While analysts and academics from around the world have noted that the United States is no exception to this rule, some who previously worked within the U.S. war machine have come out in recent years to warn the public that the U.S. is not just an empire in decline, but an empire on the edge of collapse.
One of the more notable insiders to warn of the impending collapse of the U.S. empire is Lawrence Wilkerson, a former U.S. Army colonel and chief of staff for Colin Powell under the George W. Bush administration. For the past several years, Wilkerson has come out swinging against the military-industrial complex he once served, calling the U.S. "the death merchant of the world" and expressing his dissatisfaction with "the corporate interests that we go abroad to slay monsters for."
Now, Wilkerson has once again emerged to criticize the U.S.' global war machine. In an interview with Paul Jay of the Real News Network, Wilkerson argued that the U.S. is both provoking current enemies and generating new ones at a rate that is beyond its capacity to handle, despite having a massive defense budget.
He expressed his bewilderment at the belligerent actions of the Obama and Trump administrations against certain foreign powers, stating:
"What I can't fathom right now is why anyone would want, with the situation the way it is right now in this country, another enemy. You know that old conservation of enemies theory: You don't want any more than you can handle at any given time."
As Wilkerson noted, the U.S. seems to be attempting to contain, confront and provoke enemies on several continents on several fronts simultaneously - actions set to take the country's long-standing policy of perpetual warfare to a level that it may not be able to deal with.
"We're lining up China. We're lining up Iran and all that goes along with Iran, including Hezbollah in Lebanon. We are lining up with North Korea. We are lining up with Russia. This is absurd," Wilkerson noted, listing off the U.S.' most well-known boogeymen.
However, other countries that have been targeted by the U.S. in recent years, such as Venezuela and Syria, escaped mention.
Wilkerson asserted that this rapid generation of enemies throughout the world is well beyond the U.S. military's ability to handle. "We do not need an enemy list that is beyond what we could even in the most wild moment contemplate handling. We don't have the military forces to handle all these enemies, and, yet, we're bearding them, as it were," he said.
Even the U.S. military itself has previously admitted it is badly overextended. In 2005, when Wilkerson still worked at the State Department, news broke that Gen. Richard Myers, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was concerned about the U.S. military overextending itself in the Middle East, not to mention other theaters of war. Twelve years later, those same wars initiated by the Bush administration - including the never-ending "War on Terror" - are still being waged.
Not surprisingly, the U.S. military is currently in even worse shape than it was in the Bush era. For example, a 2015 think tank assessment of the U.S. military found that it would be unable to fight in two regional conflicts simultaneously, ultimately netting the entire military a score of "weak."
In addition, Chief of Staff of the Army Mark Milley warned last year that the U.S. military was in no way prepared for a conflict with either Russia or China — countries that the U.S. has been actively provoking.
With more enemies constantly being added to the list of nations that supposedly threaten U.S. interests, Wilkerson's view that the U.S. "is probably finished" as a global imperial superpower seems more prescient than ever.
Reader Comments
After all who would survive for all these psychopaths to rape pillage and plunder.
It would take a good few thousand years for humanity to evolve back from the stone age.
No it's much more beneficial to rape pillage and plunder the world as it is right now, manipulate countries and people by economic means, to squeeze every last bit of energy out of the system they can gather.
War or any kind of conflict is just another excuse to usurp the natural order, the universe likes balance.
People, it's been said before, well, we are just collateral damage, but not only that we also hold he key to there success.
The more that we believe the BS the more power they have, the more energy it gives them to destroy all that humanity has created through blood sweat and tears for thousands of years.
I have nothing more to say, except the words that have been attributed to George Santayana
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.
Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them.
Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them
True. But the Dow Jones Industrial Average is now at 20,000. And the stocks of Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing are over the moon. And the stock options of their CEOs have made them rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams. And the Rockefeller Family controls $11 trillion. And the other 300 richest families of the world control hundreds of trillions. And, as we speak, two billion people in the world are hungry tonight without food in their children's grumbling bellies.
So who gives a shit if the US Empire collapses? It is way, way, way past time.