386 – My Kingdom for a Beer? Heineken’s “Eurotopia”

 

Freddy Heineken (1923-2002), the Dutch tycoon who made his beer into a global brand, also was a dedicated Europhile. Towards the end of his life, he proposed reshuffling Europe’s national borders to strengthen the supranational project whose stated goal is an “ever closer union”.

Heineken collaborated with two historians to produce a booklet entitled “The United States of Europe, A Eurotopia?” The idea was timely, for two reasons. Eastern Europe was experiencing a period of turmoil, following the collapse of communism. The resulting wave of nationalism led to the re-emergence of several nation-states (i.e. the Baltics) and the break-up of several others (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia). And in 1992, the Maastricht Treaty would transform an initially mainly economic “European Community” into a more political “European Union”.

Heineken’s proposal would lead to the creation of dozens of new European states, which would have a comparably small population size (mostly between 5 and 10 million), some basis in history, and for the most part would be ethnically homogenous.

The theory behind Heineken’s idea is that a larger number of smaller member-states would be easier to govern within a single European framework than a combination of larger states competing for dominance. Heineken might have been inspired by the work of Leopold Kohr, whose similar proposal was discussed earlier on this blog (#18).

Here is a list of countries proposed in the “Eurotopia” detailed by Heineken e.a., with their capital cities and population figures. Numbers correspond to the ones on the map:

