The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

One of the ironies of the Felon's regime is that while it constantly uses the slogan "make America great again," the reality is that on the foreign affairs and economic stage the exact opposite is occurring. Decades old military and economic alliances are being shredded and America is being weakened - which is likely what Putin is directing the Felon to do - and the slogan seemingly really means "make America white again" as diversity, equity and inclusion policies are being banned, and non-discrimination laws are undermined or ignored, all so aggrieved whites can feel superior and have a license to discriminate.  Indeed, Project 2025's agenda is to bring back Jim Crow 2.0 and take LGBT rights back to the 1950's - the Department of Health and Human Services this week told 46 states to change parts of sex ed lessons that focus on LGBTQ+ issues. If they don’t comply in 60 days, they’ll lose federal money for the lessons. Meanwhile, on the home front, prices and inflation are increasing and international trade has been thrown into chaos - portending even more price increases - exposing the lie to the claim the Felon would lower prices. Yet the MAGA base remains loyal to their cult leader, apparently satisfied with efforts to restore white privilege and superiority under the law., respect for America dwindles.  Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman looks at the Felon's destruction of America's leadership roll in the world and the American empire: 

Last Saturday I posted a conversation with the military historian Phillips O’Brien, much of which was devoted to the war in Ukraine and what has passed for U.S. diplomacy the past few weeks. But we also talked about his new book War and Power, and I was struck by one of his points: The importance of having good allies.

 

As he noted, Germany lost both world wars in part because it was confronted by powerful alliances while its own allies were “terrible” — Austria-Hungary in World War I, Italy in World War II. He went on to say:

 

The key of the United States has been that it has maintained arguably the most successful alliance system in history since 1945. What the U.S. maintained with NATO, an alliance which kept Europe very much on the American orbit, in the American orbit, both economically and militarily, also with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and countries in Asia is, they constructed this alliance system which hugely amplified both America's economic possibilities but also its strategic possibilities.

 

And Trump is throwing all that away. . . . .[W]hat always struck me, is that the U.S. had a specialty of creating international organizations that were formally equal, where we were all partners together. Now, everybody understood that the United States was actually in charge, but we went to great lengths to make sure that the World Trade Organization or NATO were alliances of equals, at least on paper. And it was a very effective trick.

 

The Pax Americana that emerged after World War II — and basically ended on January 20, 2025 — was, in many ways, an American Empire. Even after Europe recovered from wartime devastation, the United States retained a dominant economic and military position among non-Communist nations. And we built international economic and military alliances to support a world order in effect designed to U.S. specifications.

 

But for Europe and Japan the American Empire was a subtle thing, with the United States avoiding crude displays of power and bending over backwards to avoid being explicit about its imperial status. . . . .Yet in the history of world empires, the Pax Americana nonetheless stands out for its subtlety, restraint — and effectiveness.

 

We set up the postwar international monetary system at a famous 1944 conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. It was a U.S.-centric system, although Britain also helped shape the rules. (Some guy named John Maynard Keynes played an important role.) But while the initial system did give a special role to the dollar (a role that ended in 1971) the international institutions it established, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, are, at least on paper, country-blind. Obviously they have always given special deference to U.S. concerns, but they have never been explicit instruments of U.S. power.

 

In 1947 a conference in Geneva established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which set the ground rules for, um, tariffs and trade. The GATT in turn became the foundation for the World Trade Organization, established in 1994.

 

The GATT very much set up a world trading system in America’s image — to a large extent it was a globalized version of America’s 1934 Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. But the text and the rules it sets don’t single out the U.S. for any kind of special treatment.

 

Then there were the military alliances. . . . . the closest parallel I can think of is the Delian League Athens established to confront Persia in the 5^th century BC. Athens eventually gave in to temptation and began treating its allies as subjects to be exploited; America never did. Remember, the Soviet Union repeatedly had to send in the tanks to keep puppet governments in power in Eastern Europe. Nothing like that ever happened, or even came close to happening, in NATO.

You could, I guess, say that formally treating our allies as if they were our equals was hypocritical. But I see it more as a way of showing respect and declaring that we would not abuse our national power.

 

Now, we squandered a lot of credibility by invading Iraq under false pretenses. And the credibility we lost in Iraq has made it difficult to act against atrocities elsewhere, from the use of chemical weapons in Syria to the terrible things Israel is doing in Gaza.

 

But in 2024 America was still in a real sense the leader of the free world. And while you can criticize the Biden administration for always delivering too little, too late, it nonetheless did help mobilize a large coalition to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.

But that was another America.

 

The current occupant of the White House clearly has no use for subtlety and understatement: . . . in just 7 months Trump has completely ripped up the foundations of the Pax Americana. Almost all his tariffs are clearly in violation of the GATT, yet Trump has vandalized the world trading system as casually as he has paved over the Rose Garden. We haven’t yet had a test of whether he would honor our obligations under NATO, but he’s said that his willingness to abide by the most central obligation, the guarantee of mutual defense, “depends on your definition.”

 

Trump’s foreign policy doctrine appears to be Oderint dum metuant — let them hate as long as they fear —  supposedly the favorite motto of the Emperor Caligula. America, he seems to believe, is so powerful that it doesn’t need allies; he can bully the world into doing his bidding.

 

As Phillips O’Brien told me, history shows that such a belief is always wrong. And it’s especially wrong right now, when America is far less dominant than it once was. Whatever Trump may imagine, the world doesn’t fear us. For example, Trump may have imagined that his tariffs would bring India crawling to him, begging for relief; instead, India seems to be moving to closer ties with China.

 

In fact, not only does the world not fear us. Increasingly, it doesn’t need us. This is even true for nations that used to depend on U.S. military aid. You may remember Trump berating Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, declaring “you don’t have the cards.” In reality, even in the Ukraine war Trump has far fewer cards than he imagines. At this point Europe is providing far more aid to Ukraine than we are . . . .

 

One of the many problems with the slogan Make America Great Again was that America already was great. Now, not so much. In a world in which America is no longer the dominant economic and military power it once was — measured by purchasing power, China’s economy is already 30 percent larger than ours — our role in world affairs depends, even more than it did in the past, on having willing allies who trust our promises. 

We used to be very good at having allies. But Trump has flushed all of that down the golden toilet.