Igor Panarin's prediction of the United States collapse in 2010

The prediction of the United States collapse in 2010 was made in 1998 by the Russian academic Igor Panarin. The prediction received substantial media attention since the 2008 financial crisis and has been widely criticised since.

In the summer of 1998, based on classified data about the state of the United States economy and its society supplied to him by fellow FAPSI analysts, Igor Panarin forecast the probable disintegration of the United States into six parts in 2010 (at the end of June – start of July 2010, as he specified on 10 December 2008), following a civil war triggered by mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation. He forecast financial and demographic changes provoking a political crisis in which wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government, effectively seceding from the Union, leading to social unrest, civil war, national division, and intervention of foreign powers.

Panarin sees the task of the world elite as not letting the United States follow the Yugoslavian model of disintegration. He says it is desirable that it follows the Czechoslovakian model of disintegration so that everything goes calmly and peacefully.

Premises

Panarin gives 3 main factors which could lead to a collapse of the USA:

1. The moral and psychological factor – moral decay, stress of the population, inter-ethnic and inter-cultural conflicts.
2. The financial and economic problems, e.g. fiat dollar not redeemable for gold, foreign debt of $13.6 trillion (2008).
3. The increase of the anti-Americanism in the rest of the world caused by the USA's aspiration for world domination.

Among all facts on which he based his conclusion, Panarin lists the following:

• The dirty sex scandal Monicagate actually increased the popularity of Bill Clinton to 70%, though the actions of the President were evidently amoral (adjectives are Panarin's).
• Madeleine Albright, a Czech Jew saved by the Serbs in World War II, played a major role in the U.S. policy against them in the 1990s. (When the peasants of the same village that saved her from the Nazi wrote her a letter requesting to stop bombing their village, she ignored the letter.)
• The U.S. budget since 1945 (end of World War II) has had no deficit only for 3 fiscal years. (By contrast, the Soviet budget had had a deficit only since 1988.)
• The accident rate in the U.S. Air Force in the 1990s was 6 times higher than in the Russian Air Force, in spite of the much more average flight hours in the former than in the latter.

There was other data too, like suicide and homicide levels, incarceration rate, and materials about the U.S. economy problems. Panarin stresses that he deduced his hypothesis in the summer of 1998 on his own, based on thorough scientific analysis of a variety of materials provided by people whom he trusted as professionals. He says that there were no emotions, albeit some data (e.g. the USAF accident rate and U.S. budget deficit, see above) was so shocking that he did not believe it and double-checked it but it turned out to be correct.

Deduction and announcement in 1998

Panarin wrote that the idea of U.S. disintegration did not came at once. He was preparing for the Infowar'98 conference (see below). When he found out that 150 of the 400 participants are Americans, he started searching a way to revive and agitate the audience. Without setting a goal in advance, he started collecting data and studying the USA. His analysis led him to the conclusion that they have no future. Next, he had to determine when this will happen. Based on the business cycle theory and the developments of the Russian economists Nikolai Kondratiev and Alexander Bogdanov, he calculated that 12 years after the peak in 1998, the U.S. will be reached by a colossal fall down and drew his map.

The idea was first presented at 12:30 local time (11:30 UTC) on Wednesday, 9 September 1998, in the Adalbert Stifter Hall (Stiftersaal) of the Brucknerhaus, Linz, Austria, when Panarin spoke at the Ars Electronica Infowar'98 symposium devoted to information warfare. In his presentation, Panarin viewed the Lewinsky affair and the American school shootings as the first signs of a mental collapse of the U.S. society. He said that the aggressive policy of the United States has turned against themselves, predicted a collapse of the USA in 2010 and showed his map of the six parts into which the USA will disintegrate in his view. As he remembers, his prediction back in 1998, when the U.S. was at the peak of its might, whereas Russia was in a terrible condition after the collapse of the USSR, had an effect of a "bursting bomb".

When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise.

