"Doug Casey on America's Fading
Hegemony and the New World Order"
by International Man
"International Man: For decades, the US has been the world’s dominant military, financial, and political power. Where is the American empire today? Are we witnessing a temporary period of weakness—or something more fundamental, like the beginning of the end of US global hegemony?
Doug Casey: The U.S. today is a very different country than it was in 1946. At the end of World War 2, it was by far the most financially, economically, industrially, and militarily powerful country in the world. It was a culturally, religiously, and ethnically aligned, and a genuine middle-class society. Now none of those things are true.
The U.S. has devolved into a bankrupt multicultural domestic empire. The Government’s $40 trillion - and rapidly growing - debt can never be paid off. The dollar is an irredeemable fiat unit. US welfare benefits are drawing immigrants who are at odds in every way to the existing population. It’s no longer the country which promotes individualism, free minds and free markets. Rather, it’s been captured by a gigantic regulatory bureaucracy which requires permission for most everything, while taking roughly 40% of the GDP directly and indirectly. The military is well-equipped, at gigantic expense, to fight 20th C wars, but totally ill-equipped to fight the kind of wars the US is provoking everywhere.
I’d say the US decline has more-or-less mirrored that of Rome. If you use that analogy, we’re moving into a time similar to Rome’s mid-3rd century - a time of foreign wars, civil wars, wholesale bankruptcy, and societal chaos.
The bright side is that certain areas of technology are still advancing rapidly - at the moment. But we’re at the peak of the biggest financial bubble in history, and it’s tech-driven. When it pops, the consequences will be widespread and serious. AI data centers will remain, but mostly used to monitor the population. So, yes, the era of US hegemony is coming to an end.
International Man: The Middle East seems to be entering a new and much more dangerous phase. How do you view what’s happening there now? Has US involvement strengthened its position in the region, or is Washington discovering the limits of what military power can accomplish?
Doug Casey: With Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, among others, the US Government has, for reasons that make zero sense, decided to involve itself in the world’s most chaotic and blood-soaked perpetual tribal war zone.
Now, idiotically, it’s decided to hunt big game in the form of Iran. The U.S. started to bake this cake in 1953 when the CIA overthrew their popularly elected leader, replacing him with the Shah. It's not that Mossadegh was a good guy. Nor was the Shah we replaced him with. Iranians resented the Americans replacing their government with our puppet, a dictator, and 27 years later the result was Khomeini and his Mullahs.
Of course, there's been a lot of nasty rhetoric towards Americans since then. But harsh language on the part of the Iranians, with zero ability to threaten the U.S. in any way, isn't an excuse to launch an unprovoked surprise attack on the country in the midst of negotiations. Iran has never been a threat to anybody but Israel. And it's very clear that Israel is using the Americans to solve its Iran problem.
The US has decisively lost the war against Iran, making the situation much, much worse than before the Israeli/American strikes six months ago.
International Man: Then there’s Russia and Ukraine. After years of war, enormous spending, sanctions, and confrontation with Moscow, what do you think the US has actually accomplished? And what does this conflict tell us about the relative power of the US, Russia, and Europe today?
Doug Casey: One of the good things about Trump is that he reopened communications with Russia. There was zero communication between the two nuclear powers during the Biden years, making for an extremely dangerous situation.
Worse, the U.S. fomented the Russia/Ukraine war when it conducted a color revolution against the Ukraine in 2014. At that point, the Russian minority Donbas provinces split off from the Ukraine, and Kiev launched a war to recover them. Seeing the Ukraine turned into an enemy before his very eyes, Putin felt he had no alternative other than to teach them a lesson and defend Donbas and Crimea with his "special military operation" in 2022.
Since then, things have gotten completely out of hand. It appears that there have been a couple of million casualties. Numerous serious missile attacks have been launched into the homelands of both countries. Worse, European governments seem to be plumping for a full-scale war against Russia while providing the corrupt Zelensky regime with money and masses of materiel. The situation could easily go critical. Russia may finally decide to draw a line in the sand and launch a nuclear strike against the Ukraine or a European country.
The best solution - the only solution, actually - is for the US to withdraw all aid of any type from the Ukraine, which is acting as a flashpoint for World War III. The same is true of support for Israel, and "aid" to all foreign governments, without exception. I’ve described foreign aid as a transfer scam from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. It just gives them the money they need to fight with each other.
International Man: China is obviously the bigger long-term question. Washington increasingly treats Beijing as its principal strategic rival, while Taiwan remains an obvious potential flashpoint. Do you think a direct confrontation between the US and China is becoming more likely - and if it happens, is the US really in a position to win it?
Doug Casey: It's unfortunate and irrational of Beijing to insist on bringing Taiwan back into its fold. Perhaps the next Chinese leader, after Xi, will recognize that the status quo has changed; Taiwan has become a separate and independent country over the last 80 years, apart from the fact that a war of conquest against Taiwan would be immensely destructive to both parties.
But that shouldn't be the concern of the US. By sticking its nose into a fratricidal conflict, the Americans can only make things much worse. The Americans, who understand Chinese culture about as well as they understand Iranian or Russian culture, should leave both parties to their own devices.
We can only hope that the US won't let an alliance with Taiwan draw it into a full-scale war with China. There's no way we can win it. It’s a bad idea for a bankrupt empire to go looking for trouble on the other side of the world in three different theatres.
And, as I pointed out earlier, our means of military force projection are basically relics from World War II. Aircraft carriers, for instance, are nearly useless in today's military environment, as are $100 million F-35s and billion-dollar B-2s.
International Man: When you put all of this together - the Middle East, Russia, China, a weakening Europe, rising powers outside the West, and America’s enormous financial problems - where do you think the world is headed over the next decade? What does the decline of an empire typically look like, and what should individuals be doing now to prepare for it?
Doug Casey: Large-scale formal war has been a feature of human existence for at least 5,000 years, starting with the rise of cities. As humans have become vastly richer, wars have become vastly more deadly. Everybody seems aware of that except for the posturing non-entities who run NATO and the EU.
When Einstein was asked what weapons he thought World War 3 would be fought with, he said he didn't know. He was only sure that World War 4 would be fought with sticks and stones.
Everyone is justifiably afraid of nuclear weapons. But in today’s world, where computers control everything, a cyber war could be nearly as deadly. And a biological war could be deadlier than either. I’ve discussed those possibilities in the past. Recently it’s occurred to me that mass migration could be as destructive as any of the other three alternatives. Don’t believe me? I urge you to read Jean Raspail’s "The Camp of the Saints." It’s ultra non PC, funny, scary, well-written, and accurate.
And there are other varieties of war lurking. AI, drones, and robots together mean the world of the Terminator has arrived. As Gilda Radner's Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: "It's just one damn thing after another. It's always something."
What should you do about it? We can’t control what today’s MegaStates, or the Deep States behind them, will do. Being politically involved in "our democracy," hoping to make a change by voting, is someplace between laughably counterproductive and criminally stupid."
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