The Prosperity, stability and power of the United States and indeed the West survives on it being an empire. That empire is now devouring itself. After destroying many. Trump's ways may dismantle this colonial behemoth. Will United States survive as a country, when it is no longer an empire?
When rage is combined with religious and ideological absolutism, avenues of freedoms vanish. Dissent is met with ruthless subjugation and every atrocity is covered up by ambivalence. Let's deep dive.
My India journey started with Mahakumbh, followed by a conference on geopolitics. The world is changing, and we need to focus on the motivations behind these changes.
The Prosperity, stability and power of the United States and indeed the West survives on it being an empire. That empire is now devouring itself. After destroying many. Trump's ways may dismantle this colonial behemoth. Will United States survive as a country, when it is no longer an empire?
When a predator becomes a monk, the jungle doesn’t change its rules.
Whenever brutal warlords have unleashed fire and death, and created an empire by forcing submission of everyone, have found it hard to hold on to their gains.
If age or good judgment tempered their fury, and power was to be used to govern, not as a destroyer but as a restorer, that path has never been easy.
Once the swords of the brutal warlords return to their sheaths a new dynamic unfolds.
The world—fed on fear and accustomed to his wrath— does not always rejoice.
Many conspire. Those who were once vassals test boundaries of patience and resistance. Dormant enemies stir up.
Rebellion became the price of restraint.
Power, once unsheathed, cannot return quietly to its scabbard.
“A lion who forgets his roar invites the hyenas,” is an old saying.
Justice is a virtue of the strong, yes. But only if strength is remembered.
A just king must wear the crown with iron underneath the gold.
For in this world, mercy without might is merely an invitation to be devoured.
The Colossus projects power.
The Farmer counts pennies.
The Empire wins wars for oligarchs.
The Country buries soldiers with flags.
One conquers the world to feel alive.
The other just wants to live.
And now, the two stand face to face.
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Trump is systematically dismantling the grip of the Deep State—by acting on DOGE recommendations, shutting down USAID, calling out the duplicity of European Union leaders, and spotlighting trade imbalances through aggressive tariffs. But this raises a deeper question: is the United States merely a country—or is it an empire that can no longer function as just a nation?
This empire, having long colonized others, now turns inward—ready to subjugate its own people using the same machinery it once deployed abroad. That is today’s reality.
Strip the empire of its predatory tools—those that devour both foreign lands and its own citizens—and what remains? A hollowed-out nation with little to offer. Its manufacturing base is gone. It neither produces for its people nor offers the world anything tangible. Without its imperial teeth, the U.S. risks collapse.
We need to look into this in more detail.
Since the embers of World War II cooled—and with unchallenged dominance post-1991—the United States hasn’t merely existed as a nation. It has moved through the world as an empire in disguise.
Not the kind with flags planted on foreign soil or viceroys administering colonies. No. This is an empire of shadows—enforced not with chains, but with debt. Not with armies alone, but with narratives. Washington doesn’t rule lands. It bends systems. It doesn’t raise monuments; it scripts ideologies.
Through unmatched military might, financial coercion, and a culture industry that colonizes minds, the U.S. has shaped the modern world in its own fractured image. It is not a country among others. It is the axis around which the current global order spins—whether others like it or not.
All this is maintained via its military power: US has 750 military bases across at least 80 foreign countries.
The United States has more overseas military bases than any other country in the world. In 2023, the US had 750 military bases in 80 countries. The United States has so many bases partly because it became a global peacekeeper after World War II. The Korean War, the Cold War, and the threat of the spread of Communism resulted in the creation of even more bases. The War on Terrorism has led to the creation of many bases in the Middle East. The US still has more than 30 bases in Okinawa, Japan, alone. It also has several bases in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific. One of the largest bases is Rammstein AB in Germany, which has more than 9,000 troops. The Russian Federation also has many military bases abroad, including several in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Many are in former Soviet-bloc countries. (Source: Overseas Military Bases by Country 2025 / World Population Review)
To understand this properly, let us restate the obvious.
All this is financed by the American taxpayers.
When the intellectuals and diplomats throw around the "international or global order," it is a cute way of hiding the obvious.
The International Order is defined as the body of rules, norms, and institutions that govern relations between the key players on the international stage. Today, this body includes a nexus of global institutions, such as the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization; bilateral and regional security organizations; and liberal political norms, as well as what the authors describe as “liberal political norms”. (Source: World Economic Forum)
There is no international order.
