As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, 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.