Is the American Empire in decline?

Photograph of the Statue of Liberty
By Ruben Mavarez

Is the American Empire in decline?
Friday – November 14, 2025

The short answer is yes, and the longer answer is actually that the American Empire is dead and has been dead for some time now, but allow me to explore why and what the future implications of this apparent decline are. Yes, the American Empire is in decline, profound decline and there are a couple of reasons for this, ranging from a belief in what I label the "progress maxim", that stems from the absurd implications of the many assertions made by universal humanism, something that I've covered in the past. Indeed, the assumption was from the very puritan beginning of America that America was to be a "shining city upon a hill" and indeed this assumption has prompted many men to seek out the unknown in America, but this has also been the root cause of another perhaps not so progressive and "enlightened" tendency in America, namely the fairly deeply rooted tendency to want to turn away from the world, and it would seem that this contradictions is at the core of this civilization: on one hand America should be the best and the greatest, but on the other hand America should be kept away from the malign influences of the old and foreign world. Of course, from a materialist point of view one can easily assert that America is the greatest civilization in the world and in history, but as happens with all Empires and great civilizations at some point people become complacent and their civilizations slowly but evermore steadily starts to fade away, and this is no less true for America. How is it that this seemingly great, grand, civilization is so divided and full of tensions, hate, and really an uncertain future, at least most people would surely assume that America's future is uncertain? Well that's easy, America can't keep up with the deterritorializaing forces that the capitalist production base has unleashed, which is the entire raison d'être for America, have put in motion and really to put it more bluntly: when you go from hardship, from what really used to be a backwater, to the most prosperous civilization in history, you also lift a lot of people out of poverty, you essentially radically improve the materialist circumstances of most men, and with this come greatness at first, but this sudden and rapid improvement of the material domain is essentially unsustainable and most men cannot psychologically survive the toll of going from good to worse and in the end your civilization starts to fade away as people basically cease to believe in America, and this just creates further problems; it's essentially an, so far at least, impossible situation to solve, and history has shown this. It's also the case that most empires don't just collapse like the Soviet Union, over night and really the Soviet Union didn't collapse over a night either—the Soviet Union entered a slow and fairly low intensive terminal phase somewhere between 1923 and 1942/43, 1923 is when Joseph Stalin became the paramount leader of the Soviet Union and 1942/43 was the height of World War II in the Soviet Union, that really destroyed most of that civilization, especially in terms of human capital, well it destroyed the future of the Soviet Union. While the Soviets won World War II, it's clear that they lost the future. So, America will not enter into some kind of rapid collapse, at least that's not likely. America will slowly fade away, and we can see this today as well: What kind of democratic and liberal leader is Donald Trump? Was the opposition that bad, or are Americans really tired of liberalism and perhaps more to the point the ravages of the capitalist production base? Well, that's a question for future historians to answer. But one thing seems to remain clear across time and civilization: only a very strong and prosperous society can afford to lavish in and fool around promiscuously with ideas that enable the worst and most depraved elements of society to gain fair and equal standing: here I'm referring to such things as criminal "justice", a very open and lose immigration policy, an encouraged weakness in men, and an almost sexual and pornographic obsession with the crimes of past generations to the point where it becomes perverted and obscene. But that libertarian vain, if you will, only works as long as civilization continues to intercept the dreams and aspirations of the youth, particularly young men, but once that civilization becomes weak, old, and tired a growing mismatch makes itself apparent between the capacity of that civilization and its aspirations and consequently men start to lose faith in their own civilization and in turn their own ability and the result is stagnation and eventual collapse.

    So, what's the future for America and the world? The immediate future, the contemporary world, is clearly more multi polar than it has been for a while and that will mean that the liberal international order is about to face its imminent defeat, because most of the rest of the world, the world outside America and the imperial core, aren't interested in being bullied around by America, and most of these societies also want better material circumstances, but preferably without the libertarian tendencies of the west. Indeed, most men are very aware of their own sub-unit if you will, this is basically tribalism, and the liberal and humanist suggestion that they should leave that identity behind in order to join the enlightened liberal and cosmopolitan elite isn't going to be that palatable, not at first. Indeed, we are living through a moment where the reaction to the looseness and the imposed lawlessness of the liberal order is about to overtake the old world so to speak, and this will likely profoundly reshape the world and my guess is that China and far more authoritarian powers will become more salient, and my guess is also that the old powers, such as America, of the imperial core will also start to slide into a more authoritarian direction, and it will be this authoritarianism that will kill off the last life left in what was the liberal paradigm. The moment for democratic discourse, the medium of mass politics has come and it has gone; the capitalist production base doesn't care and it will simply move on and the old world will be destroyed and in its ruins a brave new world will arise, and this brave new world will be the start of the post-humanist paradigm. Such is the world.

    Again, these shifts happen in history but they happen slowly, or they used to happen slowly. I believe that technology is a sign of the Kali Yuga and I believe that it is technology that has enabled the acceleration towards death and decay, the race to the bottom if you will. But humanity will be back.

Reginald Drax – November 14, 2025.