It is an American order.
An order that has been run by U.S. led security guarantees and alliances.
Security guarantee is a strong word. It is so strong an undertaking that the one providing it should be running the system on its own terms. No leak and no mistake.
That is why whenever there is a country or a leader which "threatens" to be independent in its policies or approach - as in not aligned to what the US establishment wants it to do - is taken down or out.
Guarantee needs might. Unambiguous and unparalleled military and espionage might.
Guns can conquer. Spies can destabilize. Wars can burn nations to the ground. But none of that makes people obey. To control behavior—not just borders—you need the quiet whip of economics.
That is where America reigns supreme.
Its true weapon isn't just the Pentagon or Langley. It's the dollar. The green god that fuels trade, anchors reserves, and bends nations to Washington's will—without firing a single shot.
The U.S. dollar isn’t just currency. It is compliance. A lever that moves the world while America stays at the fulcrum.
Euro, the second biggest currency is not even close!
Governments and central banks around the world hold dollar-dominated assets, usually U.S. Treasury debt, as reserves to manage the foreign exchange value of their currencies or weather economic shocks. Dollar assets comprise about 59% of global foreign currency reserves; the next largest share is the euro at 20%. (Source: The changing role of the US dollar / Brookings)
They call it an “exorbitant privilege.” But it’s more than that. It’s legalized global manipulation.
Desh Kapoor
With the dollar enthroned at the heart of global finance, the U.S. prints deficits and borrows like a king without consequences. It lives beyond its means—because it controls the means.
But the real power? Coercion without combat.
The dollar-based banking system is Washington’s silent weapon. No bombs. No boots. Just a flick of a switch—and entire economies can be choked, isolated, or brought to their knees. Sanctions become siege warfare, disguised as policy.
This isn’t just privilege. It’s imperial domination through spreadsheets.
It is imperative to note here that the 59% level of global forex reserves in the US Dollar today, were 70% in 2000!
It is at its lowest point in 25 years! And falling.
This points to a rapidly de-dollarizing world.
Desh Kapoor
Look at this again.
Here is a graph showing the currency that the US has been printing over the last 15 years. Right around COVID you see a major spike that takes the graph to a whole new trajectory.
That was an additional global taxation for the other countries.
It’s the empire’s greatest sleight of hand.
Since 2020, over $6 trillion has been conjured out of thin air by the U.S. Federal Reserve. On paper, a nation in crisis. In practice, an empire pushing the consequences outward—across oceans, borders, and generations.
If that $6 trillion were confined to America’s 330 million citizens, each person would bear nearly $20,000 worth of freshly printed currency. The dollar would crater. Prices would skyrocket. The illusion of prosperity would implode.
But Washington doesn’t play by the rules of nations. It plays by the rules of empire.
Because the dollar is global, the pain is diluted. Instead of $20,000 per head, the world absorbs the shock—spreading the cost to over 8 billion people. Suddenly, it’s less than $1,000 a head.
Manageable and above all...invisible.
This isn’t monetary policy. This is economic warfare dressed up as stimulus.
America's most devastating export isn’t McDonald’s or Marvel. It’s inflation.
And as the printing press roars, the empire smiles—because while it consumes, the world pays.
So, let’s stop pretending.
You see, the American Empire doesn’t send tax collectors to foreign lands. It doesn’t need to.
It simply prints.
Every time the Federal Reserve hits Ctrl+P, the world pays. Quietly. Involuntarily. Unknowingly.
Because when America prints dollars, it doesn’t just inflate its own economy—it inflates the planet. Prices rise in Lagos. Savings shrink in Jakarta. Budgets strain in Buenos Aires. And none of those people ever voted for the policies that impoverish them.
This is not aid. It’s not trade. It’s global taxation through dollar inflation.
A currency backed by nothing but power—and enforced by nothing but belief—becomes the greatest imperial tool in human history. The U.S. borrows with abandon, consumes without constraint, and exports its debt across eight billion backs.
The empire doesn’t tax with laws. It taxes with inflation.
And the dollar is the taxman.
But can this last forever?
That is the crucial question one needs to ask.
For, empires don’t just rot. They provoke resistance.
As Washington floods the world with inflation masked as a stimulus, a quiet rebellion brews. The Global South is no longer asleep, and the East is no longer obedient. The BRICS nations—once passive players—are now seen as engineers of a post-dollar world.