Scandinavia

1 Iceland      Reykjavik     252.000

2 Norway Oslo 4.200.000

3 Sweden Stockholm 8.500.000

4 Finland Helsinki 4.900.000

5 Denmark Copenhagen 5.100.000

British Isles

6 Scotland Edinburgh 5.100.000

7 Ireland Dublin 5.100.000

8 Northumbria York 8.000.000

9 Lancaster Manchester 5.400.000

10 Wales Cardiff 2.900.000

11 Mercia Birmingham 7.400.000

12 East-Anglia Cambridge 5.300.000

13 Essex London 8.300.000

14 Wessex Plymouth 5.900.000

15 Kent Southampton 5.400.000

Low countries/Central Europe

16 Holland-Zeeland The Hague 6.500.000

17 Ysselland Arnhem 6.000.000

18 Flanders/Vlaanderen Brussels 7.800.000

19 Hainaut/Henegouwen Lille/Rijssel 7.100.000

20 Schleswig-Holstein Hamburg 6.100.000

21 Hannover Bremen 7.900.000

22 Brandenburg Berlin 6.000.000

23 Sachsen Dresden 7.900.000

24 Westfalen Münster 7.900.000

25 Nordrheinland Düsseldorf 9.200.000

26 Thüringen Erfurt 8.300.000

27 Rhein-Moselland Mainz 5.100.000

28 Frankenland Nürnberg 5.100.000

29 Bavaria/Bayern Munich 6.000.000

30 Baden-Württemberg Stuttgart 9.600.000

31 Poznan/Posen Poznan 6.200.000

32 Silesia Wroclaw 8.200.000

33 Gdansk Gdansk 5.500.000

34 Warzawa Warsaw 7.600.000

35 Galicia Krakow 7.400.000

36 Bohemia Prague 6.300.000

37 Moravia Brno 4.000.000

38 Slowakia Bratislava 5.300.000

39 Austria Vienna 4.500.000

40 Noricum Graz 5.000.000

France

41 Picardy-Normandy Rouen 4.900.000

42 Ile-de-France Paris 10.300.000

43 Burgundy Nancy 8.000.000

44 Neustria Nantes 8.200.000

45 Aquitania Bordeaux 7.400.000

46 Auvergne Lyon 6.500.000

47 Provence Marseille 6.500.000

Iberia

48 Galicia-Asturias Santiago de Compostela 4.400.000

49 Castilia Madrid 9.100.000

50 Navarre-Aragon Bilbao 4.100.000

51 Catalonia Barcelona 6.000.000

52 Valencia Valencia 5.500.000

53 Andalusia Sevillia 8.000.000

54 Portugal Lisbon 10.300.000

Switzerland/Italy

55 Switzerland Bern 6.600.000

56 Piedmont Torino 6.200.000

57 Lombardy Milan 8.900.000

58 Venice Venice 6.500.000

59 Tuscany Bologna 7.500.000

60 Umbria Rome 7.400.000

61 Apulia Bari 5.700.000

62 Naples Naples 8.600.000

63 Sicily Palermo 7.100.000

Balkans/Greece

64 Hungary Budapest 10.600.000

65 Croatia Zagreb 4.600.000

66 Bosnia-Herzegovina Sarajevo 4.100.000

67 Serbia Belgrade 8.500.000

68 Albania Tirana 5.000.000

69 Transyvlvania Cluj-Napoca 7.500.000

70 Moldavia Bacau 5.000.000

71 Wallachia Bucharest 9.000.000

72 Bulgaria Sofia 8.900.000

73 Skopje Skopje 1.900.000

74 Greece Athens 10.300.000

75 Cyprus Nicosia 688.000

While an interesting conversation piece, Mr Heineken’s proposal is wildly improbable, as no EU member-state is eager to be dismembered or dissolved for the greater good. The Dutchman died in the year his “Eurotopia” plan was published. The European Union has since continued to expand eastwards, becoming ever more unwieldy as the number of member states increased. Whether chopping up larger states into smaller ones with less historical baggage would make the decision-making process within the EU easier or more difficult, will probably remain a purely academic question.

Many thanks to Theo Hoebink for sending in this map and Marc Vlek, Jan Noordam and others for also suggesting it.

385 – Pogue States: A Celtocentric World Map

As seemed to be the rule in those days, Shane MacGowan’s stage appearance was over in minutes. After incomprehensibly muttering the lyrics to a new song, a couple of roadies carried off the singer, who was much too drunk to make it to the end of the set – or the back of the stage. Lyrical intelligibility increased greatly when one of the other Pogues took over the singing. But it wasn’t until after the festival that I discovered that what had sounded like “Mnnng hhmn hfwmg hmmm ghm hnng hmsn” actually was “If I Should Fall From Grace With God”, the title of the new Pogues album. Which places the event in 1988.

In 2000, Tim Bradford wrote a book about Irish culture, entitled “Is Shane MacGowan still alive?” A pertinent question. The singer had been fired by the rest of the band in 1991, and had slipped into obscurity. But he hadn’t fallen from grace with God. MacGowan, the drunkards’ drunkard, his rotten row of teeth resembling an ancient graveyard, became legendary as much for his self-destructive antics as for his singing and songwriting. But he survived, re-joined the Pogues (in 2001) and to date is still touring with them.

These pictures are the front and back of a t-shirt for the 2008 Pogues US tour, and together they form a world map according to the Pogues. The quotes are all taken from Pogues lyrics, and reflect the world as seen through Irish eyes, with an emphasis on lands important to the Irish diaspora. These include

• the United States (where, according to some estimates, over 36 million Americans claim Irish ancestry – 12% of the total population and 6 times the current total population of Ireland)
• the United Kingdom (over 6 million Brits, or 10% of the total population, is of Irish descent. Shane MacGowan, for example, was born in Kent).
• Australia (almost two million Australians, or 9% of the population, has Irish antecedents).

