| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Russian scholar says US will collapse -- next year |
| 2009-03-04 |
| Sounds like Russian scholars are right up there with Islamic scholars... MOSCOW -- If you're inclined to believe Igor Panarin, and the Kremlin wouldn't mind if you did, then President Barack Obama will order martial law this year, the U.S. will split into six rump-states before 2011, and Russia and China will become the backbones of a new world order. Panarin might be easy to ignore but for the fact that he is a dean at the Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels. And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership. "There is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010," Panarin told dozens of students, professors and diplomats Tuesday at the Diplomatic Academy -- a lecture the ministry pointedly invited The Associated Press and other foreign media to attend. Enthusiastically accepted, I'll bet... Dr. Prognosticator didn't mention that Russia would go down three months before we do ... The prediction from Panarin, a former spokesman for Russia's Federal Space Agency and reportedly an ex-KGB analyst, meshes with the negative view of the U.S. that has been flowing from the Kremlin in recent years, in particular from Vladimir Putin. Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has likened the United States to Nazi Germany's Third Reich and blames Washington for the global financial crisis that has pounded the Russian economy. Panarin didn't give many specifics on what underlies his analysis, mostly citing newspapers, magazines and other open sources. He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now. Wow. Credible or what? Don't kill the job, Igor. But he said the recent economic turmoil in the U.S. and other "social and cultural phenomena" led him to nail down a specific timeframe for "The End" -- when the United States will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska will revert to Russian control. ...and if it doesn't, he'll just revise the timetable. Like those "End of the World" guys. Panarin argued that Americans are in moral decline, saying their great psychological stress is evident from school shootings, the size of the prison population and the number of gay men. America collapses: Prison Inmates, Gays Hardest Hit... Turning to economic woes, he cited the slide in major stock indexes, the decline in U.S. gross domestic product and Washington's bailout of banking giant Citigroup as evidence that American dominance of global markets has collapsed. "I was there recently and things are far from good," he said. "What's happened is the collapse of the American dream." How's the "Russian dream" working out these days? Panarin insisted he didn't wish for a U.S. collapse, but he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Asked for comment on how the Foreign Ministry views Panarin's theories, a spokesman said all questions had to be submitted in writing and no answers were likely before Wednesday. Look's like some closet Commies are still around in the Foreign Ministry. It wasn't clear how persuasive the 20-minute lecture was. One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country's demise. Panarin dismissed that idea: "The collapse of Russia will not occur." Kinda like when the Soviets were gonna bury us... But Alexei Malashenko, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center who did not attend the lecture, sided with the skeptical instructor, saying Russia is the country that is on the verge of disintegration. "I can't imagine at all how the United States could ever fall apart," Malashenko told the AP. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #20 "MAJOR THREAT TO EMERGING CHINA [+ Asia] IS INTERNAL SEPARATISM, NOT INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION." Gee, ya' think? |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-03-04 20:51 |
| #19 OTOH, TOPIX > CHINA'S DEFENCE WHITE PAPER: MAJOR THREAT TO EMERGING CHINA [+ Asia] IS INTERNAL SEPARATISM, NOT INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-03-04 20:49 |
| #18 #16 He could be on to something. I'll bet Obama's Five Year Tractor Production Plan sounded a little too familiar. Posted by DMFD 2009-03-04 20:01 Hot cocoa thru the nose and into the keyboard on THAT one! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-03-04 20:06 |
| #17 more lucid french wingnuts pundits (who frequently happen to be long time free-market advocates and/or anti-communists, as opposed to the crypto socialist and anti-capitalist Jeeebus K... do you like use a Yarn and Squares Database? Sound's awfully complex. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2009-03-04 20:01 |
| #16 He could be on to something. I'll bet Obama's Five Year Tractor Production Plan sounded a little too familiar. |
| Posted by: DMFD 2009-03-04 20:01 |
| #15 they couldn't even win in chechnya |
| Posted by: rabid whitetail 2009-03-04 19:29 |
| #14 A collapsed America will still look like paradise compared to Russia on a good day. |
| Posted by: Cynicism Inc 2009-03-04 19:06 |
| #13 Did Panarin predict the collapse of the USSR in 1989? Nope, didn't think so... |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2009-03-04 18:44 |