Russia and China are transacting in yuan and rubles. India is testing rupee settlements. The Gulf is flirting with oil-for-yuan. And the BRICS bloc? It may e eyeing a new reserve currency—possibly gold or commodity-backed—decoupled from the dollar’s toxic gravity.
These aren’t just economic experiments. They are lifeboats from a sinking imperial ship.
Even as the U.S. weaponizes SWIFT and sanctions as tools of compliance, others are quietly building alternative pipes—new payment systems, digital currencies, and sovereign trade corridors that bypass the empire’s grip.
It’s not a revolution. Not yet. But it’s a realignment. And it’s accelerating.
The age of dollar dominance was never eternal. It was enforced—by tanks, banks, and Hollywood dreams.
But as the illusion fades, one question lingers:
What happens when the world no longer pays America’s tab?
As of now, the dollar isn’t just a currency. It’s the bloodstream of the global economic order, circulating through trade routes, financial markets, and nation-balance sheets.
Over 54% of global trade is still invoiced in dollars. From SWIFT networks (even when things may be changing) to oil contracts, the planet runs on Washington’s paper. Not because it’s just, or even stable—but because it’s entrenched. Deeply. Systemically.
Its rivals? Weak pretenders.
But the real strength of the dollar isn’t moral or even economic.
It’s inertia.
The dollar benefits from the oldest con in empire: the network effect. The more it is used, the harder it is to escape. Even in crisis, when the world trembles, capital doesn’t run from the dollar—it runs to it. Not because it is good. But because it is less dangerous than the alternatives.
America is the largest magnet of foreign direct investment. Its capital markets are vast, liquid, and ruthlessly efficient. You can buy or dump its debt in seconds. Its currency converts instantly—anywhere, anytime. Central banks hoard dollars to stabilize their own economies, while the Fed plays global lender of last resort—extending swap lines like lifelines to friendly regimes during financial storms.
But here’s the deeper truth: the system can’t be changed easily—not because it’s perfect, but because it's too embedded to uproot without chaos.
So the world stays locked in a gilded cage, paying tribute to an empire that prints its own power.
The dollar remains king—not by virtue, but by design. Not by trust, but by trap.
Should the already underway de-dollarization accelerate, the U.S. would face serious adjustments.
The end of dollar primacy would remove the carte blanche ability to run up debts and print money without immediate consequence.
If, for instance, major energy exporters stopped pricing oil in dollars, demand for dollars could drop sharply and the U.S. could experience a currency depreciation, raising import prices.
Higher interest rates might be needed to entice lenders, straining the U.S. budget (which is already burdened by a debt exceeding 100% of GDP).
In a dedollarized scenario, the U.S. could no longer count on effectively taxing the world via inflation or relying on foreign central banks to buy its Treasury bonds.
It would have to earn its way like everyone else – meaning likely a combination of reduced consumption, spending cuts, increased exports (which presupposes rebuilding competitive industries), or some debt restructuring in a worst case.
Dedollarization would force a reckoning with those choices.
At this critical juncture comes Donald Trump.
The 45th US President from 2017 to 2021 and the 47th President from 2025 through 2029.
In his first term, Trump didn’t just disrupt politics—he took a sledgehammer to the sacred pillars of America’s post-war gospel.
Free trade? No longer holy. Multilateralism? Treated with suspicion. Global policing and endless entanglements? Put under the knife.
What the foreign policy class called “strategic stability,” Trump saw as strategic suicide. He sought to recalibrate—not to retreat, but to reassert. On America’s terms.
For the first time in decades, a U.S. president questioned the architecture that had sustained American empire—not out of ideological purity, but raw, transactional realism.
Trump's recalibration wasn’t subtle. It was seismic.
By questioning NATO’s purpose, mocking G7 summits, and pulling out of deals like the Paris Accord and the Iran nuclear agreement, he exposed a truth long buried beneath diplomatic niceties: most U.S. alliances were less about mutual strength and more about America footing the bill while others cashed in.
Europe gasped. The UN grumbled. Global elites fumed. But for many nations watching from the sidelines, the message was clear—the emperor had started questioning his own wardrobe.
Alliances built on dependence began to look brittle. Global institutions that once masked American dominance under the banner of multilateralism suddenly stood naked—tools of empire dressed up as global consensus.
Trump didn’t destroy the system. He simply stopped pretending it wasn’t rigged.
