The United States, like all empires in decline, will not go down without a fight. Numerous problems facing US Imperialism are building as it seeks to maintain its economic and geo-political hegemony over the world.
We can see this manifest in its determination to fight Russia via its proxy war with Moscow in Ukraine. Washington is also committed to the ‘Asia Pivot’ towards a military confrontation with China despite the fact that it lacks the manpower and resources to effectively do so. The United States also faces another drain on its military resources due to its unstinting support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Many western geo-political analysts maintain that this is not a problem for the US due to its unlimited financial firepower with which to sustain its various proxy wars/military confrontations.
The great Roman orator Cicero noted back in the first century BC;
The sinews of war are infinite money.
In other words, without substantial financial resources military operations and endeavours are unsustainable and will be ineffective.
Magic Money Tree
The US, despite having a magic money printer called the Federal Reserve, is going into a period of major problems with its external debt which now runs at over $33 trillion. Interest payments on that unpayable sum are forecast to reach over $1 trillion per year in the next 2-3 years. Interest payments on the debt will soon exceed all other spending including defence and Medicare/Medicaid.
Numerous bodies such as the Congressional Budget Office are warning that the US faces massive problems in managing its debt over the next 10-15 years. Even the corrupt credit rating agencies such as Moody's etc are becoming increasingly concerned by the levels of US government debt and the dysfunctional nature of the US political system when it comes to the funding of the US government.
The strategists of US imperialism ignore the looming financial problems of financing a trillion dollar a year defence budget. The US ruling class will eventually face a choice between completely destroying the purchasing power of the dollar, which is in terminal decline, or going back to massive money printing which will bring double digit inflation.
The European Factor
The problems of Washington in this area are compounded by the economic problems of the EU which will be unable to compensate for any future cuts to US defence spending. The European Union is deindustrializing itself through its slavish adoption of US sanctions on Russia. The process seems very pronounced in Germany where decades old businesses across different industries are either closing/preparing for relocation outside of the EU or are downsizing.
Without the benefit of cheap gas from Russia German industry now has to rely on the much more expensive US liquid natural gas ({LNG).
The question which has to be asked is: how long before sections of the population in the wealthier countries of the EU such as France and Germany rebel against the economic decline which is now well established and will gather pace during the 2020s?
House of Cards
The US is a superpower resting on increasingly shaky socio-economic foundations.
Since the 2008 Great Financial Crisis the American ruling class has done very little to address the structural problems affecting the US economy from an ageing, increasingly decrepit infrastructure to the continued decline of manufacturing and the insolvency of its banking system.
It remains to be seen how the average American citizen reacts to the continued decline in living standards which will gather pace as they are made to pay the price of the unfolding economic crisis during the rest of the 2020s.
Those who claim that the US can maintain geo-political/military conflicts on numerous fronts across Europe, the Middle East and Asia ignore the fact the US military industrial complex has become severely overstretched. Over the last 18 months its arms deliveries to Kiev have depleted its reserves of critical ammunition such as 155mm artillery shells.
The US is now greatly outproduced by Russia’s defence industries which are now able to outproduce all of NATO in key areas such as artillery ammunition, tanks, air defence missiles, cruise missiles. One could add the growing disparity in favour of Russia in critical areas such as electronic warfare, drone warfare and hypersonic missiles. This of course, does not take into account the advances which China has made in its development of such weapons at scale.
The United States is acutely aware of the growing challenge to its hegemony over the global economy. It is being increasingly challenged in this multi-polar world with Russia and China leading the way. Their promotion of BRICS as an alternative trading/economic network to the West’s grip on the global economy, are a major threat to US global pre-eminence.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the geo-political brain of many US presidents including most recently Obama, warned in his seminal book The Grand Chessboard that for the US to maintain its global hegemony it had to maintain control of the economic/natural resources of the Eurasian continent. For this to happen it was imperative that Washington prevented the emergence of any Eurasian challenger/s. Hence the attempt by the United States to confront geo-political foes on numerous fronts.
American imperialism will face grave economic challenges and continuing military-industrial overstretch as it attempts to arrest its decline.