Lyrics on the front cover:

• Greenland Whale Fisheries
• The Western Ocean
• A Land of Opportunity
• Boston and PA
• Fairytale of New York
• He Fought the champ in Pittsburgh
• Those Old Cotton Fields Back Home
• She Left Me Drunk in New Orleans
• Havana to Seville
• ‘Round Cape Horn
• The Wake of the Medusa
• Girl from the Wadi Hammamat
• Sketches of Spain
• Frank Ryan bought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
• Night train to Lorca
• Until we see Almeria once again
• A trip to Lourdes
• Paris St. Germaine
• Pont Mirabeau
• You pissed yourself in Frankfurt
• Got syph down in Cologne
• Flanders Oh
• The rosy parks of England
• White City
• Dark streets of London
• In Guildford there’s four
• Birmingham Six
• The booze ran out at Crewe
• Dirty old town
• The leaving of Liverpool
• Dear old Ireland
• Star of the county Down
• Boat train
• There’s fighting in Dublin to be done
• Wildcats of Kilkenny
• Their hearts in Tipperary
• People from Cork City
• In Newcastle West I spent many a night
• The Limerick Rake
• Galway Bay
• Galway races
• THe broad majestic Shannon
• The road leading up Glenaveigh
• Passengers from Nenagh
• Seen the carnival at Rome

Lyrics on the back cover:

• South Australia
• To the Dusty Outback
• The Battle of Brisbane
• From the Murray’s Green Basin
• As our Trip pulled into Circular Quay
• Macao to Acapulco
• I am bound for California
• Summer in Siam
• My brother earned his medals at My Lai in Vietnam
• She gave me Mekong whiskey
• She gave me Hong Kong Flu
• Hanging out on Pattaya Beach
• Ended up in Nepal
• Put me on a breeze to Kathmandu
• Stepped over bodies in Bombay
• The Lebanon Line
• Billy’s Bones
• Turkish Song of the Damned
• We sailed off for Gallipoli
• The hell that they called Suvla Bay

Two final points:

This celtocentric worldview not only emphasises certain countries important to the Irish Diaspora, it also enlarges them. Ireland and Great Britain dominate the front of the t-shirt (in a way reminiscent of the Tory Atlas of the World – #105). And I’m pretty sure Australia has also been inflated.

The lyrics that don’t refer to Irish emigration destinations tend to reflect theatres of war (the Middle East, Gallipoli in Asia Minor, the Spanish Civil War, etc.)

The t-shirt mentions the original name of the band, Pogue Mahone, which is a rude expression in Irish. The band shortened the name after complaints the BBC received complaints from Scotch-Gaelic viewers.

Many thanks to Liam Flanagan for sending in these images, who asks to confirm whether this map consists entirely of lyrics. As far as I can tell (and as far as I can rely on Mr MacGowan’s elocution), I think it does.

384 – Does My Metro Area Look Big in this Ring Road?

In London Orbital, writer, walker and Londoner Iain Sinclair approaches his favourite subject – his home town – by circumambulating it. The book details his trek along the M25, London’s ring road.

Sinclair completes the 117 mile (188 km) journey in 592 pages, which works out to 5 pages per mile (or 3 per kilometer). As ring roads go, London’s is one of the longer ones – which can with some difficulty be gleaned from this map.

The map layers the peripheral highways of 27 of the world’s larger cities onto a poster, designed by the Rice School of Architecture in Houston, TX. That location is no coincidence, because the poster highlights a record for Houston: it has the largest ring road in the world (or at least the largest of all the world cities surveyed).

However, it is unclear how long a book Mr Sinclair would have to write, were he to transplant his peripatetic procedure (and the same distance-to-volume ratio) from London to Houston.

The city at the centre of the US’s sixth-largest metropolitan area (with 5.7 million inhabitants) has three ring roads: Interstate 610 [circling downtown in a 38-mile (61-km) loop], Beltway 8 [about 83 miles, or 137 km] and the as yet unfinished Grand Parkway [State Highway 99].

Clearly, for Houston to have the world’s longest loop, the big black blob on this map could only be the latter. But a few problems arise. Four, to be exact.

One: the Grand Parkway is far from finished. Only two of 11 segments are completed. However tempting it may be, it is hardly fair to tout something as “the world’s largest” before it’s been completed. Especially since, as any large-scale project, the Grand Parkway has its share of detractors. So it might never get done.

Two: even if it is to be completed, plans may change and length might vary. The website for the Grand Parkway Association doesn’t specify beyond the “circumferential scenic highway” going to be “180+ miles” (app. 290 km) long.