In doing so, he ruptured the illusion of permanence. That America would always underwrite the world’s security. That it would always tolerate trade deficits in the name of “leadership.” That its power would always be dressed in diplomacy.
He replaced sermons with ultimatums. Deals with tariffs. Global cooperation with cold calculus.
At the heart of Trump’s doctrine was a simmering conviction: that America, for decades, had played the fool in a game it created. Too generous. Too trusting. Too willing to carry the weight of the world while allies freeloaded and adversaries smiled through clenched teeth.
America First wasn’t just a slogan—it was a reckoning.
Trump believed the U.S. had bled itself for an ungrateful world. His mission? To claw back sovereignty, to put economic self-interest over global approval, and to dismantle the polished lies of the so-called “international order.”
If that meant disruption, so be it. Empires don’t ask permission to protect themselves.
And in that brutal clarity, he forced the world to confront a haunting possibility:
What if America no longer wants to be the empire the world had come to rely on?
Or worse—what if it still wants to be the empire, but only for itself?
Factories had vanished.
Wages had stagnated.
Small towns had become ghost towns. Opioid crises, rising inflation, unaffordable medical facilities, the takeover of agriculture by greedy multinational hegemons, and food that had been contaminated beyond recognition.
All the while, Washington preached about global leadership and international obligations, while ordinary Americans paid the price.
It resonated in steel towns, border communities, and forgotten heartlands — not because it was perfect, but because it was honest.
And that terrified the old guard.
For the first time in generations, someone was pulling back the curtain on the global system—a system designed to enrich multinationals, fund endless wars, and sell out sovereignty in boardrooms and Brussels alike.
Trump didn’t just challenge the international order. He revealed how deeply it was rigged.
And in doing so, he didn’t just polarize the world.
He may have polarized reality itself. Perceived and Experienced.
One that the propagandists would have the Americans believe in. And one that they knew existed!
One of Trump’s fiercest battlefronts was trade.
To him, deindustrialization wasn’t a byproduct of progress—it was a slow, deliberate gutting of America’s soul. Empty factories, ghost towns, and entire communities left behind were not accidents. They were the price paid for decades of “free trade” deals that benefited everyone—except Americans.
And China was ground zero.
Starting in 2018, Trump unsheathed tariffs like weapons. Over $350 billion worth of Chinese goods were hit. Steel and aluminum? Taxed globally. This wasn’t diplomacy—it was economic warfare designed to reclaim American industry, shrink the trade deficit, and drag complacent trading partners back to the negotiating table.
Critics howled. But something shifted.
U.S. imports from China fell. American firms began rerouting supply chains—turning to Mexico, Vietnam, and beyond. It was slow, imperfect, messy. But it was movement. The gears of strategic decoupling had begun to turn.
In effect, consumers and firms often just shifted to other foreign suppliers, and China retaliated by cutting purchases of U.S. exports and imposing its own tariffs on, say, soybeans.
On April 2, 2018, China imposed tariffs of up to 25% on 128 U.S. products, including airplanes and soybeans. (Source: Reuters)
Trump’s fire wasn’t reserved for America’s enemies. He turned the heat on its so-called friends.
Alliances that once stood as untouchable pillars—NATO, the EU, multilateral clubs—were suddenly on trial. Trump was both a prosecutor and executioner.
He accused NATO allies of freeloading—enjoying U.S. military protection while barely paying their dues. The message was brutal and unapologetic: You want the American shield? Start paying for the sword.
And it didn’t stop there.
“The European Union treats us worse than China,” he declared—a strong indictment of a bloc once seen as America’s closest economic and ideological partner.
Trump slammed EU nations for erecting unfair trade barriers while hiding behind American defense commitments.
To Europe’s elite, this wasn’t diplomacy—it was betrayal. They had long assumed partnership was unconditional. Trump reminded them it was transactional.
Maybe what rattled the world was not just what he said—but that he dared to say it aloud.
Pretense was the hallmark of this global charade. Everyone knew the reality. Everyone saw the impact on the Americans, while the globalists rejoiced. It continued regardless.
Now someone was calling it out.
Trump’s rhetoric may have sounded reckless to Brussels, but behind the outrage was an unsettling realization: the transatlantic umbilical cord was fraying.
Europe, long content under the American security blanket, was suddenly exposed. If Washington could question NATO… if it could equate the EU with China… what guarantee remained?
The result? A quiet, uneasy shift.
