On Christmas day 1991, the USSR imploded into a commonwealth of “independent” states with the lowering of the Red Flag over the Kremlin. Russia remained as the largest of these, the only one with nuke capability, a space program, and a large standing army. Russia took over the obligations of the USSR and descended into capitalist chaos until Vladimir Putin became president. Under Putin Russia regained its superpower confidence. It did this in tandem with the re-establishment of the state prerogatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Russia then had the power to turn off the gas mains every winter. Ukraine (the traditional near abroad nemesis) and the European Union was sent into a deep freeze. It seems that Tsarism has been resurrected.
The implosion of the USSR presents interesting insights to Barack Obama’s US of A. The dean of Russia’s diplomatic training academy, Dr Igor Panarim spoke at the UP about the coming implosion of the US of A. The funny thing is that Barack Obama has been likened to the USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev. Obama and Gorby are the right people at the right time but are powerless to do anything.
The USSR’s collapse according to Panarim is due to its debts. If debt did in the socialist system, debt can do the same for capitalism. With the gadzillion fiscal stimulus, expect more deficits, the shrinking GDP and the fall of the US dollar. Like in the socialist zone, the fall of the ruble forced the socialist economies to use the dollar and the mark and other regional currencies. Panarin even sets a timeframe. Expect the collapse of the USA by September!
But Panarim’s most interesting predictions involve the secession of US states. The idea of secession from the Union is a smouldering issue in American society ever since the Civil War. Secession is just under the surface and in the South any issue that tramples on state rights is sure to see the raising of the Stars and Bars. Secession is not a joke in the USA.
The west led by California can secede. The deep south (Mississipi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahamoa, Georgia, Florida etc) can revive their Confederacy.
This is sure to interest the contrafactual analysis of US history. The biggest question here is what if the South won?
In the contrafactual history, the Philippines would have been a colony of the CSA. And the CSA could have been a worse colonizer than the USA.
Panarim’s conjectures were challenged by no less than Randy David who said that the USA truly was a superpower that the USSR never was. The USSR was not able to maintain its influence aside from the Party faithful in Eastern Europe and some states like Cuba. The USA on the other hand was able to maintain cultural influence all over the world. The US dollar remains as a global currency unlike the ruble and wannabes like the euro.
The interesting question for us is “Can we imagine a world without a United States of America?” This would put the likes of Joma Sison, Dodong Nemenzo and all the lefties at CSSP into utter irrelevance.
But my scepticism is reinforced when Panarim placed a date by which to expect the American implosion. It is like the Protestant fundamentalists and other wackos that predict the end of the world!
Popularity: 2% [?]
Dr. Panarim is either an idiot or high on something. LOL
let the russians and the americans kill each other..for all i care. and if we send a team to help the americans…please send our current politicians..wala naman silang silbi sa bayan natin eh.
hahahaha
the russian economy fell 8.8% in Feb. With low oil prices, the Russians will be hard pressed too just like everybody else.
As for an implosion by the USofA. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it is FAR from dire. This is a recession, not yet a depression. the writing on the wall will be clear /long/ before /if ever/ the USofA will collapse. Heck the cost of empire is an important read.
This is a global economic challenge because our world economy is so integrated.
As for California seceding from the Union, The Bear Flag Revolution: California’s Experiment in the New Federalism gives great insight into today’s American Federalism and the challenge of State Rights.
Here is a very interesting statistic: There were two years in the last hundred or so when the total public debt of the United States equalled 100% of its GDP: 1929 and 2008. It looks like the Great Depression won’t be the greatest anymore before this one is over.
I don’t know about implosion but I guess it’s being called the Great Recession. A billion could be out of work, twice that if the US “implodes.”
There are also increasingly persuasive voices and analyses indicating that the bailouts won’t work and that we are just throwing good money after bad.
Anyway, if the US implodes, China will explode.
BTW this fear of implosion and a Barack Obama presidency has reinforced calls for an American Monarchy! That was something quite fringe before. Its more fringe than reconstituting the Confederate States of America!
Now is Barack really an American version of Gorby?
During glasnost and perestroika, the joke was the politburo’s train got stuck and Stalin, Khruschev and Gorby were on the train. Stalin commanded the soldiers on board to shoot the train engineer. Khruschev ordered the engineer exiled to the gulag while Gorby opened the window and shouted to the whole taiga, “the train is stuck!”
I wonder what the Barack version of the joke would be?
Panarim grasping onto his most memorable experience — secession and the break-up of USSR — sounds similar to Abe Margallo romance with EDSA-PeoplePower.
The US always survives!!! The Watchmen :razz: walk among its people.
LOL I wanna meet this Panarim guy. He reminds me of Eddie Gil.
We dont know what the future can bring. Russians
are not happy the way their Soviet Empire had
disintegrated.
It was a Communist Empire held by the strong arm
of the KGB. Putin is doing the same now. With
the Russian Intelligence holding together what
is left for the Empire.
All countries is vulnerable to downfall. Look at
the Roman empire, Greek Empire, Babylonian Empire,
Persian Empire, etc…
All went down, inspite of their Powers…
The Obama presidency right now is really about appealing to both sides of the divide: bug business and ordinary Americans. These two side have to cooperate (banks have to be less nervous, manufacturers more efficient, etc. and ordinary Americans have to alter their money spending to buying better goods and waste less of them).