— Igor Panarin,

Six divisions

Panarin's scenario sees the U.S. (territories excluded) split into six parts, each to be in the sphere of influence of another country or union, or to join it:

A map showing Panarin's prediction of the USA's disintegration (original). Compare with the map of the census regions of the USA.

Name of the new formation	Country or union to join or be under influence of	States and/or regions of the current USA comprised
Californian Republic	China	California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho
Texas Republic	Mexico	Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida
Atlantic America	European Union	Northeast (including all BosWash states and West Virginia) + Kentucky, Tennessee, North & South Carolina
Central North American Republic	Canada	Midwest + Montana, Wyoming, Colorado
Alaska	Russia	Alaska
Hawaii	Japan or China	Hawaii

Panarin specified that the idea of Atlantic America joining the European Union was not conceived by him but by a European analyst who responded to his U.S. collapse hypothesis.

Lectures

Panarin repeated his predictions in a 20-minute lecture at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow on 3 March 2009, saying that "there is a high probability that the collapse of the United States will occur by 2010", and "what has happened is the collapse of the American dream". He said he does not wish for a U.S. collapse but gave 12 indicators for it, predicted that Russia and China would emerge from the economic turmoil stronger and recommended the two nations to work together, including to create a new currency to replace the U.S. Dollar. The Russian Foreign Ministry invited foreign reporters (Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, The Wall Street Journal, Prensa Latina) to attend the lecture, which drew an audience of students, professors and diplomats.

On 10 March 2009, in a lecture in the University of the Philippines, Panarin stated that the history of the United States shows that they have no future and that the fall of Wall Street could be likened to the end of the American Dream. He said that through their legislatures, eight US states had reiterated their sovereignty vis-à-vis the US federal government, seven of them only this February, and some native American groups had also declared their independence from the union. Panarin has also compared Barack Obama to the USSR's last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. Panarin said that Gorbachev also had beautiful words to say, but in practice he failed to manage the drastic changes and presided over the Union's economic disaster and national collapse.

Interviews

Following the 2008 financial crisis, Panarin's 10-year old hypothesis quickly gained international attention, and both Russian and foreign media started to interview him very often, which suddenly made him a celebrity not only in Russia but also worldwide.

Chinese influence; statists and globalists in the U.S. elite

The "buzz" started after his interview with the Izvestia daily on 26 November 2008 (later translated into English, French, German, and Spanish), in which Panarin called the U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid which is bound to collapse" and claimed that the U.S. economy is already collapsing. He said that "the skeleton which holds the USA together is fragile" and that the Chinese influence over the U.S. Pacific coast increases, e.g. 53% of San Francisco's population are Chinese, former Governor of Washington state Gary Locke is an ethnic Chinese, and Seattle is called a "gate of the Chinese emigration to the USA".

Panarin also expressed his view that the key division in the U.S. elite is not between Democrats and Republicans but between statists (key figures: Robert Gates, Michael Hayden, and John Michael McConnell) and Trotskyite-globalists (key figures: Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney), which two "clans" exist in both main parties and are already in open confrontation. (On 7 May 2009 he added William Burns and Robert McFarlane to the list of the statesmen and Andrew Kuchins and Jim DeMint to the list of the globalists, estimating the correlation of forces in the U.S. elite as 50% statesmen, 30% globalists, 20% undetermined.)

Probability of U.S. collapse with time (Y axis, most recent at the top)

U.S. breakup probability; similar predictions by other experts

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on 29 December 2008, he said that he was being interviewed about his predictions as much as twice a day and expected the attention to grow even stronger. In the interview, he estimated a 55% chance that the disintegration would occur, saying that while he does not dislike Americans, the outlook for them is dire.

Later, Panarin increased the probability of U.S. collapse to 60% in January, to 65% in February (confirmed again in March) and to 75% in April 2009. According to him, this probability was estimated in China as 25% in January 2009.

