http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html
MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been
predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time,
he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral
collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the
U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian
state media.
In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day
about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I
think the attention is going to grow even stronger."
Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former
KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy
for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures
students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on
U.S.-Russia relations.
But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the
ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington
for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global
financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the
Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place
on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many
feared that the country would go economically and politically
bankrupt and break into separate territories.
A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists
he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for
them is dire.
"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will
occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds,
poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best
scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful
on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it
currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the
U.S.
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic
decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall
and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or
early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with
Alaska reverting to Russian control.
In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are
tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin's ideas are now
being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory
at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The
country's top international relations school has hosted him as a
keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel
Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of
lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S.
The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin's
English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.
Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced
degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner,
a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it
was in the Soviet Union."
Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the
U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin's predictions. "Crazy ideas are not
usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director
of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who
thinks Mr. Panarin's theories don't hold water.
Mr. Panarin's résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an
experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in
downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the
wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB's successor agency. It
is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the
symbol of czarist Russia.
The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In
post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science,
studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian
equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did
strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that
the details are "classified."
In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria,
devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over
a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he
first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in
2010.
"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. He says most in the audience were
skeptical. "They didn't believe me."
At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him
to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.
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.
California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The
Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese
influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a
cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican
influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an
"Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will
grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central
North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a
protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into
Russia.
"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it
was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite
image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a
thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason,"
he says with a sly grin.
Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an
article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In
it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid
scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's
role as a global financial regulator.
Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles,"
he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are
no miracles."
The article prompted a question about the White House's reaction
to Prof. Panarin's forecast at a December news conference. "I'll
have to decline to comment," spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much
laughter.
For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino's response was significant. "The
way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are
being listened to very carefully," he says.
The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his
theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar
cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French
political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having
rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years
beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin.
