Various writers seem to think that the American empire is in serious decline. There are signs to consider. As just observed, the American economy is in serious trouble, with chronic recession, structural unemployment, growing poverty, and a huge foreign debt and trade deficit.
In South America, countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina are pursuing a reformist self-developing path in defiance of the imperial New World Order. Not only in South America but across the planet, opinion is largely critical of US arrogance and aggression.
Then there is the Colossus of the East: China. With its massive population and dramatic economic growth, China is out-producing just about everyone else, emerging as the most formidable player in the international economy, the only country that seems to have no fear of the United States. While the United States sinks deeper into debt, China grows in production and earnings. China also controls the credit and holds the chips.
Furthermore, as Andre Vltchek reports, China is developing impressively. The government is trying to introduce universal health insurance and more adequate environmental protections. Minimal wages are much higher than in Indonesia and the Philippines, and vastly better than in India. The present Beijing administration is reintroducing labor protection for workers. China has constructed the longest network of electric trains, running at over 400km/h (fastest in the world). More than thirty cities are building massive subway systems, while a dozen other cities already have such systems. The trains, buses, and subways charge modest fares, being themselves publicly subsidized. Public buses run on electricity or natural gas. Bicycle lanes are everywhere, and electric bicycles are being produced and encouraged. In addition, there are the admirable new public parks with lakes, sports facilities, and free exercise machines used by many. And China is the only country in Asia that has a coherent population control program. With its one-child policy it is making a strong effort at “sustainability.”19
Meanwhile, China is outperforming the US global empire. As James Petras points out, in parts of Latin America, Africa, and especially Asia, China is emerging as the principal trading partner. While the US wallows in pointless conflicts in marginal countries like Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan and organizes a dirty coup in tiny Honduras, “China signs on to billion-dollar joint ventures in oil and iron projects in Brazil and Venezuela and an Argentine grain production. The US specializes in propping up broken states like Mexico and Columbia, while China invests heavily in extractive industries in Angola, Nigeria, South Africa, and Iran” and “deepens its links with the dynamic economies of South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Brazil, and the oil riches of Russia and the raw materials of Africa.”20
Getting back to the United States: before predicting the fall of the US empire, we should not underestimate its capacity for durability and regeneration. Setbacks and defeats do not necessarily consign empires to the graveyard of history. The United States suffered a serious defeat in Vietnam, yet in the face of dire predictions to the contrary, US imperialism became still stronger in the years that followed.
An empire dedicated to boundless corporate plunder is—unfortunately—more likely to undo the global ecosphere before it undoes itself. The titanic expenditures needed to maintain military supremacy leave little money for environmental initiatives. Drought problems— once peculiar only to the US Southwest—now threaten every region of the country. Pollution and health problems intensify as chemical spraying over rural and urban communities increases. In the aftermath of America’s worst environmental disaster (the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) President Obama did not reverse his endorsement of deepwater drilling and nuclear power. In his first two years in office, he did next to nothing about the climate crisis.
A secret Pentagon report from 2004 predicted that global catastrophe was imminent and perhaps even unavoidable. “Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.”21 In a Russia beset by drought and record temperatures, fires destroyed millions of acres of farmlands and forests in 2010, along with one-third of Russia’s grain crop. Whole villages were destroyed. Thousands of people sickened from the smoke inhalation, and thousands died as carbon monoxide levels reached over six times the maximum allowable level. The death rate in Moscow doubled amid the heat and toxic smoke. In Pakistan that same year, nearly twenty million people lost everything to floods; over 1,500 perished.22
The US empire presides over the global unraveling of nature without so much as a plan of action. The US empire has more important things to do: pursue corporate profit opportunities and capital accumulation, and vanquish those who try to oppose or deviate from this course. To the extent the empire deals at all with the climate crisis, it is only to figure out new ways of making a profit off it.23