Three: the Houston orbital outsizes all others on this map to such an extent that it’s difficult to imagine its circumference to be no larger than London’s by a factor of 180 to 117.

And finally, four: now that I’m mentioning London’s orbital road again — the website for the UK’s Highway Agency states that the M25 is… the longest ring road in the world.

While the identity of the actual highway(s) surrounding Houston and depicted here remains elusive, it is beyond doubt that the Texan city has a large surface, a fact attested by a map posted earlier on this blog (#327), the discussion of which also touches upon the phenomenon of sprawl (large conurbations with relatively low population density) as a result of increased mobility.

 Many thanks to Owen Evans, Scott Bodenheimer, Iain Kennedy (and anyone I might have overlooked) for alerting me to this map, found here on Thumb.

383 – The Obfuscated Giants of Brobdingnag

 

 

“Having been condemned by Nature and Fortune to an active and restless Life, in two Months after my Return I again left my native Country, and took Shipping in the Downs on the 20th Day of June 1702, in the Adventure, Capt. John Nicholas, a Cornish Man, Commander, bound for Surat.”

Thus begins the second part of Gulliver’s Travels, which will have Jonathan Swift’s fictional hero Lemuel Gulliver shipwrecked once again, though not this time on Lilliput, the strange land inhabited by tiny humans that he visited in the first part, but on Brobdingnag, where the people by contrast are huge; Gulliver is no longer a giant among men, but a dwarf among giants.

As indicated by this map printed in early editions of Gulliver’s Travels, the land of Brobdingnag seems to be located on the Californian coast, just north of New Albion. The inclusion on the map of that English colony, named by Francis Drake, might be to underline the nowhere-ness (or u-topia) of Brobdingnag, as the exact location of Drake’s land-claim was deliberately obfuscated by the English crown, and has been debated fiercely ever since.

New Albion has been positioned just north of San Francisco, and anywhere north from there along the US’s Pacific coast – which does not, however, contain a peninsula in the rather peculiar shape of Brobdingnag. The only shape vaguely similar is that of Canada’s Vancouver Island – but that is not a peninsula.

To make matters even more confusing, indications in the text itself would place Brobdingnag in Micronesia. Furthermore, Brobdingnag is described as being continent-sized – 6,000 miles long and 3,000 miles wide. Which doesn’t fit with any land mass, in Micronesia or on the Pacific coast of North America. And even more fantastically, Brobdingnag is separated from the continent by a volcano range of up to 30 miles high – a gravitational impossibility. All of this is not an accident; Swift’s own obfuscating reflects his skepticism of the reliability of contemporary travel writing.

Although 60 feet (18 m) of height, the giants of Brobdingnag nevertheless stand less tall in the popular imagination than the dwarves of Lilliput. While ‘lilliputian’ has become a more or less general adjectival synonym for ‘tiny’, ‘brobdingnagian’ has become rather less used (for ‘colossal’), although Italy has been described as ‘the brobdingnagian boot’.

Rather appropriately, the lack of appreciation appears to be mutual. After Gulliver explained the ins and outs and what have yous of 18th century European politics, the King of the Brobdingnagians declares: “I cannot but conclude the Bulk of your Natives to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.”

This map taken from the relevant Wikipedia page. Entry #83 on this blog deals with another of Gulliver’s fictional countries – the Land of the Houyhnhnms.

382 – Two Eggs and a Kidney: Regional World Cities

This world map slices up the globe into two egg-shaped pieces and, for some reason, a kidney-shaped one. It purports to show the world’s three panregions (*), and the world cities with which they interact. In all, there are nine of these “regional world cities”: two “panregional centres”, three “major regional centres” and four “minor regional centres”.

The American panregion is divided into northern and southern halves, but both are dominated by northern cities: New York and Miami respectively.

