Joel Garreau of the Washington Post reports on the Russian pundit Igor Panarin, who is forecasting that “the United States will break into six parts in June or July of 2010.”
He notes that
Panarin’s disintegration divination comes complete with a map. In it, Alaska goes to Russia. Hawaii goes to Japan or China. “The California Republic” — the West from Utah and Arizona to the Pacific — goes to China. “The Texas Republic” — the South from New Mexico to Florida — goes to Mexico. “Atlantic America” — the Northeast from Tennessee and South Carolina up to Maine — joins the European Union. And “The Central North-American Republic” — the Plains from Ohio to Montana — goes to Canada.
Garreau suggests that Russians may be happily projecting their own past experiences — or future worries — onto the US. And, in fact, Russia is more likely to lose parts than is the US.
Overall, the likelihood of secession in the US seems low. This is the FutureAtlas.com estimate:
And, as Garreau and others point out, Panarin’s divisions are oddly chosen. A more likely division might look something like this:
The most plausible fracture line is the “red-blue” one, as the largest font of true extremism in the US comes from the so-called “Christian right.” One can imagine a scenario in which the Republican Party or a Christan-right splinter of it can no longer win national elections, turns radical, and seeks a split, taking the South, the Great Plains, and the northern Rockies. (Or it might just involve the South, if the Republicans become a regional, Southern party.)
Overall, though, this is unlikely, as American national identity is strong, all parts of the country are somewhat ideologically mixed, and all but the most extreme evangelical Christians seem to understand the realities of living in pluralist, diverse America.
(Who knows what Alaska might do in this circumstance? It might stay in the US, join the red secession, or opt for independence. It would not revert to Russia however.)
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I wrote a commentary piece for Radio Free Europe on the future of Russia.
The central points, briefly, are these:
- “Diminished democratic decision making reduces the feedback Russian society can give to the government, increasing the likelihood that popular and elite interests will diverge.”
- “A state that relies on resource extraction can easily lose the inclination to attend to other aspects of economic strength that are more stable and promising over the long term.”
- “Russia seems fixated on threats from the West. But this sense of danger is misplaced,” as “Russia faces much more plausible security threats from the south and east.”
- “No foreign power is likely to do Russia as much harm as its dire demographic decline.”
A commenter had this to say about the piece: the “author conveniently forgets about the fact that throughout the 90s Russia already tried to align with the broadly defined “West”, only to see its interests completely ignored and enemies encouraged through a very short-sighted policies of US, EU, and NATO.”
One might ask: which enemies where encouraged? Russia’s only real enemies in the 1990s were separatists in Caucasian Russia, and the West had little to do with that. Unless Russia has military designs on the former countries of the Warsaw Pact, Russia’s interests are not harmed by their joining NATO, and in any case Russia does not get to choose their fates any longer. After centuries of abuse at Russian hands, the Poles (for instance) have every right to look for protection westward. (Though continued rapid NATO expansion is not a great idea: at this point, inclusion of divided Ukraine and irresponsible Georgia would probably harm NATO more than it would hurt Russian interests.)
And Serbia was a terrible place to place one’s sympathies: Russia ignored the fact that the Serbians were engaging in savage policies in both Bosnia and Kosovo — and neither situation was triggered by the West.
Internally, Russians were in fact harmed by the so-called oligarchs, but they were Russian, and they acquired wealth and power due to choices Russians made.
My ultimate point is this: it should act on its real interests, not a emotion-driven parody of those interests.
The Washington Post reports on the gains of the Islamist rebels in Somalia — and on unintended (but not unanticipated) consequences:
The scenario now unfolding in Somalia is the one a U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion nearly two years ago had been intended to thwart: a takeover by radical Islamists. At the time, Ethiopian forces ousted a relatively diverse Islamic movement that had briefly gained control of the capital, Mogadishu. . . . But the policy backfired, inspiring a relentless insurgency of clan militias and Islamist fighters that has left Somalia’s first central government since 1991 near collapse.
The result is that “the two-year insurgency has energized the most radical Islamist faction, the Shabab — ‘youth’ in Arabic — which the United States has designated a terrorist organization.
… Analysts predict the Shabab will extend its control after the Ethiopians withdraw” early in the year.
However, writes the International Crisis Group:
Opposition to the Ethiopian occupation has been the single issue on which the many elements of the fractious Islamist insurgency could agree. When that glue is removed, it is likely that infighting will increase, making it difficult for the insurgency to obtain complete military victory, or at least sustain it, and creating opportunities for political progress.
The announced Ethiopian withdrawal, if it occurs, will open up a new period of uncertainty and risk. It could also provide a window of opportunity to relaunch a credible political process, however, if additional parties can be persuaded to join the Djibouti reconciliation talks, and local and international actors –- including the U.S. and Ethiopia –- accept that room must be found for much of the Islamist insurgency in that process and ultimately in a new government dispensation.