On 24 February 2009, Panarin was asked by the Argumenty i Fakty weekly to comment on the prediction of Gerald Celente for tax revolts and food riots in the States by 2012. Panarin agreed with Celente (later he also mentioned a similar prognosis by financier Bob Moriarty) and said that American philosopher and historian Stephen F. Cohen similarly predicted a collapse of the USA but for around February 2013, and French political scientist Emmanuel Todd also predicted a U.S. collapse in principle (in his book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order and in an interview with the Trud daily) without mentioning a date.

U.S. collapse forecasts. Todd forecast it in '01; in '06 said it will occur in 30 yrs

Comparing today's U.S. to the Titanic; Panarin's advice

In his interview with the Russia Today English language TV channel on 25 March 2009, Panarin compared the U.S. of today to the Titanic steamship which has already collided with an iceberg, except that so far the crew of this Titanic is trying to save only itself and neither the ship nor the passengers. He advised Obama to radically reduce U.S. foreign policy activities, especially in the Eurasian region, starting with restriction of foreign military activities. Panarin also advised the U.S. analytical centres to, first, admit their incompetence in building forecasts for the development of the world financial system, and second, establish contacts with European, Russian and Chinese analysts and work out new recommendations and models in expert mode, then make them public. He saw this as a decisive step for taking the U.S. out of the crisis.

U.S. breakup and Russo-German / Russo-Polish relations

On 31 March 2009, in his interview with the Sky News TV channel, Panarin claimed again that the failure of the April 2009 G-20 London summit to reverse the global recession will be followed by a complete collapse of the U.S. economy, a civil war, and the country's disintegration by the summer of 2010. The same day he was interviewed by the ProPolonia.pl web portal. He said that a U.S. collapse will contribute to better Russo-Polish and Russo-German relations and encouraged Russians and Poles to remember that they are all Slavs.

Russo-U.S. relations reset and Obama's plan

The next day Panarin was interviewed by the Izvestia daily and said that whether or not one agrees with his concept of U.S. collapse, the majority of the world's politicians already acknowledge that, unconditionally, the States will lose the role of the world leader; U.S. influence in Eurasia will diminish, and Russia must fill this vacuum before the other players do. In his interview the same day with the Russian Journal daily, he claimed that the declared "reset" in the Russo-American relations is a farce while the U.S. still keep their old foreign policy, failing to realise that they can no longer afford this after the collapse of Wall Street, which means that the Obama's entourage can not objectively analyse the situation. Panarin agreed with Paul Krugman that Obama's plan leads to a disaster, predicted an internal chaos in the USA by November 2009 and an inevitable U.S. withdrawal from Eurasia, and concluded that the time for unilateral concessions by Russia is over.

Signs of preparation by U.S. authorities for a civil war

In his interview with Russia's top-selling newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda on 6 April 2009, Panarin said that even now 43 of the 50 U.S. states are subsidised, and Puerto Rico has declared insolvency. For November 2009, he predicted a crash of the U.S. Dollar, a sharp weakening of the socio-economic situation in the U.S., and flourishing regional leaders who will remember the independent Texas Republic, Vermont Republic, and similar formations. The future of the U.S. will depend on new Lenins and Trotskys and also on the actions of the US armed forces, which have already been prepared for this through the creation of Rapid Deployment Forces of 6,000 soldiers (to be increased to 20,000), building FEMA, Rex 84, etc. camps for unreliable elements, and storing millions of plastic coffins in the Atlanta region. The question whether the US army would and could suppress the looming "parade of sovereignties" is open, because the National Guard was not able to return New Orleans to normal life within three years after the terrible flood there.

Asked about Russia, Panarin said that it must claim the zones of its interest (the CIS, Mongolia, Eastern Europe, Alaska) and work for their economic integration. But Russia must keep maximal neutrality while the U.S. head for collapse, without interference in their internal affairs, and ask in return the U.S. to stop attacks against Russia, such as the deployment of the missile defence in Eastern Europe or the interference in the CIS affairs.

