[R-P] Estratega ruso que predice la ruptura de los EEUU llama la atención del Kremlin

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

Gentileza de la A-List

[Está en inglés, no tengo tiempo de traducir. Pero resalto lo siguiente: 
se trata de un señor cuyas predicciones no son demasiado aceptables, no 
por mí al menos. Y creo que nadie que conozca lo que es un estado 
capitalista autocentrado en la era imperialista podría compartirlas. El 
tipo dice que en 2010 los EEUU se van a partir en varios estados. Lo 
interesante, sin embargo, es que en el Kremlin le prestan oídos, algo 
que dice mucho más sobre loq ue anda pasando por la cabeza de la 
dirigencia rusa que cualquier otro análisis. El Wall Street Journal, que 
es de donde viene esta nota, resalte precisamente este aspecto de la 
información. Y lo bien que hace]

-------- Mensaje original --------
Asunto: [A-List] Russian strategist predicts breakup of the US
Fecha: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 13:47:15 -0500
De: Tony B. <tal1 en cogeco.ca>
Responder a: The A-List <a-list en lists.econ.utah.edu>
Para: A-List <a-list en lists.econ.utah.edu>

"At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to
autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S."

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB123051100709638419-lMyQjAxMDI4MzMwMDUzMTAxWj.html


As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.
In Moscow, Igor Panarin's Forecasts Are All the Rage; America
'Disintegrates' in 2010

  By ANDREW OSBORN

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.
[Prof. Panarin]

Igor Panarin

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.
[Igor Panarin]

Write to Andrew Osborn at andrew.osborn en wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB123051100709638419-lMyQjAxMDI4MzMwMDUzMTAxWj.html