The Economist: "America's attempts to impose its designs on the Middle East have run their course"

America seems to be stuck in the Middle East.  It has no easy way out of its war with Iran.  Yet the conflict, however it ends, will in fact mark something quite different: the moment when America pulls back from the region—in the sense that it finally relinquishes its hegemony there.  For the first time since the great powers dismembered the Ottoman empire a century ago, the Middle East’s overarching order will no longer be imposed from afar.  Will that herald an orgy of score-settling and violence, or a new beginning? 

After three wars, countless covert operations and seemingly endless rounds of diplomacy, America's attempts to impose its designs have run their course.  Like Britain, France and Russia, America will still be involved.  It will occasionally use military force to pursue its interests, including for counter-terrorism.   But it will abandon its role as architect.

The signs of America's looming retrenchment are unmistakable—even as President Donald Trump uses the annual meeting of the UN to threaten Iran with "annihilation" for the umpteenth time.  Two stand out.  Earlier this month America declined to join its ally Saudi Arabia in striking the Houthis in Yemen, who are endangering shipping in the Red Sea.  Instead it held talks behind the Saudis' backs to spare American vessels from attack.  That may seem like a detail, but when a superpower does deals with an insurgent militia, everyone understands it wants to cut its commitments.

The other sign is the expectation that America will limit its presence in the Middle East.  In peacetime it has 30,000-40,000 troops on 19 bases, eight of which are permanent.  However, the war has exposed how vulnerable they are to drones and cheap missiles.

~ "When America walks away: For decades America has enjoyed hegemony over the Middle East. That is about to end," The Economist, September 24, 2026

 

Karen Kwiatkowski on the Iran war: a tale of two empires

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

 

Kevin Duffy on U.S. aggressions against Iran

The world doesn't trust Iran because it has memory-holed past U.S. aggressions: 

1953 - CIA-led coup overthrows democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh; installs U.S.-friendly Shah, authoritarian monarch. 

1957 - SAVAK (secret police) is established with CIA and Israeli (Mossad) assistance; this becomes the Shah’s primary tool of repression. 

1979 - U.S. first imposes sanctions after the Shah is overthrown; these undergo a major expansion in 1995 under Clinton. 

1980-1988 - U.S. backs Saddam Hussein in Iran-Iraq War, costing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives 

1988 - USS Vincennes “mistakenly” shoots down civilian Iran Air Flight 655 on July 3 over the Strait of Hormuz. All 290 aboard are killed, including 254 Iranians and 66 children. The US calls it a tragic error in a combat zone; Iran views it as deliberate. 

2025-2026 - US and Israeli strikes on Iran (starting late February 2025/early 2026) cause thousands of Iranian deaths, including a missile strike that hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, costing 156 lives, 120 of them schoolchildren.

~ Kevin Duffy, tweet, April 28, 2026

 

Donald Jeffries on U.S. support of Israel

Since the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been a tinderbox of ancient ethnic hostilities.  Israel fought four major wars against neighboring countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, in its first twenty five years alone.  Since the neocons took control of U.S. foreign policy during the Reagan administration, America has been a consistent presence there, hovering in the background like the big brother waiting to pounce on any perceived slight to the younger sibling.  We fought the Gulf “War” (really, don’t you have to have two sides for a real war?) in 1989, for no other reason than to protect Israeli interests.  U.S. envoy April Glaspie famously told former CIA asset Saddam Hussein that if he invaded the tiny artificial oil oligarchy of Kuwait, we wouldn’t interfere.  Of course, that was a lie.  The only people cheering on such lunacy were the leaders of Israel. 

I lost count of how many times we bombed Iraq in the subsequent years. Our embargo killed over a million Iraqis, including over 500,000 children.  We ventured into Afghanistan for no reason whatsoever.  Well, except that Israel requested it. And that’s all that matters in “our” defense department.  No one says “no” to Israel.  Except John F. Kennedy.  We all know what happened to him.  Obama became embroiled in Syria and Yemen because Israel wanted it.  They’re like a collective, spoiled trust fund baby.  Donald Trump, after rightly criticizing Obama for bombing Syria, did so himself when ordered to.  You know exactly who gave the orders.  And now, we may become deeply embroiled in Israel’s war with Iran, again at Israel’s request.  Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen- none of them have ever done anything to us.  We have no beef with any of them.  But Israel does.  All of this is in their interests, not ours.