The Euro-Afro-Middle-Eastern one (note: find snappier name for this panregion) is more complex, with a Francophone African subregion within Africa, and the Middle East seemingly straddling Africa and Europe. London has the biggest reach of all the regional world cities in this zone, interacting with Europe, the Middle East and Africa. But not with Francophone Africa, which is the sole domain of Paris. Johannesburg and Brussels are minor players, tentatively tentaculating into their respective continents.

The Asia-Oceania panregion is divided into four subregions: North East and South East Asia, Japan and Oceania. Singapore and Hong Kong are mirror images of each other, extending their influence into both subregions on their side of the north-south axis. Tokio is the main hub of the small Japanese zone.

The acronym GaWC refers to the Globalisation and World Cities Research Network (based at the Geography Department of Loughborough University in the UK), a network focused on studying the interaction between world cities (which obviously encompasses the study of globalisation).

A world city is a city with a global impact – and thus not necessarily synonymous with a megacity. Which is why Brussels (app. 1 million inhabitants, but lots of Eurocrats and lobbyists among them) is one, but much more populous cities like Lagos, Mexico City or Pyongyang aren’t.

“Global impact” naturally is a highly subjective term. Since 1998, the GaWC at Loughborough has tried to define and refine a set of criteria that world cities have to correspond to. I am guessing this map dates from the GaWC’s early days. More recent updates, in 2004 and 2008, have produced sophisticated rankings and subsets of world cities that go beyond just the nine of them on this map.

Nevertheless, in the 2008 update, London and New York are still listed as the only two world cities in the top, “Alpha++” category. The Alpha+ category is made up of Hong Kong, Paris, Singapore and Tokyo (also on this map), but also Sydney, Shanghai and Beijing. All the way down the list are “Gamma-” cities such as Edinburgh, Tallinn, San Diego, Calgary and Doha.

Many thanks to blgfk for sending in this map, taken here. More info on the GaWC on this page at Loughborough University.

* Since there’s three of them instead of two, it would be silly to call them hemispheres.

381 – Shoe World

 

Italy’s famously boot-like appearance might be what gave Emad Hajjaj the idea for this footwear-oriented world map. Hajjaj, a cartoonist for the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, manages to craft all major countries and continents into shoe-shapes – most of them endemic to the country or continent thus represented.

Russia, home of the galosh (see also entry #289) is made up of two brobdingnagian furry boots (one European and one Siberian, one imagines). Canada and Greenland are similarly furry and boot-like. Canada’s northern archipelago is represented by a craquelure of icy patches that together form the shape of a low boot.

South America, passionate about futbol, is decked out as a sports shoe decorated, for good measure, with a football. Mexico and India also seem shaped like locally worn footwear. Nice touch: the Baja California peninsula doubles as an elongated heel, while India’s shoetip is decorated with a pompon – i.e. Sri Lanka. The US is, of course, a cowboy boot. Alaska is cleverly represented as the nose of Canada’s left shoe, but in the America’s cowboy motif.

The fair amount of single shoes floating around the world seas remind one of one of life’s less transcendental, yet reoccurring conundrums: why does one always see shoes by the wayside in singles and never in pairs? Islands thus represented are Iceland, Nova Zembla, a particularly well-turned out New Zealand (perhaps a Wellington boot?), a Japanese folklorically correct wooden shoe (the exact term eludes me), an unmatching pair representing the island of New Guinea, divided between the independent state of Papua New Guinea (eastern half) and Irian Jaya (Indonesia’s western half).

I doubt, however, whether any Saudi wears the laced boots representing the Arabian peninsula, and I don’t know whether slippers are really that popular on Madagascar. Quite appropriately, Italy is represented by the exact same shape it has in reality…

I am not familiar with the context of this particular cartoon, so I am unaware of any political double entendre. I can only speculate that, if such were the case, it might have something to do with the particular place of footwear in Arab social discourse. To be struck with the sole of a shoe is the ultimate insult – hence the images, at the end of the Baathist regime, of angry Iraqis hammering Saddam’s torn-down statue with their shoes.  Hence also the practice of throwing footwear at despised dignitaries, as happened to the former president Bush on his last visit to Iraq.