Comparing Obama to Gorbachev and Texas to Pribaltika

The same day, Panarin was interviewed by the Govorit Moskva radio. Saying that he is upset himself because he sympathises the ordinary Americans, he criticised Obama for acting just like Bush by "pouring" big money into the banks. In November 2008, Panarin had predicted that by the spring of 2009, it will become clear that Obama could not perform the expected miracles. Now Panarin claimed this prediction of his came true with the fall of Obama's approval rating at an unprecedented rate – from 84% in January to 56% in March 2009. He called the meeting of Gorbachev and Obama "a crying example" that Obama has no answers to the calls of Governors and regional bankers who deny the Federal aid as unfavourable, and his advisers do not understand the problems of the world public opinion (it is still not forgotten how Gorbachev's perestroika ended – with a collapse of the USSR). Panarin repeated that Obama is a new American Gorbachev.

Asked by the Km.ru web portal on 16 April 2009 to comment the backing by Governor of Texas Rick Perry of the resolution affirming Texas' sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and his later hints on a possible Texas secession, Panarin compared Texas with Soviet Pribaltika (the first Soviet republics that seceded in 1990–1991) and added that in general, we are witnessing the tendency which developed in 1989–1990 in the Soviet Union, and everything goes virtually under an analogous scheme. He said the separatism of Chuck Norris who claimed that Texas was never formally a part of the United States in the first place has big enough support groups in Texas. In Panarin's view, the global financial crisis stimulates this process. He predicted a 25 million unemployment in the U.S. in the autumn of 2009 and said that unemployment stimulates regional separatism, and the tendency will be developing.

The following week, in an interview with the AiF Kazakhstan weekly, Panarin claimed that the point of no return has already been passed, and the fact that a poll about possible secession has been carried out in Texas speaks a lot, albeit 75% voted against secession.

A map of Alaska

Return of Alaska to Russia

In this interview, Panarin expressed his point of view that Alaska must return to the bosom of Mother Russia. He said that (unlike him) the majority of experts consider it sold (not leased); the text of the treaty in English and French mentions its cession for $7.2 million. But he asked if there were also secret protocols, like those attached to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Panarin claimed that his publications are readily printed all over the world, but for some reason, in the USA this point was taken most painfully. Asked about the different living standards between the two territories on the different sides of the Bering Strait, he replied that Russia will start living better after the U.S. collapse – the average wage in the USA before the crisis was about 10 times higher than in Russia; now the gap is steadily reducing.

Panarin also stated that the world financial crisis is first and foremost a deep crisis of the USA, a crisis of capitalism and the spiritual values, a crisis material and moral. That is why he supposes that the disintegration of the most important capitalist country can occur already in 2010, albeit he is not 100% certain in that, and there are two other possible scenarios – a confederation and turning to isolationism (least probable). Panarin said he is convinced that nowadays America faces the choice of a model, and whatever it is, the USA already ceased to exist as a united centre of the "free world".

U.S. analytical school and lifestyle; Russia saving the U.S.

In his interview with the Kazakh weekly New Generation in April 2009, Panarin attributed the predicted U.S. collapse to the defeat of the American analytical school which could not build a new world model after the collapse of the USSR, resulting in an ideological deadlock. In his view, already during the Reagan presidency, the growth of the financial pyramid was tied to the growth of the American lifestyle, to the American dream, and this growth reached its limit at the end of the twentieth century. According to him, at that point the American ideologists failed to offer a new model, and Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney were at fault in choosing the old pattern of struggle (this time against Russia instead of the USSR) by colour revolutions instead of building a new ideological model – i.e. they chose to destabilise the Eurasian sphere, distracting attention from internal American problems, instead of building a new American dream. Then the Wall Street and mortgage crash led to the collapse of the American dream. Panarin said that 1.5 million U.S. citizens have lost their homes in the last six months.