~ Donald Jeffries, "The Explosion of Jewish Fatigue Syndrome," Tired of naked emperors, June 29, 2025

Stephen Kinzer on the racist roots of American imperialism

The first wave of American "regime change" operations, which lasted from 1893 to 1911, was propelled largely by the search for resources, markets, and commercial opportunities.  Not all of the early imperialists, however, were the tools of big business.  Roosevelt, Lodge, and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan were moved by what they considered to be the transcendent imperatives of history.  Expanding, they believed, was simply what great nations did.  In their minds, promoting commerce and defending national security fused into what one historian has called "an aggressive national egoism and a romantic attachment to national power."  They considered themselves nothing less than instruments of destiny and Providence.

The missionary instinct was already deeply ingrained in the American psyche.  From the time John Winthrop proclaimed his dream of building a "city upon the hill" to which the world would look for inspiration, Americans have considered themselves a special people.  At the end of the nineteenth century, many came to believe they had a duty to civilize needy savages and rescue exploited masses from oppression.  Rudyard Kipling encouraged their missionary spirit with a famous poem published in McClure's Magazine as the debate over annexing the Philippines began.

Take up the White Man's burden

Send forth the best ye breed,

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness

On fluttered folk and wild,

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child

Americans have a profoundly compassionate side.  Many not only appreciate the freedom and prosperity with which they have been blessed but fervently wish to share their good fortune with others.  Time and again, they have proved willing to support foreign interventions that are presented as missions to rescue less fortunate people.

When President McKinley said he was going to war in Cuba to stop "oppression at our very doors," Americans cheered.  They did so again a decade later, when the Taft administration declared that it was deposing the government of Nicaragua in order to impose "republican institutions" and promote "real patriotism."  Since then, every time the United States has set out to overthrow a foreign government, its leaders have insisted that they are acting not to expand American power but to help people who are suffering.

This paternalism was often mixed with racism.  Many Americans considered Latin Americans and Pacific islanders to be "colored" natives in need of guidance from whites.  In a nation whose black population was systematically repressed, and where racial prejudice was widespread, this view helped many people accept the need for the United States to dominate foreign countries.

Speeches justifying American expansionism on the grounds of the white race's presumed superiority were staples of political discourse in the 1890s.  Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana described expansion as part of a natural process, "the disappearance of debased civilizations and decaying races before the higher civilization of the nobler and more virile types of man."  Representative Charles Cochrane of Mississippi spoke of "the onward march of the indomitable race that founded this Republic" and predicted "the conquest of the world by the Aryan races."  When he finished his speech, the House burst into applause.

~ Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, pp. 83-84

Jeffrey Sachs on why the U.S. opposes Russia and China

What do we have against Russia?  The fact of the matter is, Russia is big.  Russia is powerful.  And for that reason and that reason alone, or sufficiently, the U.S. would oppose Russia, just like the U.S. opposes China.  Now of course, maybe people listening to this would say, "That's crazy.  We oppose China because all of the terrible things they do."  Or "We oppose Russia because all of the terrible things they do."  I would take a different view of this which is, we make up stories about why we oppose big powers, but the basic reason we oppose big powers is that they are big.  They are an afront to our desire for what the political scientists in a fancy word call "primacy," or call "hegemony," or call "full spectrum dominance."  In other words, Russia is an afront to our ability to dictate circumstances.  China certainly is an afront to the U.S. ability to dictate circumstances in Asia.  For that reason alone, for the powers that be in Washington, that's completely antithetical to the American strategic purpose, which explicitly, for many, many years has been full spectrum dominance...  In other words, our purpose, as stated by the establishment, by the military industrial complex, is "We must be the unrivaled #1."

Jeffrey Sachs, "Jeffrey Sachs: The Dark Forces Pushing Trump Into War With Iran, & Ukraine/Russia New Escalation," Tucker Carlson, 7:15 mark, June 11, 2025

Kevin Duffy on fixing America's economic problems and maintaining an empire

While America’s economic problems are fixable, American hegemony is ephemeral.  The U.S. can have guns or butter, but not both. 

