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.