‘Parade of Sovereignties’ Now Threatens US as It Once Did the USSR, Moscow Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 22 – Vladimir Vasilyev, a specialist at Moscow’s Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, says that independence movements in California and Texas are setting “an extraordinarily important precedent” and will provoke “a parade of sovereignties” in other states as well, including Wyoming and Nebraska.

            Such “’a domino effect,’” he continues as cited in a Versiya article today by Ruslan Gorevoy will have in  his view “a colossal impact on the entire system, just as the earlier “parade of sovereignties” in Gorbachev’s time had on the USSR (versia.ru/ssha-i-es-mogut-raspastsya-chtoby-spasti-svoyu-yekonomiku).

            What is important about these remarks is that they suggest Moscow hopes to provoke such declarations not only in California and Texas where its role is already much in evidence -- see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2016/11/russians-back-secession-of-california.html – but in other states as well, not because these will succeed but because they will create problems.

            Gorevoy admits as much when he says that there are sovereignty movements like those in California and Texas in 29 other states but that of course, not all of them are directed at achieving full independence from the United States. However, he says, “the process as the last Soviet leader said has started.”

            And he suggests that one of the most important factors driving this process now is concern about the US national debt and the consequences of demands by foreign creditors like China to be repaid.  If states leave the US, he says, they might escape responsibility for the indebtedness Washington has incurred.