by Andrew Osborn
Wall Street Journal

Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he’s found an eager audience: Russian state media.

In recent weeks, he’s been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It’s a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it’s his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin’s views also fit neatly with the Kremlin’s narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

"There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, 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.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin’s ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country’s top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin’s English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin’s apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It’s much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin’s predictions. "Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin’s theories don’t hold water.

Mr. Panarin’s résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB’s successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are "classified."

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

"When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. "They didn’t believe me."

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

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.

"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It’s not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia’s biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington’s role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles," he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

The article prompted a question about the White House’s reaction to Prof. Panarin’s forecast at a December news conference. "I’ll have to decline to comment," spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino’s response was significant. "The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully," he says.

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

by Mary Starrett
Constitution Party Communications Director

The word “fascism” has been used for decades to deride political ideaologies of both the right and left. Fact is, fascism has come to America and we have allowed it to happen.

Back in 1944 economist and author John Flynn pointed out that we have been laying the basecoat of fascism here in the U.S. in the book As We Go Marching.

“But alas, the most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society. Nothing could have been further from the minds of most of them than the final brutish and obscene result. The gangster comes upon the stage only when the scene has been made ready for him by his blundering precursors.”

Flynn wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that what he predicted 65 years ago is happening in our country today. He said “all the elements of facism” include the “organization of the economic society as a planned economy under the supervision of the state.”

Flynn laid it all out saying we faced “ a planned… economy,” “militarism as an economic weapon,” “imperialism” and ultimately “dictatorship.”

I thought of Flynn during the presidential debates when both candidates talked up the necessity for war in foreign countries, for mandating “sustainable” energy, for demands for a government-controlled health care system, for more farm subsidies, for “bailing out” the banking industry, despite the voter’s outcry against it. And I thought of him again when the “bailout” was passed by Congress because Flynn had written:

“Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans…who are convinced that the present economic system is washed up…and who wish to commit this country to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and the cities; taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the role of a great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending them on all sorts of projects through which a government can paralyze opposition and command public support; marshaling great armies…at crushing costs to support the industry of war….which will become our greatest industry…adding …global planning …under the authority of a centralized government in which the executive will hold…all the powers, with Congress reduced to the role of a debating society.”

Fascism didn’t come to America wearing jack boots and brown shirts. It came respectably-clad in suits and ties and calling itself Republicans and Democrats.

The fascism basecoat was laid with each government intervention in the free market system, each undeclared and unconstitutional war and every single incursion by the state into private enterprises like banking and auto manufacturing. And both the R’s and the D’s were behind it all.

As we watched the basecoat dry we continued to allow the incremental creeping toward fascism by electing those who made no secret of their plans to redistribute wealth, make the state the boss of us and dismantle the free enterprise system.

Both McCain and Obama and elected officials in both parties have consistently supported elements of fascism and they never had to worry they’d lose because of it. It was only a matter of how much fascism Americans wanted each election cycle.

Elected officials know that as members of the controlling elite that masquerades as two separate and opposing factions, they will not be deposed. The vast majority will be easily re-elected despite their opposition to the majority of Americans on such issues as illegal immigration, secure borders, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the “Bailout.”

Unless Americans make a determined move to unseat incumbents for these and other assaults against the Constitution, we can expect nothing more than a shallacking by those now controlling our government in both “Big Box” parties.

© 2009 Mary Starrett - All Rights Reserved

by Patrick Krey
www.TheNewAmerican.com

The rise of the neoconservatives within the GOP has not only discredited the Grand Old Party but tarnished the image of conservatism.

The Republican party suffered an overwhelming electoral defeat this past November. The establishment media were all too quick to proclaim that conservatism is dead and we’re now at the dawn of a liberal age. Peter Beinart, Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), wrote in Time magazine that we are facing the dawn of a "new liberal order."

In making this proclamation, Beinart overlooks the fact that the public was not voting for President-elect Obama, but rather against Republicans like John McCain and George W. Bush. But what was it that Bush and the Republican Party have come to symbolize? Bush and McCain both stood for an activist foreign policy of globally spreading democracy, never-ending commitments of nation building, open borders at home, record deficit spending, circumventing the Constitution, expanding domestic welfare programs, and nationalizing the financial sector.

Conservative South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wrote in a CNN commentary that "Republicans have campaigned on the conservative themes of lower taxes, less government and more freedom — they just haven’t governed that way. America didn’t turn away from conservatism, they turned away from many who faked it."

Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin wrote, "For all intents and purposes, conservatism — as a national movement — is completely and thoroughly dead. Barack Obama did not destroy it, however. It was George W. Bush and John McCain who destroyed conservatism in America."