According to the ICG, “One way or the other, Somalia is likely to be dominated by Islamist forces.”
The Taliban insurgency continues to hold the momentum in Afghanistan.
The AP reports that they are setting up shadow governmental structures within 30 miles of Kabul, increasingly replacing those of the official, Western-backed government.
US officials quotes in the article downplay this and ascribe Taliban success to intimidation, but a tribal elder in one province asserts that 90% of the population of the region support the insurgents.
To counter the Taliban, the US and the Afghan government are planning to arm local militias, in hopes of replicating some of the success of that strategy in Iraq.
But, the New York Times notes, “the plan is causing deep unease among many Afghans, who fear that Pashtun-dominated militias could get out of control, terrorize local populations and turn against the government.”
And a Taliban commander suggested to the Times “that the government militias would find it hard to put down roots in the area, if only because the Taliban had already done so. ‘We are living in the districts, in the villages — we are not living in the mountains. The people are with us.’”
The upshot is that the neglect of Afghanistan by the Bush administration may have set up Obama to be LBJ: firmly pledged to get deeper into a deteriorating situation.
The Somali pirates have managed to invoke the multipolar 21st century:
- The European Union is sending a force of 20 warships to patrol around the Horn of Africa, including countries such as Spain and Sweden, an unusual display of military power by the organization.
- China is also sending three warships, a striking extension of its global reach. This is likely the first time a Chinese flotilla has operated in these waters since the great fleets of Admiral Zheng He, in the early 15th century.
Image: Ben Walther (Flickr)
The terrorist atrocities in Mumbai this week serve as another reminder of two fundamental issues for India:
- India’s future will always be imperiled as long as relations with Pakistan remain on a hair-trigger. The terrorist group that attacked the city may have no official ties to Pakistan, yet still managed to raise tensions between the two states. All India’s hopes could disappear in nuclear fire if each crisis could lead to war.
- The problem of Kashmir — a predominately Muslim area ruled by India, which stations hundreds of thousands of troops there — is also likely to bedevil India’s future. There are signs that the terrorists were motivated by the Kashmir problem, and Kashmir will continue to generate crises until India resolves the issue. It is also the most dangerous flashpoint for Indo-Pakistani relations.
In a New York Times article by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, analysts say that Al Qaeda has lashed out at President-elect Obama in a new video because he “challenged its worldview,” with his multiracial, multicultural background.
Mazzetti and Shane wrote, “American antiterrorism officials and other experts dismissed the video as a desperate tactic by a terrorist group that suffered a defeat in the global war of ideas with Mr. Obama’s election.”
They quote Dr. Ronald Walters: ““You’re talking about someone who looks like the rest of the world, and that’s got to be threatening to them.”
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com and usable with attribution and link)
Reports–such as this AP article–suggest that the Tibetan self-determination movement may be nearing a crossroads.
The reporter summarizes the feelings at a meeting of 600 Tibetan exile leaders thusly:
Many young leaders - some of whom have only seen their homeland from across the Himalayas in India - are pushing for a declaration of independence from China. However, much of the older guard, who witnessed firsthand China’s military might, are standing by the Dalai Lama’s path of compromise.
Younger factions have grown more dissatisfied with the Dalai Lama’s compromise approach, and more now advocate violence against Tibet’s Chinese rulers.
Such a strategy would be perilous.
- China has vastly more raw power than Tibetans can ever muster.
- The Chinese government and general populace are likely ready to use that power.
- China’s political culture is still in a stage that demonstrations of Tibetan dissatisfaction with Chinese rule–whether violent or nonviolent–are unlikely to meet with much sympathy, except from small groups of liberal Chinese.
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com, usable with attribution and link)
Somali pirates seizing ships on the high seas and militias driving hundreds of thousands from their homes in the Congo are prime examples of what happens when there is too little government to manage even basic control of a country.
FutureAtlas has a new issue page examining just this issue; see the page for a larger version of this map.
Government effectiveness is crucial because many key 21st century issues — from climate change and intellectual property theft to human rights and terrorism — are decisively affected by it.
“Israeli leaders are seriously considering a dormant Saudi plan offering a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for lands captured during the 1967 war,” reports say.
The 2002 Saudi plan is unusually straightforward, and has been endorsed by the 22-member Arab League: Arab states would fully recognize Israel in return for Israel’s relinquishing the territories it occupied in 1967–the West Bank, Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Israelis in favor of the plan still have qualms about elements that may endorse some kind of large -scale “right of return,” in which Palestinians could go to Israel if they or their families were uprooted in 1948.