President Trump is writing checks he cannot cash.  He can’t maintain an empire and reduce the size of government.  He can’t limit cheap imports and keep a lid on inflation.  He can’t manage trade from the top down and cultivate a free market from the bottom up.  He can’t bully the world and enjoy the privilege of printing the world’s reserve currency.

~ Kevin Duffy, "Mercantilism in America," The Coffee Can Portfolio, May 6, 2025

Richard Wolff on the American defense umbrella: "Germany bet on the wrong horse"

Germany is the biggest and most powerful core of what we call Western Europe, and it has been for a long time.  Germany was the only serious competitor with the United States to replace the British empire.  Had Germany not fought and lost both world wars, we would be much more aware of what was going on in that country than we are.  But those wars removed Germany from the competition.  World War II removed Japan from the competition and gave us, the United States, the kind of free ride of the last 75 years of being the dominant economic powerhouse in the world.  And we are now going through the decline, the precipitous decline of the American empire...  And that is changing everything because after Germany was defeated twice in two world wars and its enemy was the United States in both world wars, it took a very subordinate position, as did the other loser in World War II, Japan.  Subordinate to the winner, which is often what happens in big wars.  

And so, what we are seeing is a moment, cataclysmically important for global politics - although you wouldn't notice that from American media treatment - we are seeing Germany leading Europe to recognize now that they bet on the wrong horse after World War II.  Because the United States, which would and did, protect them from their fantasy of being at risk of a Russian invasion, it protected them for 70 years, it can no longer afford to do it because its own empire is declining, and so with the Trump administration the United States is withdrawing from being the protector of Europe and now wants to rip it off to benefit the United States - that's what the America First really means - when the United States in its decline has to turn on its former friends and allies, above all Europe, but equally Canada and Mexico, because it is trying to hold on to as much of its declining empire as it can.  And it will sacrifice its friends before it turns in on itself.  But please notice the word "before."

~  Richard Wolff, "German Election Shockwaves: Rapid Decline of US Influence in Europe w/ Prof. Richard Wolff," BreakThrough News, February 25, 2025

Kevin Duffy on American foreign policy

Perhaps the greatest delusion the American people suffer from is our government's foreign policy.  The good news is that all bubbles eventually burst. After 9/11, 80% of Americans wanted revenge and went along with invading Iraq and Afghanistan. I guarantee you many of those people today will admit it was a costly mistake, even though they won't admit going along with it.  Today, there is little popular support of the war in Ukraine on the right, while there is little support for the war in Gaza on the left. China baffles me because there seems to be bipartisan support for at least an economic war (which hurts us economically).  I think a shooting war would be a different matter.  Young people here have no interest in dying in foreign wars. 

Economically, our government is broke.  They're spending money they don't have mainly because that's all they know how to do.  Higher interest rates guarantee that spending cuts are coming or inflation's coming or both.  With the baby boomers retiring in droves, we as a country will have to choose between military spending or social security checks.  I suspect the latter will ultimately win out. 

I look forward to the day the U.S. government dismantles its empire and we can all get along.  That day is coming.  I just don't know the exact date.

~ Kevin Duffy, note to a friend, May 7, 2024

Kevin Duffy on American imperialism and the Israel alliance

At the core of American imperialism is the noble cause.  Woodrow Wilson got the ad campaign started when he coined the phrase “making the world safe for democracy.”  In 2009, the Navy came up with the slogan “a global force for good.”  (This lasted all of five years.)  The mask is now off Israel.  Its carefully cultivated image as an enlightened, progressive, tolerant democracy has been shattered… not good for the U.S. global brand.  America’s longstanding policy of unconditional support for Israel is now in question, i.e. the imperial delusion is bumping into harsh reality.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Israel-Palestine Conflict: Investment implications," The Coffee Can Portfolio, January 6, 2024

Andrew Bacevich on America's history of intervention in the Middle East

[I]n the wake of the atrocities committed on October 7th and Washington’s tacit acquiescence in Israel’s maximalist war aims, the dubious notion that vital American interests are still at stake in the Greater Middle East has taken on new life.  Dating from the 1980s, Washington had cycled through a variety of arguments for why that part of the world was worthy of spending American blood and treasure: the threat of Soviet aggression, U.S. reliance on foreign oil, radical Arab dictators, Islamic jihadism, weapons of mass destruction falling into hostile hands, potential ethnic cleansing and genocide.  All of those were pressed into service at one time or another to justify continuing to treat the Middle East as a strategic U.S. priority. 

