused on the left of the political spectrum.

The other large and important part of the explanation lies in his early school years in Indonesia, where, as a young boy he learned the common Javanese cultural traits of smiling, no matter what, saying what other people want to hear, disguising one’s own feelings so as not to give offense, and, most importantly, verbal skills in public speaking and declamation.

Many, if not most Americans go through life never having to give a public speech and are terrified in having to get up before a crowd to give an off-the-cuff, long discourse. In American schools, the emphasis is on writing, not speaking. Not so in Indonesia.

I worked in Indonesia for ten years and was always amazed at the facility of Indonesians at public speaking. This is a trait expected of everyone. One time I came in from an international flight to attend a seminar. One of the organizers came up to me and said, “John, we’re missing a speaker, so you’re on next.” “What am I supposed to talk about”, I asked. “It doesn’t matter”. “How long shall I talk?” “About an hour.” There were about three hundred accountants in the audience, waiting for my impromptu words; I had no choice. After a decade, I got used to the notion that at any moment I might be called upon to get up and, without preparation, start talking to a crowd of people (or even worse, singing).

This quote from the New York Times shows that Obama’s skills suggest his Javanese background:

He proved deft at navigating an institution scorched with ideological battles, many of which revolved around race. He developed a leadership style based more on furthering consensus than on imposing his own ideas. Surrounded by students who enjoyed the sound of their own voices, Mr. Obama cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once.

Friends say he did not want anyone to assume they knew his mind — and because of that, even those close to him did not always know exactly where he stood.

So, what Barack Obama really stands for or intends to do is still a mystery to most Americans, who will have to find out by his actions, not his words.

The rapid decline in Obama’s popularity

Professor Igor Panarin has couched his forecasts of the collapse of the United States in terms of probable outcomes — with the likelihood of a US collapse being revised upwards as the Obama administration has proceeded in demonstrating increasingly inept public policy.

The Russian professor has raised the predicted probability of collapse gradually from 55% in January 2009 to 75% in April 2009.

Professor Panarin’s increased pessimism is matched by the rapid decline in President Obama’s popularity with the American people:

If this trend continues, which could happen if Obama does not reverse course, suddenly sprout executive skills, and move from the extreme, destructive left to the center, the 2010 elections will be a devastating defeat for the Democrat Party.

The so-called “main stream media” is paying a heavy price for its blind support of Obama.

Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and right-wing radio talk shows now dominate the agenda, commanding changes in public opinion. Young conservative bloggers, barely out of their teens, are taking over the traditional role of investigative reporting.

The Tea Party March on Washington on September 12, 2020, brought huge peaceful crowds protesting Obama’s policies of high taxes, inflationary spending, and increased government intervention in American lives.

The extreme left which now controls Congress is lashing back, accusing ordinary Americans of racism, lack of patriotism, mob tactics, and thuggish behavior — none of which is true and only serves to further diminish support for the Obama administration.

A whiff of coup d’etat?

About the only circumstances that could support Professor Panarin’s predicted new American civil war, would be an Obama coup d’etat. Such a thing has never happened in American history and seems exceedingly unlikely.

The economic problems facing the United States today are largely the result of three major sources of corruption:

1. Professional politicians: Through gerrymandered districts, get-out-the-vote fraud, Congressional seniority rules that dramatically increase the power of incumbents and reduce the people’s ability to influence Washington, and pork barrel spending to favored voting groups, American democracy has been seriously eroded.
2. Government-protected unions: Trade unionism which succeeded in diminishing the United States as an industrial power and turning much of the Northern US into a “rust belt” has moved into the schools and public service functions, setting up extraordinary pension schemes that will bankrupt many of the largest cities and guarantee continued decline in the quality of education — keeping the lower classes at a perpetual disadvantage.
3. Dishonest hired corporate executives: Large US corporations are now largely controlled not by shareholders but by hired corporate executives who are able to manipulate the system, using stock buybacks and options, to defraud ordinary investors of dividends. The US SEC has gotten into bed with these executives, fining corporations (shareholders) rather than the executives for any wrong-doing, with no admission of guilt.

This corruption, although disgraceful, is not yet at the level of the lack of public morality found in hundreds of less developed countries throughout the world.

Current US economic problems can all be resolved by applying commonsense and tested methods of prudent government:

1. Reduce taxes, especially on small business, to stimulate employment.
2. Avoid protectionist measures.
3. Introduce prudential financial management rules in the financial sector.
4. Cut government spending to a level sustainable by non-inflationary government finance.

However, the Obama administration is moving in the opposite direction in all these areas. It is as if the goal is to destabilize the economy, create political chaos, setting the stage for a coup d’etat.

Unilateral disarmament

The most likely scenario for a coup d’etat would be a foreign attack on the US that would give Obama an excuse to introduce censorship of the Internet and traditional media and suspend habeas corpus.

To encourage a foreign attack on the US and create a heightened sense of crisis, the following tactics would be helpful:

1. Allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon that could be used on Israel, resulting in a war between these countries and chaos in the Middle East. This would drive up the price of oil, bringing economic distress to the US.
2. Allow Russia to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon that would threaten the United States, further increasing insecurity of the population and increasing the price of oil.
3. Lose the war in Afghanistan by withdrawing troops or by hindering operations of troops on the ground by changing the rules of war to require reading Miranda rights to prisioners and excessivly tight “rules of engagement”. This would give Al Queda a safe base from which to operate.
4. Reduce support for the CIA and national security services, turning the job of protecting against terrorism over to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. Stop using the term “war on terror”.
5. Reduce guards and protective measures on US borders and ports.

The Obama administration is already beginning to move in all these directions.

I lived through the coup d’etat of President João Goulart in Brazil in 1965, when he used government workers to stage riots and demonstrations in the streets of Rio de Janeiro for over two years, leading up to the actual takeover of radio and the press, with tanks in the streets. Soviet Russia had a direct hand in the planning. Goulart ordered the Army to impose martial law. Fortunately, the military refused to fire on the people and Goulart was deposed.

However, the fact that Americans are well-armed, well-connected via the Internet, and well aware of the danger, plus a two hundred year history of problem resolution by peaceful, non-revolutionary means, suggests that a coup d’etat leading to a new American civil war is extremely unlikely.

Professor Panarin will just have to plug some new numbers into his computer.

The decline in Obama’s popularity, rather than being an ominous sign, seems to signal better days ahead and eventual economic recovery.

We’ll see.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Leadership, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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