In an interview with the Finam.fm radio on 7 May 2009, where 86% of the listeners and Panarin himself regarded the USA as unfriendly to Russia, he claimed that the course of action of the USA for the last 20 years has been against Russia, and the majority of the U.S. elite is anti-Russian, ungrateful to Russia for saving the USA as a country twice in history and for carrying the decisive contribution to the victory in World War II. In his view, this ingratitude is expressed in economic pressure and creation of zones of conflict in the ex-Soviet space, opposing its economic integration, installing anti-Russian regimes in Georgia and Ukraine, and destabilising Russia by colour revolutions. He said that it is Russia that can save the U.S. that is at a bifurcation point and does not know how to get out of a systematic ideological and economic crisis that touches all fields. Panarin expressed his hope that an awareness of their own injustice to Russia will come in the U.S by the autumn of 2009 when the situation there will be very complex.

Russia is, it seems to me, one of the few countries who sincerely wish the USA well. And a response reaction, I hope, will occur. If it does not, I am convinced that the collapse of the USA is inevitable.

— Igor Panarin,

Reactions

Panarin's prediction has been widely commented and criticised in both Russia and abroad. Both the very possibility of U.S. collapse in the near future and the post-collapse configuration forecast by Panarin have been disputed.

Anti-U.S. mural in Tehran

Anti-U.S. mural in Tehran (2004)

Anti-Americanism and Russian transference

Some commentators have accused Panarin of claiming that after a collapse of the U.S., Russia would be left as the dominant superpower. But Panarin made it clear that he did not wish for the breakup of the United States. Such an event may not be the best case scenario for Russia, since its economy would suffer because of its dependence on the dollar and its trade with the U.S. On the other hand, regaining of Alaska with expansion of the rouble on the North American continent would expand Russia's strategic potential. It could lower its defence expenses because NATO would be dissolved in favour of European security forces, and Russia has no problems with the EU.

Russian TV journalist Vladimir Posner says that Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today", which is "much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union". On the other hand, Panarin says that the cheerful reaction of the European Infowar'98 participants right after he presented his prediction about the U.S. collapse there shows that the anti-Americanism in Europe was much stronger than that in Russia by that time (1998):

When I headed back to my seat, Austrians, Frenchmen, Germans rushed to me, they were embracing me, patting my shoulders, saying me "Well done!", "How you dared to sound this idea!". You know, I was surprised that the level of anti-Americanism in Europe was much higher than in Russia... already in 1998, prior to the Iraq occupation.

— Igor Panarin,

After the Panarin's lecture at the Diplomatic Academy, a professor asked him whether his scenario does not better 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 the idea, saying that Russia's collapse will not occur.

Arthur Cyr, a Distinguished Professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin, wrote that Panarin's views are in stark contrast to history, and the U.S. Constitution is designed to handle well tensions between the federal government and the states as well as adapt to changing circumstances. Cyr thinks that Panarin's views "reveal more about Russia than about the U.S.".

Among his critique of Russia in Forbes.com, Melik Kaylan says that Panarin's "doomsday scenario of disintegration betrays a laughable ignorance of the U.S. and what's worse, utter blindness to the basic processes of history".

Commenting the latter publication as a typical example of "substituting real analysis with ungrounded emotions", Panarin said that in the information warfare theory, such approach is called "transfer of attention to a false object".

Critical comments and Panarin's defence

Cristina Pecequilo, professor of International Relations at the São Paulo State University, said that she does not know Panarin's theory but one of the great virtues of the United States was exactly the maintenance of its territorial integrity and sphere of influence, and albeit there is a red and a blue America, to speak about dividing it would be a bit of exaggeration.

Randy David, sociology professor at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, questioned the "theoretical soundness" of Panarin's claims, especially about the strength of the U.S. Dollar, as well as the post-collapse "absorbing" of the new-formed republics by other countries as Panarin predicted.