David Boaz of the libertarian CATO Institute explains that Bush "delivered massive overspending, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years, centralization of education, a floundering war, an imperial presidency, civil liberties abuses, ... and finally a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that just kept on growing in the last month of the campaign. Voters who believed in limited government had every reason to reject that record."

These modern Republican policies have nothing to do with traditional conservatism, but have much more in common with big-government liberalism. So how did politicians claiming to be conservatives end up acting like big-government liberals? The explanation lies in understanding the rise of neoconservatism, which has come to define modern conservatism and the GOP.

Modern American Conservatism

The modern American conservative movement is considered to have begun in 1953 with the publishing of The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. With this book, Kirk traced the evolution of the conservative ideology from the American founding to the early 20th century.

Conservatism, Kirk proclaimed, was based on the core principles of "an enduring moral order, the Constitution of the United States, established American way of life, and a free economy." Conservatism, as Kirk and similar traditionalists of his day saw it, meant an adherence to the Constitution and a mind-our-own-business foreign policy. These conservatives were opposed to an activist foreign policy, weary of executive power, and hesitant to engage in war. Kirk praised the late Senator Robert A. Taft for his ability to recognize that "war was the enemy of Constitution, liberty, economic security, and the cake of custom."

Conservative ideology developed and morphed through the years. It had internal conflicts between Rockefeller Republicans, followers of Nelson Rockefeller who held liberal views, and Goldwater conservatives, supporters of Barry Goldwater who adhered to a strict interpretation of the Constitution. This struggle went back and forth, with the liberal wing electing Richard Nixon and the conservative wing electing Ronald Reagan. Over this period, the liberal wing began to gain more power within the establishment right centered inside our nation’s capital beltway. It wasn’t until the 1970s when the neoconservatives (neocons for short) joined the conservative movement with their own distinct radical beliefs involving a hyper-interventionist foreign policy. Their influence within the movement would grow through the following decades, eventually culminating in George W. Bush’s administration.

Neocons as Big-government Globalists

So what is it neocons believe in? Neocons are not concerned with reducing the size of government and are actually quite content with it getting bigger. Justin Raimondo, author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (the book that inspired Ron Paul to run for president), writes, "On the domestic front, far from opposing the growth of Big Government, or even seeking to slow it down, the neocons want to utilize the centralizing federal apparatus to achieve their own ’conservative’ ends."

President Bush exemplified this big-government conservatism more than any other modern Republican. Fred Barnes, the author of the pro-Bush Rebel in Chief, explains that "big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a ’conservative welfare state.’ (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) ... Bush has never put a name on his political philosophy, though he once joked that it was based on the premise that you could fool some of the people all of the time and he intended to concentrate on those people." Keep in mind that Barnes is actually speaking favorably about Bush. He highlights the misplaced priorities between traditional conservatives and neocons.

While big-government programs might be part and parcel of neocon agendas, it is foreign policy that is at the heart of their ideology. Max Boot, another admitted neocon and CFR senior fellow, explains: "It is not really domestic policy that defines neoconservatism. This was a movement founded on foreign policy, and it is still here that neoconservatism carries the greatest meaning." Boot contends that America should be the world’s policeman.

This foreign policy is far from the noninterventionist one recommended by America’s Founders of avoiding entangling alliances and pursuing peace and commerce. Instead, it is an aggressive, costly and dangerous policy of America policing the globe in order to establish a new democratic order without regard to any U.S. national interest. Of course, constant war goes hand in hand with this scenario. Raimondo writes, "Indeed, warmongering is the very essence of neoconservatism."

Neocons’ Leftist Origins

Neocons were former liberal war hawks, many of whom were intellectuals, who felt disenfranchised by the Democratic Party’s embrace of the peace movement. The neocons decided to jump ship and join with the Republicans, in whom they felt they would have a more receptive audience for their internationalist agenda. They were welcomed with open arms by the Rockefeller Republicans and other members of the beltway right. Traditional conservatives were not enthused by these new arrivals, but they felt that a new group of intellectuals would add gravitas to the movement.

Neoconservative thought represents an ideology with more similarities to Trotskyite communism than traditional American conservatism. Writing in the Weekly Standard, Irving Kristol, who is widely considered to be the godfather of neocons, freely admitted that neoconservatism originated "from disillusioned liberal intellectuals in the 1970s." Kristol himself is an admitted former Trotskyite. Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism named after Leon Trotsky, who strongly supported an international socialist revolution and asserted that socialism could only come into being on a global scale. Kristol was the managing editor of Commentary Magazine from 1947 to 1952, which is referred to as the neocon bible. Kristol is also the father of William Kristol, founder of the Weekly Standard. William Kristol, part of the second generation of neocons, is considered to be one of the leading voices of the movement.

