DISINTEGRATION: INDICATORS OF THE COMING AMERICAN COLLAPSE
By Andrei Martyanov (Clarity Press: Atlanta, GA, 2021)
Reviewed by Hugh Murray
On December 1, 2021, Vice President Kamala Harris met for the first time with the leaders of the new U.S. Space Force. She outlined the Biden Administration's position on space, essentially continuing most of the Trump policies – however, there was to be one major new emphasis: “Climate Change.” When I heard this on the news, I laughed, and then was saddened. Why? First, because there were news reports in October 2021, a month before VP Harris's address, stating that the Chinese had launched a hypersonic missile around the earth, and when it returned to China, it came within a few kilometers of its target. That was major news. Later in mid-November 2021, Gen. Mark Milley would call the Chinese success “a near Sputnik moment,” meaning that the US was as stunned by the Chinese advance in 2021 as the Americans were by the Soviets launching the first satelite on October 4, 1957. Further information released in November was that such missiles travel at over 5 times the speed of sound, and can carry nuclear weapons. Because they travel so fast, radar may not be able to detect, much less defend against them. In 2021 we were entering a new age of weaponry. And VP Harris ignored the “sputnik” of 2021 to urge us to prioritize climate change!
Another reason I was saddened by Harris's remarks is because I had recently read Martyanov's short, excellent, provocative Disintegration, published in 2021. As a foreigner, Martyanov's sentences seem overly long, repetitious, but as a foreigner he views America in a different light, revealing weak spots often oblivious to us who live in our milieu. Indeed, he often sees weaknesses where we assume there is strength.
Is America's economy #1? Martyanov thinks it is padded to appear stronger than it is. He questions the position of FIRE, finance, insurance, real estate, in estimating the size of an economy. He thinks those bloat the statistics, and contends an economy's real measure is how it makes things. He blames Pres. Clinton, who was supported by the elder Pres. Bush, in passing trade legislation like NAFTA, and worse, working to get China into the World Trade Organization. The effect of these, especially the latter, was a giant vacuum cleaner to remove American industry and send it to China. With its cheap labor, one-part system, China would become the work-house of the world. And China would make things. The Council on Foreign Relations reported, ”While the US real economy started its prolonged dive, China's grew 8-fold since 2001.”(p. 84) America imports finished products from China, while we export petroleum and gas and agricultural products and chicken feet to China. Martyanov describes America becoming a 3rd world economy.(90)
In her Feb. 23, 2022 article, Ann Coulter wrote: As Americans discovered to their dismay when the pandemic hit, we can't make our own masks, pharmaceuticals or aspirins. We can't make our own computer chips, razors, toys, sneakers, Levi's jeans...But boy, do we make weapons!” She mentions 4 large corporations who have earned huge contracts with the US government over recent years – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Boeing.
Martyanov agrees with Coulter, to a point. But he questions now, how good are some of the weapons we make? And the ones we sell to NATO, Saudi Arabia, and other allies? He goes into detail about the commercial airliners that were American made and the stars of the skies. Boeing, when they updated one, they did not properly redesign it, trying to accommodate new factors on old designs improperly, skimping here and there, paying off so it looked liked they passed all the tests. Results, Boeing plane crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia resulting in hundreds of deaths. There followed law suits, the loss of sales and confidence while many air fleets were grounded in the desert. Is the same shoddy quality going into military aircraft?
Martyanov believes that the US is losing the arms race. He notes that on 14 April 2018 Syria shot down 70% if our Tomahawk Land Air Attack Missiles. Our weapons were not getting through as easily as they had in the past. It is not only on the offensive. After the assassination of Iranian General Suleimani, in retaliation Iranians fired missiles to attack NATO and US bases in the region. Shock: their missiles got through. It “demonstrated the impotence of U.S. Defensive anti-missile technology which failed to intercept a single Iranian ballistic missile.”(166)
Following WWII America did not win the Korean War, nor the one in Vietnam, not in Yugoslavia. Martyanov adds that America has lost all its wars in the 21st century. Is he correct that the the balance of power has changed?
America is a naval power and the gems of the fleet are the air-craft carriers that defeated the Japanese in the war for the Pacific in WWII. Martyanov concludes that with the arrival of hypersonic weapons, the American super-carrier is dead as a viable weapon.(163) Such missiles changed warfare forever.(164) Radar could not track, much less defend against such weapons, and the huge carriers would be easy targets and sunk.(165)
Well, what about our submarine fleet? The New York Times 8 November 2021 reported: “Metallurgist Admits She Falsified Test Results for Steel Hood. She was testing the metal to be used in hulls of American submarines, letting the lesser quality steel pass tests, and thus, endangering the lives of the seamen, and in nuclear subs, perhaps the lives of many others. Elaine Marie Thomas falsified strength and toughness tests from1985 to 2017. How many subs did her subversion infect?
VOA News 14 July 2021 had an interesting report too. Seaman Apprentice Ryan Mays was charged with setting a fire on the ship Bonhomme Richard while it was in dock in San Diego. The fire destroyed the warship, a loss of $1.2 billion and $4 billion to replace. One might blame recruiters, but more important, who was in charge? How could one man start the fire and no one noticed for days while the ship burned until lost? Perhaps the officers were out checking on and climate change.
Martyanov's point is that the US is not necessarily the most powerful military on earth any more. And our economy? Bloomberg reported in 2019 that manufacturing had reached the lowest portion of the American economy in 72 years.(107) We make less, and we lose the skills that are honed in making things. We complain when other nations fail to import large numbers of our automobiles – Ford, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, these were once the envy of the world. Martyanov notes that the American car manufacturers no longer dominate their home market. We export treasury bills and dollars; that is we export inflation. We are a seafaring nation, yet when constructing large commercial container ships in 2016, we produced 10; the rest of the world 1,408.(53) In steel, China out produces us 11 to 1.
He admits the US has some of the best universities in the world, and we lead in STEM Ph. D.s, but of those 37% are temporary visa holders; 25% Chinese nationals. He brags that the STEM doctorates in Russia are Russians. Moreover, despite Kamala Harris's talk of stressing STEM studies, how can the US maintain any lead when more education departments declare math to be “racist,” and it is racist for a white to give the correct answer in class, and some question if there is any one correct answer or even any truth. Is postmodernism compatible with STEM? Is a woke dominated educational system?
I certainly do not agree with Martyanov on many issues. He believes the US is no longer a nation – but a multicultural cacophony of rival tribes, nearing full Balkanization. Not only does the West not make things any more, it has ceased to produce babies. He blames decadence, gays. Yet, China now has a demographic problem too, and it has not had a pro-gay policy under communism. One need not agree with all of his assertions; Martyanov is provocative. His book surely contains insights that we should ponder if our NATION is to survive and thrive again.
I bring another point of contention between us related to his title. In 1960 seven of us participated in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans, We were arrested, found guilty, and became convicted felons. Our purpose was to allow Blacks to purchase coffee at the counter like any other patron of the store. The word of the time was INTEGRATION, to treat people without regard to race, color, or creed, to stress Pres. John Kennedy's declaration that “our Constitution is color blind,” to live in a land where the children of Martin Luther King would be judged by their character, not by the color of their skin. These ideals of integration for all citizens would surely have made our NATION stronger. However, these ideals were subverted by champions of division, treating people differently, quotas, racial preferences, diversity, and now equity. Martyanov contends that the multi-ethnic, racial, cultural, approach will end in a divided land, as Yugoslavia sundered into various smaller warring nations. I argue when you treat all equally, integrate without preferences for this group or that, then you can have a strong, united NATION. We can avoid disintegration and grow again.