In truth, though, none of them has stood the test of time.  Each has proven to be fallacious.  Indeed, efforts to cure the sources of dysfunction afflicting the region proved to be a fool’s errand that has cost the United States dearly in money and lives while yielding little of value. 

For that reason, allowing Israel’s conflict with Hamas to draw the United States into a new Middle Eastern crusade would be the height of folly.  In fact, however, with little public attention and even less congressional oversight, that is precisely what may be happening.  The Global War on Terror seems on the verge of absorbing the Gaza War into its current configuration.

~ Andrew Bacevich, "America's War for the Greater Middle East (Continued)," TomDispatch, December 7, 2023

2022

Kevin Duffy on the cold war with China

The collapse of the Soviet Union thirty years ago ushered in a very unusual, unipolar world in which the US dominated geopolitically.  That world is over.  From 2020 to 2025 the increase in interest on the public debt alone will exceed the entire U.S. military budget.  So being at war with Russia, China and Islam at the same time – 44% of the world’s population – isn’t sustainable.  The U.S. is going to have to start getting along with people, which I believe means that chilled relations with China will thaw over time.

~ Kevin Duffy, "The Stock Market is Quite Complacent," The Market, December 1, 2023

Fareed Zakaria on the shifting of empires the past 500 years

There have been three tectonic power shifts over the last five hundred years, fundamental changes in the distribution of power that have reshaped international life—its politics, economics, and culture. The first was the rise of the Western world, a process that began in the fifteenth century and accelerated dramatically in the late eighteenth century. It produced modernity as we know it: science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the agricultural and industrial revolutions. It also produced the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the West.

The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the nineteenth century, was the rise of the United States. Soon after it industrialized, the United States became the most powerful nation since imperial Rome, and the only one that was stronger than any likely combination of other nations. For most of the last century, the United States has dominated global economics, politics, science, and culture. For the last twenty years, that dominance has been unrivaled, a phenomenon unprecedented in modern history.

We are now living through the third great power shift of the modern era. It could be called “the rise of the rest.” Over the past few decades, countries all over the world have been experiencing rates of economic growth that were once unthinkable. While they have had booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward. This growth has been most visible in Asia but is no longer confined to it. That is why to call this shift “the rise of Asia” does not describe it accurately. In 2006 and 2007, 124 countries grew at a rate of 4 percent or more. That includes more than 30 countries in Africa, two-thirds of the continent. Antoine van Agtmael, the fund manager who coined the term “emerging markets,” has identified the 25 companies most likely to be the world's next great multinationals. His list includes four companies each from Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, and Taiwan; three from India; two from China; and one each from Argentina, Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.

~ Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World

2008

Jacob Hornberger on how China got into the crosshairs of the American empire

For decades after the Communist Party took control over China, the Party established and maintained a strict socialist system, one in which the government owned and controlled most everything. The result was massive poverty across the land, which, of course, meant a Chinese communist government with relatively few resources. 

Then a few decades ago, China began liberalizing its economy, permitting the Chinese people to engage in economic enterprise, engage in trade, open businesses, and accumulate large amounts of wealth. The result was a tremendous increase in economic prosperity. 

For a time, Americans celebrated this economic phenomenon. And why not? For decades, many Americans had criticized China’s socialist system precisely because it generated so much poverty among the Chinese people. Now the standard of living of people was soaring. Why wouldn’t everyone celebrate the fact that people in other parts of the world are escaping poverty? 

Moreover, the rising prosperity in China meant that the Chinese people were increasingly able to purchase goods and services from Americans. The resulting trade made everyone better off. 

But the U.S. Empire — specifically, the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — saw trouble in all this. That’s because China’s economic prosperity meant vast new tax revenues for the Chinese communist regime — resources that enabled the regime to increase the size of its military and also to increase its influence around the world. 

