Thanks for sharing your process, so others can learn from it! It really was very clear in way that makes you say yes to every single sentence while you read it.
One minor distinction that I remembered while reading is about the part on military defeats: while the defeats might be ideological losses and are clear examples of military overreaching, the empire as a whole is not being defeated militarily. The US is still the most aggressive actor in the world. That’s an interesting difference to all the historical examples given as well as to the decline of previous empires, who were usually defeated militarily by fast emerging and very aggressive rivals. E.g. the emerging US fought two bloody wars against the British empire, while China isn’t fighting any wars. Giovanni Arrighi points this out in ‘The Long Twentieth Century’: the American empire isn’t being destroyed, it’s destroying itself because it’s unable to deal with internal contradictions.
Thanks, and very much agree. I’d argue that the decisive defeat for the American empire is unfolding economically as opposed to militarily. The war in Ukraine acted as a catalyst, forcing countries to make a choice when Russia, a key commodity exporter, was cut off from SWIFT. Nations had to decide to submit to US financial dominance as vassals, or assert sovereign control over their economic foreign policy. Practically every significant power outside the West chose sovereignty, accelerating the fragmentation of the US-centered global financial system.
We now live in a world divided between the G7 and BRICS, with BRICS surpassing the G7 economically. Not only that, but much of this bloc’s surging trade operates outside Western visibility and control, bypassing Western systems through direct currency swaps and China’s CIPS for transactions. Before the war, dedollarization wasn’t taken seriously as an idea, today it’s a tangible reality.
The US, seemingly oblivious to the shift of the global economy, launched a self-defeating trade war. While China was clearly the main target, the tariffs targeted the whole world. To date, not a single nation has capitulated to US demands to sever ties with China. Even the concessions extracted from the UK aren’t fundamentally changing anything. This is a massive geopolitical humiliation that exposed American impotence on the global stage.
Meanwhile, the financial repercussions from the trade war are still unfolding. There is a good chance that the economic overreach triggers a major crash in the US. It would be a psychological blow that’s as devastating as any military defeat.
Thanks for sharing your process, so others can learn from it! It really was very clear in way that makes you say yes to every single sentence while you read it.
One minor distinction that I remembered while reading is about the part on military defeats: while the defeats might be ideological losses and are clear examples of military overreaching, the empire as a whole is not being defeated militarily. The US is still the most aggressive actor in the world. That’s an interesting difference to all the historical examples given as well as to the decline of previous empires, who were usually defeated militarily by fast emerging and very aggressive rivals. E.g. the emerging US fought two bloody wars against the British empire, while China isn’t fighting any wars. Giovanni Arrighi points this out in ‘The Long Twentieth Century’: the American empire isn’t being destroyed, it’s destroying itself because it’s unable to deal with internal contradictions.
Thanks, and very much agree. I’d argue that the decisive defeat for the American empire is unfolding economically as opposed to militarily. The war in Ukraine acted as a catalyst, forcing countries to make a choice when Russia, a key commodity exporter, was cut off from SWIFT. Nations had to decide to submit to US financial dominance as vassals, or assert sovereign control over their economic foreign policy. Practically every significant power outside the West chose sovereignty, accelerating the fragmentation of the US-centered global financial system.
We now live in a world divided between the G7 and BRICS, with BRICS surpassing the G7 economically. Not only that, but much of this bloc’s surging trade operates outside Western visibility and control, bypassing Western systems through direct currency swaps and China’s CIPS for transactions. Before the war, dedollarization wasn’t taken seriously as an idea, today it’s a tangible reality.
The US, seemingly oblivious to the shift of the global economy, launched a self-defeating trade war. While China was clearly the main target, the tariffs targeted the whole world. To date, not a single nation has capitulated to US demands to sever ties with China. Even the concessions extracted from the UK aren’t fundamentally changing anything. This is a massive geopolitical humiliation that exposed American impotence on the global stage.
Meanwhile, the financial repercussions from the trade war are still unfolding. There is a good chance that the economic overreach triggers a major crash in the US. It would be a psychological blow that’s as devastating as any military defeat.