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Russian Analyst: U.S. Will Collapse Next Year

Ringer

Ringer

Jar of Clay
Article can be found here.
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 United States 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.

Meshing with the Kremlin’s view
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 United States 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.

Prediction: Alaska will return to Russian control
But he said the recent economic turmoil in the United States 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.
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.
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."
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.

Persuasive?
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."
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.
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I better brush up on my Russian and think twice about that Alaskan trip I had planned for a few years down the road. Is this guy a nut or are his grim predictions plausible?
 
McBell

McBell

mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
Wow.
Got prophets coming out of the woodwork now a days.
 
Smoke

Smoke

Done here.
The world economy is unstable and nations are unpredictable. I don't think anybody knows what will happen in the next few years. However, if I really thought the U.S. was likely to split into six rump states by 2011, my top priority would be getting the hell out of the South. I wouldn't be spending time on RF; I'd be packing.
 
Sunstone

Sunstone

De Diablo Del Fora
Premium Member
Ringer said:
Is this guy a nut or are his grim predictions plausible?
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He's just saying what Putin told him to say. The US will probably survive the economic crisis intact. As will China. But I wouldn't bet too much on Russia -- they probably will, but their chance is less than the US and China making it through. That's how I see it, at least.
 
Caladan

Caladan

Agnostic Pantheist
Vodka is such a great substitute for reality.
well seriously now, im just taking a cheap shot at my Russian side, but.. I too could not resist.
 
Valjean

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Then again, no country lasts forever. How many actually expected a collapse when it actually occurred?
 
J Bryson

J Bryson

Well-Known Member
Certain indicators of collapse are simply not there right now. We have some social strain and divisiveness, but less than in the 60s or 30s, we have an economic mess, but one that the majority of the population is convinced will eventually get better, we have a military that is pulling back from being overstrained, and the chances of serious civil unrest or large-scale secessionist movements seem slight. Nope.
 
J Bryson

J Bryson

Well-Known Member
stacey bo bacey said:
Dude, we have Hollywood. We're never going down. Or at least not anytime soon.
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Some may say that's what's bringing us down. But not me, I love the place, and I love what it does for the surrounding economy. Now if we could just keep the studios filming in town, we'd be fine....
 
stacey bo bacey

stacey bo bacey

oh no you di'int
J Bryson said:
Some may say that's what's bringing us down. But not me, I love the place, and I love what it does for the surrounding economy. Now if we could just keep the studios filming in town, we'd be fine....
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I agree. And I guess if you're looking at it through a moral viewpoint, I could understand thinking that it's bringing us down. But definitely not to the extent that people like to believe. I don't even think Hollywood is that bad morally, it's just a few bad apples ruining the bunch.

Anyhoo..yea, what it does for the economy...think of how many movies are made and how much they gross. And the money those movies make outside the U.S. alone could keep that place afloat for who knows how long...
 
J Bryson

J Bryson

Well-Known Member
It doesn't rain on you ALL THE TIME in the Bear Flag Republic, though!

california_state_flag.jpg
 
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