The American Empire Is Collapsing, And Americans Will Be The Last to Know

50 years from now historians may write about the fall of empire. But history is writing itself furiously right now, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information.

News Junkie Post / By Gilbert Mercier
AlterNet

50 years from now historians will probably be writing about the fall of the American empire. But history is writing itself furiously in the present, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information. What would have taken years to gather is accessible to anyone with a few strokes on a computer keyboard. So never mind the historians of the future, and lets see how reality is shaping up today.

The crumbling period of the United States empire started on September 11th. Since then, a chain of events so dire occurred that it would seem the empire defeated itself by a series of catastrophic mistakes. After 9/11, Americans wanted revenge, and the war in Afghanistan became a very easy sale for the Bush administration. But then the neo-cons seized the opportunity to push their agenda of the New American Century project, and it was precisely the Achille’s heel of the empire.

Attacking Iraq: The Biggest Geopolitical Blunder In History

When the Bush administration attacked Iraq in 2003, a critical element escaped their understanding of the regional and demographic parameters: By toppling the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein, they would give the upper hand to the oppressed Shia Iraqi majority allied with Iran.

In a word, the US troops who fought and died in the conflict did it ultimately for the regional benefit of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The blunders did not stop with geopolitics, but were compounded by a catastrophic financial burden.

The Cost Of Wars in Iraq And Afghanistan Is Bankrupting The US Economy

If the Pentagon was a corporation, it would be the largest in the world. The curiously called Department Of Defense has cost the American taxpayers, since the ill advised attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, around $700 billion a year. Of course, if you add up health care for wounded veterans, and layers of new “security” administration such as the Department of Homeland Security, the numbers keep adding up to top $1 trillion a year. Overall more than 25 percent of the federal budget gets swallowed in the financial black hole that is the Pentagon.

If Americans could do the math, they would quickly understand that the bill for the two wars is now creeping up to $10 trillion. In order to achieve the chimeric goals of the neocons of an ever lasting global American empire money had to be borrowed. Currently, for every dollar spent by the federal government 40 cents is borrowed. America used to borrow mainly from Japan and Europe, but now does its main borrowing from China. In a striking reversal of fortune, the “poor man of Asia” has now become the country in the world with the most liquid assets.

Empires Always Have An Expiration Date

Americans have a delusional sense of historic exceptionalism which they share with most previous empires. After all America’s ascension to a leading role on the world scene is very recent. The deal was sealed in Yalta in 1945 between Stalin and Roosevelt, with Churchill present but already taking the back seat. In a matter of 5 years, and about 60 million deaths, two new empires had emerged from the ruin of three: the United States and the Soviet Union. On the losing side of history was, of course, Japan, the empire of the sun, but also Britain and France.

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