Neocon Michael Ledeen, contributing editor for National Review, explained his leftist roots in an interview and said, "I describe myself as a democratic revolutionary, I don’t think of myself as ’conservative’ at all."

In the book Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, Pat Buchanan explains:

The first generation were ex-Trotskyites, socialists, leftists and liberals who backed FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ. When the Democratic Party was captured by McGovern in 1972 — on a platform of cutting defense and ’Come Home America!’ — these Cold War liberals found themselves isolated and ignored in their own party. Adrift, they ran over to the Republican Party and were pulled aboard as conservatism’s long voyage was culminating in the triumph of Reagan.

The Rise of the Neocons

Many neocons played important supporting roles in the Reagan administration. Neocons appointed by Reagan include William Bennett, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Richard Perle, Eugene Rostow, Carnes Lord, and Elliott Abrams. This is not to say that neocons ran the administration. As a matter of fact, the neocons had many differences of opinion with President Reagan about foreign policy. Neocon Norman Podhoretz, editor-at-large for Commentary Magazine, then wrote an essay entitled "The Neoconservative Anguish Over Reagan’s Foreign Policy."

The neocons were considered a helpful constituency in the conservative movement at the time, but they were just one constituency in a much larger movement. The neocons were not content with this arrangement and had hoped that they would gain more power in George H.W. Bush’s administration. William Kristol served as chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle and expressed optimism about neocon leadership of the first Bush White House.

Russell Kirk, still highly regarded in conservative circles at the time, expressed reservations about neocon leadership. Kirk was wary of the way neocons had "been rash in their schemes of action, pursuing a fanciful democratic globalism rather than the national interest of the United States." He also did not believe that George H.W. Bush would give in to neocon pressure. Kirk said, "It is a reasonable presumption that Mr. Kristol and certain of his colleagues would prefer to install in the White House some person, not at all a fine gentleman, who might be deviously manipulated by neoconservative ideologues. Mr. Bush has far too much practical experience of federal office to be so managed by the ’first-class academic "brain trust" ’ that Mr. Kristol desires to establish in the White House." Apparently, Kirk overestimated George H.W. Bush and did not even consider the future ascendancy of his son who would turn out to be "open to devious manipulation" by the neocons.

The neocons were elated with the advent of the first Gulf War as the elder Bush assumed the role of the liberal internationalist they had been hoping for. Kirk would become extremely disillusioned with the president over the decision to intervene. Kirk chided the president for initially engaging in war for an "oil can," referring to the rationale of keeping open the Kuwaiti oil fields, and he famously derided Bush for his eventual explanation for going to war: to launch a "New World Order." "What are we to say of Mr. Bush’s present endeavor to bring to pass a gentler, kinder New World Order? Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of the world. Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a ’One World’ candidate, Wendell Willkie, they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs." Kirk was so upset with the Gulf War and the change in direction of the conservative movement that he wrote to a friend expressing his opinion that Bush should be strung up on the White House lawn for war crimes!

As always, neocons came down on the opposing side of Kirk’s traditional conservatism. To them, it was not Bush’s globalist intervention that betrayed the conservative movement, but it was his failure to fully complete the job of regime change in Iraq. The neocons grew disillusioned with the elder Bush for not being enough of a liberal interventionist. The neocons felt betrayed by the president’s decision to leave Saddam in power. They spent most of the ’90s establishing new publications and think tanks to promote their viewpoints. The neocons also made a conscientious effort to more closely influence powerful GOP politicians like Newt Gingrich and John McCain. The neocons also worked to increase their influence with the right-wing media. Media personalities like Rush Limbaugh became closely aligned with top neocon thinkers. The flagship magazine of the beltway right, National Review, purged traditional conservatives in favor of neocon-approved GOP partisans.

You could say the neocons never met a foreign intervention they didn’t like. They praised the Clinton administration whenever it took any globalist action but then criticized it for not going far enough. The neocons were fervent supporters of Clinton’s efforts to expand NATO. They applauded the bombing of Belgrade but decried the lack of ground troops. In 1997, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, a CFR neocon and contributing editor to The New Republic, co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC is a neoconservative think tank that promotes higher military spending and an increased role for America as a global policeman. In 1998, PNAC issued a letter to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. Even though Clinton pushed deadly sanctions against Iraq and continual bombing raids, the Monica Lewinsky scandal made it politically difficult to fully implement PNAC’s policy recommendations. The neocons wouldn’t have to wait long before a politically viable reality for Iraq regime change developed.