The Russian-American political scientist Nikolai Zlobin said he does not believe the U.S. will collapse because he sees no motivations or driving forces for this. He also disagreed with Panarin's post-breakup configuration, especially with falling of the Western part of the U.S. under Chinese domination.

Academician Sergey Rogov, director of the Russian Institute for US and Canadian Studies said that "crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people" and labelled Panarin's predictions as "chase for sensation", "ideological charge of propaganda and self-advertising", and "astrology". Panarin's responded that the fact that he announced his forecast in 1998 (writing about it in most of his books since) and not in 2007 proves it is not a "self-advertising", adding that Rogov's only argument is "this can never be because it can never be".

Panarin says that since 1998, no Russian or foreign political scientist has questioned his factual correctness, and in general, all reasoning is based on the supposition that he thus brings to theory his nostalgia for the Soviet Union. He defends his analysis by reference to other people who made early forecasts of national disintegrations, such as Emmanuel Todd who predicted the fall of the USSR in 1976, and people laughed at him at that time. Panarin also says that no opponent of his provided a single convincing refutation – only generalities. He claims to have studied the U.S. very well, being there many times, not only in prospering regions but also in such depressive corners as they are never shown in films nor on TV.

As to national problems: I offered my opponents to go to San Francisco and look who fills the city streets after business hours. Virtually Chinese alone. At that, we are not speaking about some street vendors but exclusively about white collars, bank and office employees. This speaks about who holds the real power and economy here.

— Igor Panarin,

Neutral and mixed comments

Panarin's boss, the Rector of the Diplomatic Academy Prof. Alexander Panov, says that it is good that politicians and scientists discuss ideas like those of Fukuyama, Huntington and Panarin, albeit in his view Panarin's scenario is unrealistic.

Panarin's colleague, the professor in the department of international relations Oleg Ivanov, finds Panarin's hypothesis interesting but in his view it needs a larger base of proof and as there are no serious separatist organisations with wide mass support yet, he thinks 2010 is too early for a U.S. disintegration.

Analysing the opinions of Americans on Panarin's prediction in the U.S. Internet space, journalist Marinje Voskanian, a senior staff writer of the Russian analytical Internet magazine RPMonitor.ru, has reminded that Igor Panarin is an information warfare expert, and, as she said, it seems that his latest information "bomb" has reached its target – the thought that the map of the United States could change was thrown into the American information space and dragged into a wide discussion. Prepending all reasoning on this subject with the words "in general, we of course will never and for nothing disintegrate", the American experts and bloggers, nonetheless, started discussing how exactly the USA will disintegrate.

While praising Panarin for announcing his own predictions back in 1998 and saying that his views now attract "much more interest and respect", a Stockhouse.com author criticises him for basing his predictions on the officially listed U.S. foreign debt, and not their total debt which Chris Martenson detailed ($48 trillion in 2008, increased by $16 trillion in 5 years).

Seal of Republic of Texas (1836-1846)

Eurasia magazine

Writing about Panarin and his predictions, the website of the Italian geopolitics magazine Eurasia stated that secessionist movements in the USA raise voice – for example actor and political activist Chuck Norris wants to be president of "independent Texas", like the Texas Republic was for 10 years.

Eurasia's website also cites the report of the French think tank Leap/Europe 2020 in which they disclose the likelihood of civil unrest or real civil war in the autumn in countries like the U.S., claiming that they will experience a true strategic dislocation challenging their territorial integrity and all of its zones of influence in the world.

Eurasia published on its website an interview with Panarin where he told of how he sees the world without the USA, and organised a Panarin's conference in Milan (Italy) on 16 May 2009, at which he made a speech.

See also

• Igor Panarin
• Nine Nations of North America
• North American Union
• List of active secessionist movements in the USA
• Thomas W. Chittum

External links

• Official site of Igor Panarin Template:Ru icon
• Brazilian version of Panarin's map Template:Pt icon .swf
• Will America break up? by Andrew Osborn