Europe began whispering words once considered taboo—strategic autonomy. Emmanuel Macron spoke of a “European Army.” Berlin toyed with defense independence. Brussels mulled a financial system less entangled with the U.S. Treasury and its sanction-laced grip.
It wasn’t a full divorce. Not yet. But the honeymoon was over.
The old world had assumed America would always protect it, always fund it, always play benevolent hegemon. Trump forced them to confront a brutal question:
What if the empire walks away?
And in that moment of uncertainty, Europe began to reimagine itself—not as a junior partner, but as a sovereign bloc with its own spine.
The irony? Trump, the supposed destroyer of alliances, may have triggered the first real steps toward European self-reliance.
A dreamy aspiration that may never again come true. At least not in a hurry.
Since late 2023, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched drone and missile attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, targeting Western-linked shipping. Backed by Iran and emboldened by geopolitical shifts, their actions have turned vital maritime routes into battlegrounds, challenging U.S. naval presence and disrupting global trade.
The escalating Houthi threat has led to a sharp decline in Suez Canal traffic, with shipping companies rerouting vessels around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. This detour increases costs and delays, slashing transit volumes through the canal by over 40%, and straining global supply chains and insurance markets worldwide.
The Red Sea is no longer America's backyard where it exercised its power. It’s a case study of America's retreat.
Once the lifeline of global commerce and American projection, the waters around the Suez Canal have slipped from Washington’s grasp — quietly, but decisively. The U.S. Navy, once the undisputed sheriff of the seas, is now absent in a region it no longer commands.
Yes, Trump was blunt. But he wasn't wrong—when he declared that the Suez Canal has effectively fallen into Chinese hands.
All this happened not through an invasion, but through infiltration.
Beijing now controls both ends of the canal—not by flags, but by influence.
Their grip extends not just to port infrastructure, but into the dark calculations of the Houthi playbook.
And America? It launched Operation Prosperity Guardian in late 2023, a name as hollow as its outcome. The Houthis ignored it. The Chinese outmaneuvered it. The world watched as the last remnants of American maritime supremacy ran aground.
But the collapse isn’t just military. It’s systemic.
When China brokered the Saudi-Iran détente on March 10, 2023, it wasn’t just a handshake—it was a seismic redrawing of Middle Eastern fault lines. Though the Houthis weren’t at the table, the reverberations reached deep into Yemen. Iran promised to dial down its military support, aligning with UN arms embargoes, while Saudi Arabia sought to exit its Yemen quagmire to focus on Vision 2030. The result? Back-channel diplomacy, including a rare Saudi delegation visit to Sanaa in April 2023—signaling the scent of truce.
But geopolitics doesn’t obey neat scripts.
Iran’s influence didn’t vanish. It recalibrated. The Houthis, no longer under full military siege, filled the vacuum. Unburdened by Riyadh’s guns and unnoticed in the glow of Chinese diplomacy, they consolidated power. By late 2023, they weren’t weakened—they were emboldened. Their Red Sea attacks proved it: the Saudi-Iran deal gave them space, and in that space, they sharpened their knives.
So, that one deal rewired the region’s power circuit. Iran tightened its hold on the Houthis. China gained leverage over Iran. And suddenly, the Middle East didn’t orbit Washington—it tilted eastward.
The U.S. spends $2 million per missile defense system. The Houthis spend $2,000 to defeat it. Washington’s defense architecture is a lumbering behemoth—high on budget, low on adaptability. What we’re witnessing is the Uber-ization of warfare: asymmetry weaponized by agility.
A fundamentalist "garage band" with drones and chutzpah is disrupting the world’s most expensive military.
This isn’t a blockade. It’s a controlled filter. Western vessels stall. Chinese, Russian, and Iranian ships sail through. The Houthis aren’t pirates—they’re gatekeepers. The Red Sea is no longer a commons. It’s a corridor managed by America’s adversaries and policed by their proxies.
What we’re witnessing isn’t just the erosion of U.S. power. It’s the dawn of maritime anarchy. A multipolar Wild West at sea—where Washington can no longer guarantee security, nor dictate the rules.
The empire that once ruled the oceans now struggles to secure a shipping lane.
And as American power recedes with the tide, a darker question emerges:
In a world without a hegemon, who survives the storm—and who controls the choke points?
Let us take another look at the competing options that United States has offered the world in the past few years.
