US

To those who have been predicting the break-up of Pakistan, it will come as a pleasant surprise to hear that Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010.
Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is a former KGB analyst, According to him, there will be considerable unrest in the U.S. following a civil war, with the federal government getting weaker and ultimately the states seceding from the union. Some of the northern states will join Canada, some in the east coast would ally themselves with the European Union, while Alaska will be taken over by Russia (it was a part of Russia until the U.S. bought it in the nineteenth century). Texas will become part of Mexico while Hawaii will merge with Japan or China.
But the professor admits that the disintegration of the U.S. will not be good for Russia, which depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S. This is a bleak scenario, because with the world already in turmoil, another crisis will plunge it into chaos.