Neocons Finally Dominate

It was in the administration of George W. Bush that neocons finally came to fully occupy the driver’s seat. The 9/11 terrorist attacks gave the neocons the opportunity to push their long-held view of a global democratic revolution to the mainstream. Was George W. Bush a neocon? If he wasn’t, he did one great impression. Some neocons feel that Bush was a true believer. Neocon Richard Perle has said of Bush: "The President of the United States, on issue after issue, has reflected the thinking of neoconservatives." The neocons got almost everything they wanted from Bush, most importantly the Iraq invasion.

Bush appointed many neocons to his administration, and he didn’t hide the fact that he employed many neoconservatives. While giving a speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an influential Washington think tank founded in 1943 and known as the headquarters of neoconservative thought, President Bush told the audience, "You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds."

Even with all the obvious failures of the Bush administration, the Republican faithful still continued their disastrous love affair with the neocons by picking McCain as their 2008 presidential candidate. John McCain’s close relationship with the neocons dated back to the ’90s when they both broke ranks with the GOP to support the intervention in Kosovo. McCain also had many prominent neocons advising his campaign. When it came to foreign policy, McCain used all the neocon talking points on the campaign trail. McCain’s foreign policy positions seem like they were lifted straight off PNAC’s website.

Now the neocons are blaming everyone but themselves for McCain’s defeat, and they are making suggestions that have little to do with the reality of the voter rejection of the GOP. David Frum, the neocon speechwriter for Bush who coined the term "Axis of Evil," claimed that picking social conservative Sarah Palin was the reason for the loss and recommends that the GOP should lessen its opposition to abortion and gay "marriage." Frum says this despite the fact that exit polling showed that McCain might have lost by an even larger margin without Palin to draw in social conservatives. William Kristol claimed that Bush was too laissez faire and the GOP needs to become more interventionist on economic policy. Kristol says this despite the fact that Bush was nowhere close to laissez faire and employed an interventionist economic policy throughout his years in office. Bush himself seems out of touch with reality. In an interview with Charles Gibson, he explained that the biggest disappointment was not the neocon foreign policy but, rather, the failure to crowbar amnesty for illegal immigrants through Congress! He also said that the landslide November defeat was not because of him but because of voter dissatisfaction with the Republican Party. And why were they dissatisfied? Bush did not explain.

Post-neocon Conservative Movement?

What will be the future of the post-Bush conservative movement? It is tempting to heap all the blame on the neocons as an aberration in the conservative movement, but the troubles run deeper than that. Neocons have so completely infiltrated the conservative movement that it’s hard to distinguish between true neocons and establishment conservatives. Most of the Republicans who supported the Iraq invasion were not Trotskyite fellow travelers but rather knee-jerk partisans who were all too willing to accept the neocon consensus trumpeted by party leaders and the beltway right media of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

Individuals who consider themselves traditional conservatives should reject the voices of both GOP party leaders and members of the media who promoted Bush’s brand of conservatism. Instead they should listen to the voices of constitutional conservatives who stood by principle over party in opposition to Iraq and other unconstitutional actions by the big-government Bush administration. Voices like Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, Charles Goyette, and organizations like the John Birch Society as well as The New American magazine.

The mainstream media (MSM) also played a role in assisting the neocons dominating the GOP. Big-government conservatives who are close with the neocons, like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, are praised as pragmatic centrists and moderates by the establishment media, whereas true constitutionalists and traditional conservatives like Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan are considered extreme or fringe and are ignored altogether. The MSM is all too eager to employ a neocon as their organization’s in-house conservative, thereby redefining conservatism as neoconservatism. Bill Kristol became an op-ed columnist for the New York Times in January 2008 even though almost all of his Iraq predictions proved false. Jon Stewart even kidded with him, asking, "Oh, Bill Kristol, are you ever right?" It is far past time to reject this media-concocted paradigm and expose the true extremists: those who would indebt future generations and pursue dangerous and unconstitutional policies of endless war.

If conservatives continue to identify with the failed Bush policies, then the conservative movement is dead as we know it. On the other hand, if true traditional conservatives, following in the footsteps of Russell Kirk or Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan, acknowledge the failures of Bush and the neocons while renewing their dedication to the U.S. Constitution, the conservative movement’s obituary might be premature. As for many of the knee-jerk GOP partisans who became staunch supporters of the neocons? They’ll quickly fall in line with the new constitutional coalition just like they did with Bush and the Iraq War.

Patrick Krey, M.B.A., J.D., L.L.M., is a lawyer and freelance writer from New York.