Breaking Up is Hard to Do

As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.  It was true for Greece, for Rome (West and East), for the Soviet Union (okay not such a good thing) and it will probably be true for the United States of America.  We almost lost the nation during the Civil War but times were simpler then.  Enter Mr. Igor Panarin, former KGB analyst and dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats.  According to Mr. Panarin, “There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says.

Un-United States?

Panarin isn’t the only doomsayer out there.  Dmitry Orlov, another Russian, also speculates that a Soviet Union-style collapse of the U.S. is on the horizon.

Both men seem to agree on the same basic premise, that a series of events that have already taken form will evolve, causing a split.

While there are many religious zealots out there talking about how the “Apocalypse” is on its way, I tend to take a more secular view of things.

Looking at the geopolitical landscape, income to debt ratios, and applying some recent history, some of these “events” are beginning to take place and others are in various stages of happening.  For Orlov, there are 5 parts to the break-up:

Stage 1: Financial collapse
Stage 2: Commercial collapse
Stage 3: Political collapse
Stage 4: Social collapse
Stage 5: Cultural collapse

It sounds incredible to consider the possibility of the United States splitting into mini-nation states but, as is true with all break-ups whether on a political or a personal level, when different groups of people (Red States/Blue States, Urban/Rural, Rich/Poor, Nativists/Immigrants, etc…) come to believe that their interests are no longer being served they will seek to leave the group to be on their own.

Mr. Panarin believes that:

“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.”

It might seem as though recent events would allow one to easily preach doom and gloom but Panarin has been working on his theory since 1998, about 9 years after the Soviet Union quickly disintegrated.  Mr. Orlov provides more details which, thus far, eerily mirror what is occurring now in this country:

About the only thing the government currently seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble, by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent financial institutions. This has the effect of diluting the dollar, further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial Collapse.

Rome was great once, too.

If ordinary Americans begin to believe that no matter whom they elect for president and to Congress will have no effect on their lives, if they begin to believe that neither political party can offer any real solutions to the troubles that they face, it begins to become easier to see how a growing polarization will affect the Union.  In the last few presidential elections we have begun to see just how close the vote really is with only a few parts of the country determining the outcome.  And the “honeymoon” period that elected presidents enjoy have become shorter and shorter.  President Obama, in office for a little over a month, is already polling at a 59% approval rating according to Gallup.

There are many disparate elements working in the United States but what I see as the fundamental issue facing us is not the war in Iraq or Afganistan, illegal immigration, the fight between the secularist and the moralists but the growing debt of the United States and, most importantly, the fact that China has become our lender of last resort.  Having a potential rival as our banker not only gives them tremendous leverage over us (just imagine they threaten to dump their $2 trillion worth of debt onto the market unless we let them “take” Taiwan) but also takes away any moral authority this country has to show others the way towards prosperity.

The second greatest threat to the United States is our use of oil and the failure of the Democrats to allow us to exploit our natural resources while moving towards a more sustainable level of energy useage.  For without control over our money and our energy no nation can prosper.

In his excellent and insightful book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond looks at past societies that seemed to flourish until they suddenly collapsed.  Essentially, each society failed because they lived beyond their means whether it was the people on Easter Island who cut down all their trees to build their giant statues to Maya of Central America who starved and made war on their neighbors and were destroyed.

Going back to Mr. Panarin for a moment:

“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.”

While I believe that the United States is a great nation with tremendous resources and an indomitable spirit, unless very serious changes are made very soon, the future does not necessarily look guarenteed for us.  With all of the warm and fuzzy talk coming from Washington, not to mention the massive, taxpayer funded giveaways, I worry that the tough love we need will not be politically possible.

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