Our military footprint in the Gulf and the region has contracted; this will continue. What we just watched over the past 100 days was an unusually vivid moment in the long slow collapse of the US military and financial empire.
Conversely, tiny Israel saw its fluid borders expand in all four directions. The cover of this war coincided with new bases in Somaliland, new gas fields through occupation of southern Lebanon and Gaza, massive Israeli expansion through land and political purchase in Greece, Cyprus, and Albania, and the exponential erasure of Gazans, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians.
[...]
A truly defensive military and intelligence apparatus, at a fifth or even a tenth of what we spend today, as well as a structural jettisoning of special alliances that animate the current defense budget and focus, including but not limited to Israel, are now within reach for the US, in part because of what happened over the past 100 days. The empire will oppose any changes in this direction, but our dry shell of an empire has few choices.
In a strange way Trump will bring the troops home, and end US wars of choice, and like the captain of the Titanic, he will ride the ship, damaged by arrogance and overreach, into the deep.
But before the empire fades, it retrenches, and global war-mongering becomes totalitarianism at home, national intelligence becomes domestic surveillance, AI looks inward to identify potential enemies of the state, and maps their communities for decimation or economic lockdown.
[...]
Today, we are in the midst of the collapse of two empires, one tiny and vicious, the other lumbering and lazy. These two empires suffer different illusions, but Israel, under fascist Zionism, has dibs on discipline and seeks to rule.
[...]
US imperial retrenchment has been happening under our very noses, slowly at first with our devalued currency and never-ending wars, but the pace is quickening. Notably in this 250th year after the Declaration of Independence, every American needs to be prepared for war at home.
~ Karen Kwiatkowski, "The US Empire is Retrenching, Bringing Imperialism Home," LewRockwell.com, June 15, 2026
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