Let’s put the spotlight on the clash of visions: Trump’s unapologetic America First versus the tightly choreographed globalism of the Biden-era oligarchy—an elite cabal of regime-changers, think tank technocrats, and transnational profiteers who claimed to run the “free world” while hollowing out the homeland.
MAGA didn’t emerge from thin air. It was a roar from the rusted core of America.
Factories shuttered. Jobs shipped to Shenzhen. Trillions burned in desert wars that secured oil for others and coffins for America’s sons. Meanwhile, allies coasted on U.S. defense dollars and open markets, offering little in return but polite press conferences. Trump called their bluff—tariffs on China, pressure on NATO, threats on Mexico. And it worked. NATO allies hiked defense spending. Mexico tightened its southern border. For the forgotten American worker, Trump wasn’t reckless—he was righteous.
Even the Heritage Foundation acknowledged the transformation: by 2025, Trump had crafted a doctrine of strategic selfishness—no more blank checks to allies, no more underwriting utopian globalist fantasies. Every dollar spent had to serve U.S. interests. Period.
But critics saw it differently—and loudly so.
They claimed Trump wasn’t reshaping global leadership—he was smashing it. Berating NATO, insulting the EU, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership—each move, they argued, frayed alliances built over generations. In their eyes, Trump’s transactional diplomacy delighted America’s enemies and alarmed its friends.
In Europe, whispers of “strategic autonomy” grew louder. Macron openly floated the idea of a Europe free from U.S. dependency. In Asia, traditional partners began hedging, questioning America’s staying power after Trump hinted at pulling troops unless South Korea paid more. Soft power—once America’s secret weapon—began to bleed. Global surveys showed faith in U.S. leadership nosediving under Trump’s watch.
To the critics, this wasn’t course correction. It was a controlled demolition.
To MAGA, it was a necessary reckoning—a purge of illusions, and a rebirth of sovereignty.
Trump was not just a man. He was a rupture. A signal that the age of polite submission to globalist orthodoxy was over.
What followed wasn’t merely political polarization. It was the reemergence of an ancient fault line—between those who believe in sovereign nations built on identity, borders, and self-determination… and those who dream of a borderless world managed by unelected technocrats, algorithms, and multinational compacts.
This is the new war. Not of tanks and troops—but of systems and souls.
On one side: nationalist leaders, imperfect yet rooted. They speak of soil, culture, history. Of protecting one’s own. Their tools are tariffs, walls, and deindustrialization.
On the other: a polished, corporate oligarchy. Fluent in “inclusion,” allergic to accountability. It rules through platforms, global capital, and the soft tyranny of ESG scores and AI censorship.
This is not left vs. right. It’s local humanity vs. global machinery.
Trump lit the fuse, but the explosion has gone global.
People were tired of dancing to the IMF’s tune while their people starved.
Will the future belong to rooted civilizations — or to a sanitized monoculture run by unelected panels and digital leashes?
The war has begun. And every nation must now choose: Sovereignty or Elitist Takeover.
The biggest symptom and example of this dichotomy has been USAID and its dismantling.
For decades, USAID paraded as a benevolent force—offering aid, relief, and “development” to the world’s poor. But behind that practiced smile was the clenched fist of empire. It was never just about vaccines or wells. It was about control. Influence. Resource extraction. From Africa’s rare earths to Latin America’s lithium, USAID laid the groundwork for American corporations to walk in, strip the earth, and leave behind economic dependence dressed as progress.
Its dismantling isn’t just about cutting a budget line. It is the quiet toppling of a pillar that held up the American imperial edifice. And for the first time, both the oppressed abroad and the overburdened at home are clapping.
Africans and much of the Global South see this as liberation. A chance to reclaim sovereignty and write new economic futures without Washington’s conditions.
Meanwhile, the American working class sees something long denied—its tax dollars staying home. No more funding NGO empires, no more exporting rainbow revolutions while bridges collapse in Ohio.
But let’s not celebrate too early. The vacuum left by USAID won’t stay empty. China waits. Corporations shift tactics. And the imperial urge, deeply embedded in the machinery of the West, rarely dies. It adapts.
Still, a chapter has closed. USAID’s fall marks the retreat of empire—not with gunfire, but with silence. And in that silence, if we listen closely, we may just hear the world beginning to breathe again.
So what does the future hold for the US?
Let us peek into the past to find some answers.
The sun never set on the British Empire—until it did. It wasn’t a dramatic fall. No burning of palaces or mobs in the streets. Just bank meetings, bond defaults, and signatures on documents where power shifted silently across the Atlantic.