In a democracy the problem is that government cannot force the people to think realistically and act logically. During WWII the American government was able to do what it has to do: force Americans to do what is necessary. Not the case here.
sorry, BIG business.
Apparently therefore, the implosion of Russia is triggered by the lowering of the Red flag as well as by its debt. And US faces the challenge for reasons similar to Russia, hence the September doom – if it comes.
So the Russian dean predicts of a secession of US states?
Can RP join the Union? Just kidding.
Map of United States of Canada and Jesusland.
A vanityfair article had this to say:
@J, LOL. yeah.
DJB you should not take figures out from your fertile imagination and display it.
Total U.S. debt reached over 100% only after the end of the Second World war.
Counting the debt owed to the trust fund (social security the total debt of the U.S. government is $10 trillion +. The problem today is not the excess of public debt. It is strictly a private sector credit blowout.
Cheap money led to over borrowing which led to over consumption which led to economic cardiac arrest. Since the world lent the money (dollar reserve system)the collapse in demand, as all heart patients know well, have to drastically lose weight you have the makings of a global collapse in demand which could probably lead to the Second Great One.
When private consumption drastically collapses (that is households and business) government usually have to clean up the mess.
That means creditors and equity holders all have to lose weight or lose their shirts.
The Russian professor has very valid points but his conclusions are all wrong. The U.S. will force the world to forgive some of the debts they owe to the world otherwise we could have war.
The privilege of Empire allows the U.S. to have a foreign debt in its own national currency. It can always inflate it debt lower as it has done for years.
“Think about it this way:”
“The U.S. economy is in the midst of a painful adjustment from spending the equivalent of 106 percent of what we produce each year — which is what happened for most of the past 20 years — to spending 96 percent of what we produce and putting aside a modest 4 percent for savings.”
“The only way we were able to consume more than we produced was that the rest of the world was eager to lend us the balance, knowing that we’d use it to buy their sneakers, cars, computers. We also used some of the money to try to outbid each other for real estate and financial assets, driving them to price levels that were ridiculously above their underlying economic value.”
“All that came to an end beginning in the spring of 2007. The cheap and easy credit went away, the asset bubbles burst and we’ve had to confront two painful realities. One is that we were never really as rich as we thought we were. The other is that we had significantly overbuilt the economy in response to consumption levels and asset prices that were basically a mirage. Now, every day, we are forced to watch the painful adjustment process play out as households cut back on their spending and businesses close stores and factories, lay off workers, and reduce their investment in plants and equipment.”
“Implicit in this process is a massive “deleveraging” of the economy as households and businesses and banks cut back on the staggering amount of debt they had built up during the credit bubble.”
“By the middle of 2008, for example, American households had build up debt of $13.9 trillion, more than double what it was a decade before. Businesses had accumulated debt of $10.9 trillion, also doubling in a decade. And financial institutions had piled up debt of $16.6 trillion, up from $6.3 trillion in 1998.”
“And the federal government? During that same period — drum roll — its debt rose from $3.8 trillion to $5.3 trillion.” Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post
JA_G
Yes the Russian professor has valid points. But I think he gone overboard by predicting that many states will opt out of the Union. But this shouldn’t be taken lightly. Puerto Ricans, residents of a US commonwealth are thinking of jumping out of the sinking ship!
Didn’t Rome fall because of debt? The only Empire that never fell because of debt is the Roman Catholic Church (who owed the Serene Venetian Republic heaps of money). The privilege of being the Kingdom of God allows the Church to force the whole of the Western World to forgive its debts or else have the whole of civilization will be cast into Hell!
Well someone like Martin Luther thought otherwise!
But the Gates of Debt and Hell cannot prevail on the Roman Church as Christ promised to Peter. The United States of America has no such guarantees. As a Vatican official once said. The United States will be history, China will be a footnote and Communism a historical artifact but still they will celebrate Mass in St Peter’s!
If the US will implode in the future, it will not be because of the current financial crisis. Lots of factors will have to come in together with the catalysmic economic changes happening in the States and Europe — another world war, for example (God forbid). So, therefore the Panarim guy is an idiot (what I find funny is that he dared to deliver his dazzling spiel in UP). He is merely propagandizing for Russia and Vladimidir Putin (who is a great leader, by the way and like all politicians, jockying for prominence, just in case Obama and European leaders will be too busy fixing their economies to attend to that role of being the top dog in world politics.)
A US implosion due to the financial crisis is less likely to occur than a racial civil war in the US if, by bad fortune, pervert political extremists succeeds in assasinating President Obama.
I’m sure Panarim is well aware of this.
I dont know where this will bring us. But, I know
that making the Economy works is like piloting
an airplane. You just let on with the controls
with Steady Hands. Let the Plane stabilizes itself.
If you force it Down, or Up. It will surely crash.
The Obama Administration is forcing the Economy
up. I am fearing the consequences…
Here are two statements taken from the comments section of this thread. Both are off the mark:
and:
The first comment most probably referred to household debt (very different animal):
For public debt as a percentage of GDP, US ranked only 22nd, below countries like Germany, Canada and Japan, but above the homeland which ranks 29th. And Russia ranks 118.