A "Soviet-style collapse" is cited as the worst-case scenario in at least some analysis of global economic troubles, with the implication that the US (as the vanguard of globalism) would suffer any fate of this sort in a way more dramatic than much of Europe. The Wall Street Journal, tongue half in cheek, publishes this dire prognostication of a rapid fissipation of the country along geopolitical lines, courtesy of a Russian academic media darling.
It's easy to scoff at the prediction, since it doesn't look at all the way a collapse of the USA ought to look. Why would the deep South, fiercely nativist and patriotic, ever fall under the influence of Mexico - especially when Mexico has abundant troubles of its own these days? How exactly would China extend a sphere of influence over the hyper-libertarian western states? Even if the country did fall apart, it's more plausible to imagine the neo-Confederacy invading Mexico than the other way around, or California forming an economic community with Japan/Thailand rather than China.
But America just isn't the kind of place that responds to stress with centrifugal tendencies in the first place. Unlike the Soviet states, our states were never independent countries with a lengthy history and national identity. When Russia descended into a new patriotic fervor as a way to escape the malaise of Communist post-withdrawal symptoms, it was an enthnic identity that didn't include Latvians or Ukrainians or any of the various Islamic Something-stans. When America hits hard times (think FDR in the 30s and during WW2), everyone waves a flag with all the stars and stripes on it and talks about national unity.
I do see the potential for a "collapse" circa 2020, due to fiscal insolvency. But that would be an economic event, not a political one. At worst, it might involve restructuring the government at a fundamental constitutional level, rather like the current Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederacy - and just like that transition, this one would be likely to involve more centralization rather than less. The state governments are going to fail first, since they lack the power to run a debt, and come cap in hand to Congress for loans and grants. Eventually it may mean the death of federalism as a system, with state autonomy being diminished as the federal government increasing acquires their functions. This would be little more than an accelerated version of the same trend that's been occurring since Lincoln.
The even longer term problem is whether the US can maintain this debt in the face of dwindling global economic growth, which has to this point provided an apparently inexhaustible pool of creditors to allow us to rotate our debt obligations in perpetuity. If that bill comes due around the same time as the Medicare/SS ponzi scheme runs dry, say around 2030, it could mean that the entire country really does become... well, not Russia, but perhaps Columbia. That is to say, a mirror of the more jumbled and chaotic Latin American world that dominates the rest of the western hemisphere rather than a global hegemon.
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