The Wall Street Journal reports that a Russian academic has predicted the United States will meet the same fate as the Former Soviet Union, although not for the same reasons.

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.