World War II was the catalyst. Britain's spine had snapped under war debt. The U.S., fresh and flush, stepped in. But not for free. Bretton Woods. Dollar-pegged systems. Marshall Plans.
Behind them, the elite financiers and bankers—America’s Deep State in the making — gently pried the keys from Britain’s grip.
In exchange for survival, Britain became the lieutenant to a rising empire. The “Special Relationship” was forged not in trust, but in necessity. London’s global banking tentacles were preserved, its aristocracy found new roles as cultural brokers, and its diplomats leaned into managed decline.
The empire was gone, but Britain was absorbed into the new one. Not sovereign, not enslaved. A shadow nation with soft power and nuclear weapons, but no real teeth.
Britain’s lesson? If you fall from the top, fall into favor. Align with the new master early, gracefully. Control what remains—language, finance, illusion.
But America has no such master now. It cannot “fall into favor.” Its empire is the top of the pyramid. There is no other shadow to disappear into.
When the U.S. dismantles its empire, as it slowly is, it must confront something Britain never did: how to survive without being either overlord or vassal. Just an ordinary citizen!
Then there is another case study - Soviet Union.
The USSR didn’t decline. It detonated.
One day, it controlled half the world’s ideology, nuclear arsenals, and industrial might. The next, it collapsed into a blur of ruble hyperinflation, gangster capitalism, and vodka-fueled trauma. The Soviet model—held up by rigid central planning, ideological conformity, and the illusion of permanence—imploded under the weight of stagnation and internal rot.
But the real tragedy wasn’t collapse. It was what followed. Russia wanted to join the West. Gorbachev reached out. Yeltsin pleaded. Putin even asked to join NATO.
Jennifer Rankin
The U.S. smiled—and slammed the door shut.
Why? Because a weak Russia was useful. Because NATO needed a villain. Because empire always needs an other. Russia wasn’t absorbed like Britain. It was humiliated, excluded, then encircled.
From that wound came today’s Russia: not communist, not Western, but reborn through pain. Strategic, cynical, and angry. Its elites, scarred by the '90s chaos, vowed never to be humiliated again. The bear may not have regained its empire, but it rebuilt its claws.
When empires fall, they do not vanish. They transform. Britain, battered and bankrupt, handed over its imperial baton to America. It wasn’t a collapse—it was a merger. Brokered in bank vaults and transatlantic backrooms. The sun set politely.
Russia wasn’t afforded that grace. The Soviet Union imploded in a heartbeat. What rose from its ashes wasn’t welcomed—it was cast out. Washington’s elites dangled NATO in one hand and sanctions in the other. Moscow reached for partnership. It got containment. It reached for peace. It got pushed against the wall. The result? A reinvention—unforgiving, calculating, and sovereign in a new image.
Now, it’s America’s turn.
But unlike Britain, there is no larger empire to merge into. No U.S. to Britain’s decline. And unlike post-Soviet Russia, there is no villain to blame. America is both empire and emperor. When it falls, there will be no hand extended. No soft landing. No IMF cushion with stars and stripes.
And that is the moment of reckoning.
It must be a republic without an empire. Strong without subjugation. Influential without interference.
That road has no blueprint.
It is a path untravelled.
But if it is walked with some thought and clarity of purpose... and sacrifice—it may come to mark the rebirth of a nation that once stood not on domination, but on audacity.
It may not and should not be the end of America as a country where dreams came true.
But the end of Empire America that the world had come to fear and even hate.
That may create a new world - multipolar and complex. Many powers will vie for the pie of the world. Some will succeed, some won't.
In that "Geopolitical Wild West," anarchy will emerge.
A beginning of something more dangerous—and more free.
USAID is being dismantled. Contrary to what the moral busybodies declare, the aid infrastructure of the West has actively subverted other societies. Its only when it turned inwards with the same zeal that it is now being dismantled - brick by brick.
Trump has promised a new America. But the way he is approaching the world, he may up creating a new world order. His actions and words on Greenland need to be properly understood. Its a change in tactics but not a change in direction.
Laura Loomer sparked off an internal Trump camp civil war. Almost as if on a cue. What is the context of the "H1Bs" and what are the challenges? Let's discuss this dispassionately.
An election fought and won on the idea of defeating the elitist Deep State and the hero-worship of the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO show a deep and disturbing trend. The chasm is easy to witness everywhere.
