By 2021 it was apparent that we were witnessing the accelerating but creeping collapse of the American Empire. That collapse has passed an inflection point – the Empire is now in free fall.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, in his brilliant book The Upside of Down, noted that the Roman empire eventually reached the point where “the empire could no longer afford the problem of its own existence”. This is the predicament now facing the United States, its vassals and sub-imperial powers such as Australia.

For the power elites managing the United States’ imperial system, it is of course verboten to acknowledge this predicament. At best we get tame bureaucratic utterances such as in the 2023 Defence Strategic Review where it stated that the “United States, is no longer the unipolar leader of the Indo-Pacific.”

Likely the last person to acknowledge the collapse of the empire will be its current ‘emperor’, President Joe Biden. As recently as October 2023 President Biden stated that:

“We’re the United States of America for God’s sake. The most powerful nation in the history of the world.”

Whilst that clearly was once true, tropes about American exceptionalism, as noted by Emma Shortis, now ring hollow. Outside of the collective West, the leadership of which is becoming increasingly desperate and thus erratic, belligerent and downright dangerous, there would be few countries who subscribe to Biden’s view.

I have previously argued that through a combination of ‘normal diplomacy and keeping its powder dry the future of the United States imperial system could have been one of almost........

© Pearls and Irritations