chycho

Economies around the world are unravelling, and governments are failing.

Since 2005 the United States think-tank, the Fund for Peace and the magazine Foreign Policy, have been publishing an annual index called the Failed States Index.

“The index's ranks are based on twelve indicators of state vulnerability - four social, two economic and six political. The indicators are not designed to forecast when states may experience violence or collapse. Instead, they are meant to measure a state's vulnerability to collapse or conflict. All countries in the red, orange, or yellow categories display some features that make parts of their societies and institutions vulnerable to failure. Some in the yellow zone may be failing at a faster rate than those in the more dangerous orange or red zones, and therefore could experience violence sooner. Conversely, some in the red zone, though critical, may exhibit some positive signs of recovery or be deteriorating slowly, giving them time to adopt mitigating strategies.”

Two things to note regarding the above map: First, is that even though it is the 2008 index, the most recent available, it is already outdated. Second, since both organizations involved in compiling and analyzing the data are based in the United States (Washington, DC, to be exact) the analysis is most likely bias.

For example, the index lists Iceland as sustainable (green), but that’s not the case. Iceland has already collapsed. Many other countries face the same bleak future.

Japan is also marked as sustainable, and “boasts the largest and most diverse economy in Asia, and is second only to the U.S. on the world's economic stage.” The most recent data, however, shows that “Japan's exports plunged a record 49.4 percent in February as deepening recessions in the U.S. and Europe sapped demand for the country's cars and electronics. The collapse signals gross domestic product may shrink this quarter at a similar pace to the annualized 12.1 percent contraction posted in the previous three months, the sharpest since 1974. Prime Minister Taro Aso is compiling his third stimulus package as companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Panasonic Corp. fire thousands of workers.”

As for the world’s largest economy, the United States (marked as moderately sustainable), the “economy is contracting at a much faster pace than the government previously thought”(sic).

“Real gross domestic product in the U.S. was initially predicted in January to have declined at an annual rate of 3.8 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the third quarter. This figure was revised last month by the U.S. Department of Commerce to a decrease of 6.2 per cent. The revised estimates are based on more data than were available earlier. The global recession contributed to a decline in exports as well as lower retail sales and a reduced customer spending. The fourth quarter decline represents the steepest drop off since the 1982 recession.”

The situation in the U.S., however, is more dire than it may appear on paper. In late 2008, “Gao Xiqing, the man who oversees $200 billion of China’s $2 trillion in dollar holdings,” stated that many people are betting against the United States retaining its supremacy on the world stage.

“The current conditions can’t go on. It is time for the new government, under Obama or even McCain, to really tell people: ‘Look, this is wartime, this is about the survival of our nation. It’s not about our supremacy in the world. Let’s not even talk about that any more. Let’s get down to the very basics of our livelihood.’

“I have great admiration of American people. Creative, hard-working, trusting, and freedom-loving. But you have to have someone to tell you the truth. And then, start realizing it. And if you do it, just like what you did in the Second World War, then you’ll be great again! If that happens, then of course—American power would still be there for at least as long as I am living. But many people are betting on the other side.”

How many people exactly are betting against the U.S. recovering? It probably depends on which analysts you believe and how far you think the collapse will go.

In Russia, academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. “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.”

“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…

“‘There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur. One could rejoice in that process, but if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario’…

“‘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.’”

“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.”

How far-fetched is this analysis? Considering that Igor Panarin presented his arguments in 1998, approximately ten years before our present global economic meltdown, reason and caution would dictate that he should be taken more seriously than most are willing to admit. There is after all a serious secession movement in the United States, born out of the “understanding that the United States - once a great republic - has become an unsustainable Empire governed by a very few.”

“Beyond massive (and bipartisan) national electoral fraud, 9/11's unanswered questions, a ‘war on terror’ (that will not end, we are told, in our life times), the collapse of the U.S. Constitution, the erosion of civil liberties, and the practicing of ‘disaster capitalism’ on a massive scale by political and economic elites, the U.S. is simply too big to function as a democratic republic in its current state. In other words, as astute observers from across the political spectrum have pointed out, the Empire is essentially ungovernable, unsustainable, and un-reformable.”

In short, even the citizens of the United States believe that the Empire is losing its influence and the American lifestyle is unsustainable.

The only question that remains is, how soon will the status of the United States change in the Failed States Index map shown above?

Source:
http://www.chycho.com/?q=US_Failed_State_chycho2009

Illustrations:
http://www.fundforpeace.org/web/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=140
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123051100709638419.html