Many thanks for Dave Martucci for alerting me to this map, found here on Daryl Cagle’s fantastic Political Cartoonists Index. Mr Hajjaj’s work is also featured on the website www.mahjoob.com.

380 – White Fright: Asia Looming Over Anglo-Australia

A youngster in breeches and an elderly man with a scythe, both white and together looking rather vulnerable, are playing dice against a team of unreliable-looking Asians. The object of their Great Game is on the board — Australia.

“Can the English-speaking peoples protect Australia as a white man’s country? They can to-day. But at a time when the energetic and capable Americans are very dubious whether they could even to-day protect the Philippines against a Japanese attack, it is not without pertinence to point out that any defense of Australia must be accomplished very far from the home bases of both Great Britain and the United States – and that an armed China would have enormous man-power at its disposal.”

(…)

“Equally obviously Premier Hughes fears, and fears rightly, that Japanese eyes are turned towards Australia. His speech breathes that fear throughout. But he pins his faith to the British Navy, to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and to an understanding with America. He appeals to America. ‘If she can not agree with Japan, how is she to help Australia?’ But does America really want to help Australia in the event of Japan’s insistence on freedom of entry? It has long been obvious to the thinkers of the great Republic that Japan must soon ‘find room somewhere for her rapidly expanding population’. And she is taking the necessary steps to preserve the purity of her own white race. But it does not follow that she is equally anxious about the purity of the Australian section of the European race. It is actually in the mind of many Americans that Australia, being the only empty area of any magnitude in the world, and more closely connected with Asia than any other land, is the natural sphere of Japan’s extension (…)”

This map was sent in by K. McIver who found it in a 1929 issue of the Literary Digest, an American weekly magazine best remembered for the rather ignominious circumstances of its demise. In 1936, based on its own polling of 10 million Americans, the magazine predicted a landslide victory in the presidential elections for Alf Landon against F.D. Roosevelt. FDR went on to win 46 out of 48 states, the polling became a textbook example of how not to poll, and the loss of credibility cause the magazine to first merge with another and even then still fail shortly afterwards. Literary Digest’s polling was skewed because it relied on databases of telephone subscribers and car owners – in those days, a demographic much better-off (and much less Democratic) than the American average.

Whether or not the magazine poll’s right of centre orientation has something to do with the tone of this particular article is questionable. Shocking as the overt xenophobia in the above quotes might seem, it was mainstream in much of the western world – even among the nations that would go on to defeat the virulently racist Axis powers in the Second World War. It could even be argued, in fact, that anti-racism only became an intrinsic part of the ‘western’ outlook because of that victory – and even then only rather gradually (vide the decolonisation of Africa and the Civil Rights movement in the US in the Fifties and Sixties, and the rather tardy establishment of – non-white – majority rule in South Africa in the Nineties).

Australian official racism was mainstream enough to be explicited in a White Australia policy, in operation from 1901 to 1973, restricting non-white immigration to Australia. The policy was aimed mainly against migration from Japan and China, countries which were seen as the biggest threat to white Australian homogenity due to their proximity and booming population. But anti-Asian migration restrictions were in force even before Australian federation in 1901; in that period, they were often the direct result of Australian trade union protest against Chinese, other Asian and Oceanic labourers ‘undercutting’ white working men’s labour conditions – an example either of how racism extends to even the supposedly “internationalist” left wing of the political spectrum, or of how the laudable defense of (native) white workers’ rights risks turning into something less than noble when those rights are defended against other workers who are forced to be less choosy about theirs.

Australia was not alone in restricting non-European immigration; the same applied, in varying degrees and timeframes, to other countries founded by Europeans in other parts of the world. Australia was one of the few countries, though, to make its white-only immigration policy such a centrepiece of its national political scene. As Prime Minister Stanley Bruce said during the 1925 election campaign: “We intend to keep this country white and not allow its peoples to be faced with the problems that at present are practically insoluble in many parts of the world.”