During the 20 years that the U.S. government was waging war against the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, China had no such burden. Rather than using its tax revenues to kill large numbers of people, as the U.S. Empire was doing, China was using them to expand its influence around the world by helping countries with big, grandiose socialist projects. 

Thus, in the eyes of the U.S. national-security establishment, China’s rise posed a grave threat to its post-Cold War role as the world’s sole remaining empire. Something had to be done to bring China down, even if it harmed the American people at the same time. By suppressing China’s economic prosperity, the empire aimed to diminish the amount of tax revenues flowing into the Chinese government’s coffers, thereby limiting its ability to expand its military and its influence around the world.

~ Jacob G. Hornberger, "Xi Jinping is Right About the U.S. Empire," The Future of Freedom Foundation, November 20, 2023

The Economist: "How Joe Biden manages the war between Israel and Hamas will define America's global role"

As massed israeli troops await the command to invade Gaza, two hulking us Navy aircraft-carriers have been sent to support Israel.  Their task is to deter Hizbullah and its sponsor Iran from opening a second front across the Lebanese border.  No other country could do this.  The carriers are a 200,000-tonne declaration of American power at a time when much of the world believes that American power is in decline. 

The coming months will test that view.  It is hard to exaggerate the stakes.  On October 20th President Joe Biden called this “an inflection point.”  He warned of the need to repulse Hamas’s terror as well as Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.  China’s threat to invade Taiwan lurked unspoken in the background.

~ "American power: indispensable or ineffective? How Joe Biden manages the war between Israel and Hamas will define America's global role," The Economist, October 28, 2023

Garet Garrett on the language of empire

It is our turn.

Our turn to do what?

Our turn to assume the responsibilities of moral leadership in the world.

Our turn to maintain a balance of power against the forces of evil everwhere - in Europe and Asia and Africa, in the Atlantic and in the Pacific, by air and by sea - evil in this case being the Russian barbarian.

Our turn to keep the peace of the world.

Our turn to save civilization.

Our turn to serve mankind.

But this is the language of Empire.  The Roman Empire never doubted that it was the defender of civilization.  Its good intentions were peace, law and order.  The Spanish Empire added salvation.  The British Empire added the noble myth of the white man's burden.  We have added freedom and democracy.  Yet the more that may be added to it the more it is the same language still.  A language of empire.

~ Garet Garrett, The People's Pottage (1953)

(As quoted by Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty, pp. 346-347)

Ana Bozovic on the American empire

The phase of the American empire that we're in right now is one that is very far removed for most people from survival.  And it has been for so long.  And thus it's allowing belief systems and behaviors to that are not necessarily conducive to survival in challenging times to flourish.

~ Ana Bozovic, tweet, 3:10 mark, February 16, 2023

Eric Boehm on the Chinese balloon incident

On Saturday, the F-22 [which officially entered military service in 2005] scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.  There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent.  But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world's most expensive military by a massive margin.

~ Eric Boehm, "By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight," Reason.com, February 6, 2023

Tom DiLorenzo on how William Graham Sumner warned of American imperialism in 1899

In 1899 the great libertarian scholar William Graham Sumner of Yale University delivered a speech in which he warned that the Spanish-American War was a crossing-the-Rubicon event in the nation’s history that had finally transformed the nation from a constitutional republic to an empire.  Empire was what the Pilgrims escaped from, and the American Revolution was fought against, for in an empire the average citizen is viewed by his rulers as nothing more than a tax slave and cannon fodder.  Americans would soon become, he warned, exactly what their country was founded to oppose. 

The speech was entitled “The Conquest of the United States by Spain” to denote the fact that the Spanish-American war, an imperialistic war of conquest, was no different from the types of aggressive wars that the old empires of Europe had been waging for centuries.  Having devoted his adult life to scholarly pursuits in the field of political economy (among others), William Graham Sumner was prescient in his predictions about what America would become once it embarked on the road to empire.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, "The Man Who Predicted (in 1899) What America Would Become," LewRockwell.com, October 10, 2013

Doug Casey: "U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome"

U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces—the axe surrounded by rods—as a symbol of state power.  Publius, the pseudonymous author of The Federalist Papers, took his name from one of Rome’s first consuls.  As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S.  When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.

~ Doug Casey, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire," International Man, August 31, 2022