Breakin’ Up Is Hard to Do
This morning Andrew Osborn at WSJ gives Igor Panarin substantially more attention than he deserves. I’ve seen Panarin quoted in various Russian news media over the last several years—he’s been predicting for about a decade that the U. S. would disintegrate in 2010.
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.
The map above is a rendering of Panarin’s prediction. Do you think that Idaho and Utah will federate with California? Really? Or that the upper Midwest will fall under Canadian sway? Note that the population of Illinois alone is half that of all of Canada.
Panarin isn’t an America specialist. He’s an information war specialist and I can see that the Soviet Union’s grand tradition of disinformation is alive and well and living in Mother Russia. More than anything else Panarin’s theories demonstrate that Russians who aren’t America specialists’ ideas about America aren’t any better than most Americans who aren’t Russia specialists’ notions about Russia. There is one important kernel in the article, however, that bears considering: Russia is even more anti-American, if anything, than the old Soviet Union was.
Meanwhile, residents of the upper Midwest, rejoice! Things could be much worse than they are: you could be citizens of a country whose primary city was Chicago.
Well, if the blue states could get rid of Jesusland, they’d be a lot richer. The problem is they’d then have another 3rd world country on the border.
Hey, this looks like the map the Aryan Nation types were putting out for their vision of a divided America along Racial lines. Except they believed that the Asian-Americans would be sent to Hawaii for their own state.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence, DCL. I think Panarin is making his judgments along those lines. And that he doesn’t really understand what America’s like.
I also have my doubts that Kentucky, West Virginia, Tennessee and the Carolinas would affiliate with New England. I would also predict Virginia itself would split rather than go entirely to the Atlantic America.
Who thinks there are “Ethnic lines” in America? The only people here with an ancestral home on the continent have already been subjugated.
Also, if for some bizarre reason the USA were to split like this, I still see some problems with his ideas of foreign intervention. Firstly, any new Republic of Texas would surely be annexing parts of Mexico, not the other way around. Canada would be more affiliated with the Atlantic states than the mid west, China wouldn’t be able to impose much hegemony all the way across the Pacific (especially while Russia and Japan and still evidently independent and non-isolationist), so I’d give Mexico more influence over the California Republic, simply because of geography and immigrant population.
Possibly, but I think many of those immigrants would be thinking, “I just got out of Mexico where I couldn’t find a job/had a crappy job, and now they want to annex the place I’ve moved too?!?!”
Also, many in the Latino communtiy in California, New Mexico, and Arizona are not Mexican, but from other Central and South American countries. I know there is a tendency to lump people of the same ethnicity into one group/mindset and run with that, but I’m not sure people from Honduras, El Salvador, and so forth are going to be happy aligning with the Mexican government.
I’d think that taking parts of Mexico (Baja, Tijuana for example) and forming an independent nation state would also be likely and maybe the more likely outcome.
Oh and Idaho and Utah…Utah aligning with Ultra-liberal California? Really? Who has been smoking what?
But I seriously doubt that in 1 to 2 years well see any of this nut-jobbery come to pass. I agree with Dave this is more disinformation/information warfare than anything else.
There is in fact a considerable amount of prejudice against central americans in Mexico. The most dangerous place on their journey to El Norte, is the southern border of Mexico. And it doesn’t get much better further down the road.
That map makes me smile. In the event of an American break-up, what I really suspect would happen is that
1. Northern California and most of western Oregon and Washington would either end up in their own country (they have the GDP to pull it off), or as part of Canada.
2. Southern and Central California would probably become their own country, distinct from Mexico but with strong connections. It would be an interesting country, to say the least.
3. Most of the Great Plains and inland southwestern states that aren’t near either major bodies of water or rivers, or with major strategic resources (including stores of US military armaments and nukes) will end up either going their own way as governments, breaking up into smaller pieces, or being carved up between the Southern Californian Republic or the Republic of Texas. The Mississippi would be an interesting situation; you could conceivably hold together a federation of cities and states along its transversable tributaries and the like.
4. The Republic of Texas, assuming it doesn’t go bankrupt like the original Republic of Texas, snatches off pieces of Mexico and the neighboring states (including the mouth of the Mississippi River, I suspect), and bases its naval strategy around controlling the energy resources of the Gulf of Mexico.
5. The “Republic of Bos-Wash” joins up with neighboring states of similar background, plus possibility the eastern-most part of the Midwest and the Great Lakes, and becomes its own country – I doubt it would join up with Canada, although they’d be close.
6. Utah does its own thing, although at a steep price to its standard of living and with some possible ties to the surrounding governments. Presumably it would have to deal with Canada, the Southern California Republic, the Republic of Texas, and the North-Eastern Republic all contesting for influence over its natural resources.
7. None of this would be stable; the North-Eastern Republic would probably start slowly re-annexing parts of the South and Midwest, while Texas would be seeking to consolidate and expand.
8. Canada would become stronger, although it would have to do some serious upgrading in the military areas.
We need to redraw the central-north american map because I don’t think Ohio, Indianna, or Illinois should be included in that region. Most of those states would follow suit with Pennsylvania with their traditional blue collar steel crowd, heck, you could include Michigan in that mix as well.
I think it’s interesting how much weight we are lending this ideological communist considering he’s been spouting this drivel to deaf ears for the last 10 years.
I don’t think anyone in the US or anywhere outside of Russia is taking this too seriously. It’s pretty much nonsense – most of the US federal government has grown in ways that imhibit civil wars (not surprising, considering that we already had one), and it would take a massive weakening of the sense of “American” identity for this to happen. It was easier in the Civil War, when the states still had considerable tug on people’s identities.
I think you’re right on Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, FireWolf. I think they’d probably end up with a Republic consisting of the north-east Atlantic Seaboard, since the Great Lakes would basically ensure that they are all easily connected regardless of the collapse of a national government in the US.
If it were to happen, I suspect it would for the most part split along the Red State\Blue State lines. The Great Lakes\Ohio Valley areas would be interesting in where they would end up.
It seems by the tone of some they think Texas, the Midwest and the rest of the Red States would flounder without New York and California telling them what to do. One might look at where the majority of food, oil, refineries, coal, and power plants resides. Also there are plenty of manufacturers in these states as well. The transportation infrastructure is well built and doesn’t rely on waterways as much as it once did. Remember there is the Mississippi river and Gulf Coast with many large ports which would give plenty of infrastructures for exports. The Red state would be fine if we split up.
The premise that either side would have to run to another country is faulty as well. Both sides would still have a larger economy than any other Country in the world.
I’ve quoted you and linked to you here.
Once again, Dave shows he isn’t conversant about basic Illinois facts. After failing to acknowledge the championship season of the Chicago Wolves, he now claims that Illinois population is half of Canada’s.
According to figures from the US census bureau and Statscan, Illinois’ population is 40.6% of Canada’s
41% sorry 40.6% or is it 40.5912….. is not that far off of ½. Talking in rough terms, saying “the population of Illinois alone is half that of all of Canada†is not unreasonable. The point he was trying to make still stands regardless of Illinois population being 50% or 41% of that of Canada’s. Why would a region with a higher population and GNP want to join Canada? Even an area with 41% of the population of Canada probably would not want to join.