| #12 See also RENSE > PAT BUCHANAN > WE NOW HAVE SOCIALISM. The Hell you say! MSM-NET > Mexico, Venezuela = FARC, Russia, Pakistan = SOMALIA?, + North Korea, etc. AND ITS NOT EVEN 2010 YET. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2009-03-04 17:48 |
| #11 "He also noted he had been predicting the demise of the world's wealthiest country for more than a decade now." Yeah, I remember when he was saying this stuff last year.... |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2009-03-04 17:12 |
| #10 "In short, this is crap speculative history, the sort of wish-fulfillment rubbish which would have been tossed right back over the transom by any self-respecting SF editor." But it makes the America-hating Leftists feel so good, Mitch. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2009-03-04 16:42 |
| #9 and Alaska will revert to Russian control. That doesn't even work as science-fiction. The only way the Russians are taking Alaska back is if they muster up the forces to invade and kick the hypothetical rump-forces out. They don't have the sealift capacity to mount a sustained amphibious operation against an armed shore, and you can be damned sure that one of his hypothetical rump-states would fight for Alaskan oil and gas. In short, this is crap speculative history, the sort of wish-fulfillment rubbish which would have been tossed right back over the transom by any self-respecting SF editor. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2009-03-04 15:35 |
| #8 The Man Who Warned Congress On 25 February Andrei Illarionov testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The hearing was titled “From Competition to Collaboration: Strengthening the U.S.-Russia Relationship.” Illarionov is a Russian citizen presently employed by the Cato Institute. He began his testimony with a brief explanation: “For a number of years I worked at different posts in the Russian government and Administration of the Russian President.” According to Illarionov the Russian regime is a KGB regime, and the United States policy toward this regime is worse than appeasement. It is best characterized as retreat. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-03-04 14:08 |
| #7 Politically the US is unlikely to divide. That's wishful thinking from an expert in an ethnically divided nation who doesn't understand America. We might hit a depression but we're not gonna divide. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2009-03-04 13:56 |
| #6 he predicted Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and said the two nations should work together, even to create a new currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Did he mean to say that, unlike the U.S. dollar, neither the ruble nor the yuan (if I recall the names of foreign currencies correctly) are strong enough to stand alone? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-03-04 13:29 |
| #5 There might be some truth to this, given the way the Congress and President are spending so far. I'm beginning to wish that we had all voted for Kerry in 2004. A bad as it would have been, it might have avoided this. |
| Posted by: Darrell 2009-03-04 12:19 |
| #4 Keep dreaming, sugar. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-03-04 11:43 |
| #3 Hey, Joe! Did ya hear that? You're being "rehabilitated"! |
| Posted by: The Ghost of Walter Duranty 2009-03-04 11:40 |
| #2 And his predictions fit into the anti-American story line of the Kremlin leadership. And, according to more lucid french wingnuts pundits (who frequently happen to be long time free-market advocates and/or anti-communists, as opposed to the crypto socialist and anti-capitalist overall feel of what's left of the french "right"), this goes along with an effort at rehabilitating stalin, whitewashing his crimes (remember the russian historian who not so long ago claimed that millions of americans had died of hunger during the Great Depression, and that those deaths were unacknowledged by the official history? Dude, that cancel the Holodmor!), blaming russia's woes on being perpetually under siege by hostile foreign forces (stalin was only defending the Motherland, really), and a nasty "messianical" worldview with orthodxy again used as a State vehicle, pure russia against the corrupted West, IE, the third Jerusalem. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-03-04 11:38 |
| #1 One instructor asked Panarin whether his predictions more accurately describe Russia, which is undergoing its worst economic crisis in a decade as well as a demographic collapse that has led some scholars to predict the country's demise. Which is why I find it so funny that the now-mainstream of the french wingnuts grasp so desperately at the idea of the russians and the slavs being the new Hope and Change for Europe and the whites, against the Empire and assorted catchphrases that wouldn't stand out in a leftist speech (like the one I can't stand, the "hyperclass" to describe the shadpwy globalist fatcats)... I agree the West is in a pretty bad shape (a pretty decent part of it due to the efforts of... the russians, or at least, their soviet predecessors), but I don't see exactly how you can look at putin's russia and see it as a model and a beacon, on every level, unless you only see the one you imagine. |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2009-03-04 11:32 |