I am wondering which problems he was referring to at that time, at the height of Europe’s economic, if not colonial grip on the rest of the world.

“White Australia” was gradually relaxed after World War II, when the slogan Populate or Perish expressed the national mood more acutely. Racialism in immigration legislation was only explicitly forbidden in 1973, however. Immigration from Asian countries to Australia has increased markedly in recent decades, and Australia no longer is a lilywhite British Isle in the Pacific… but the UK remains one of the single largest sources of immigrants.

Many thanks to Mr McIver for sending in this map.

379 – Russia to US: You’re Breaking Up (Too)

 

Endtime prophecy is not the province of the religiously excitable alone. Even the die-hard materialists of the Russian intelligence service FSB (formerly the KGB) dabble in apocalyptic musings – although the scope of this particular prediction is not global, but limited to the imminent demise of that old-and-new archenemy, the United States.

Igor Panarin has been predicting the “moral and economic collapse” of the US for about a decade now; he set the Endtime for the American Empire at the year 2010, and the recent arrival of the credit crunch lends some credence to his outlandish forecast - at least as far as the Russian (state) media is concerned. Panarin, formerly a KGB analyst and now an academic, gets about two interview requests a day. 

The break-up predicted by Panarin would be the result of mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation, all of which would trigger a second American civil war, and the collapse of the dollar. This would then lead to the break-up of the United States, by mid-2010, into half a dozen regional sub-entities. These would be dominated or absorbed outright by foreign powers.

• Alaska would revert to Russia, and Hawaii would become Chinese or Japanese.
• The West Coast (the three Pacific states, joined with Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Arizona in a Californian Republic), would fall to China or at least be under Chinese influence.
• A Texas Republic, which would also include New Mexico, Oklahoma and all the other traditionally southern states (except the Carolinas, the Virginias, Kentucky and Tennessee), would similarly be either directly or indirectly under the sway of Mexico.
• The aforementioned southern exceptions would join the northeastern states in forming a bloc that might join the European Union.
• The rest – all midwestern and western states – would be at Canada’s mercy. 

Imagine Chinese overlordship of Utah – another Tibet waiting to happen -, the Maple Leaf flag flying at the Gateway Arch and the European Union and Mexico meeting just south of there, on the Mississippi. As far-fetched as that may sound, Mr Panarin is no fringe looney. He heads the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats (and Russia will need quite a few more of those, if his prediction comes true). Mr Panarin also is one of  the talking heads on (Russian state) tv whenever US-Russian relations are at issue.

The popularity of his end-of-America views mirrors the Kremlin’s semi-official anti-Americanism, and it is all the more popular for the pithy sympathy he wraps up his predicitions in: Panarin claims his disintegration scenario has about 50% chance of happening, and if it did, it would not be the best outcome – for Russia, that is. Even though the Russians would again cross the Bering Strait to retake possession of Alyaska, the disintegration of Russia’s main trading partner would spell economic trouble for the resurgent world power.

One can’t help but feel that Mr Panarin’s view is less a realistic scenario based on cold, hard facts (as he claims), and more a kind of payback for America’s and the West’s gleeful spectatorship of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Mr Panarin explicitly refers to political scientist Emmanuel Todd, who in 1976 predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. “People laughed at him”, Mr Panarin is quoted as saying by this article in the Wall Street Journal, implying that he can relate to the scorn felt by Mr Todd at the time, and is anticipating a similar vindication.

As with religious eschatologists (at least those careless enough to posit a near and definite date for the world’s end), the only way definitely to disprove Mr Panarin’s reverse Schadenfreude is to wait for his prediction to outlive itself. So let’s see exactly what Mr Obama remains president of, if anything, come August 2010…

Many thanks to the dozens of readers who sent in this map.