Ted Grimsrud—February 24, 2025
I have believed for a long time that the world will be better off when the American Empire falls from its stature as the most powerful superpower. For a long time, I hoped against hope that this fall would be voluntary, that somehow the US would choose to let go of its drive to dominate the world as the top dog and find ways to be collaborative in a multipolar world.
Is the American Empire falling our only hope for peace?
I now simply cannot imagine that a voluntary giving up of domination will happen. It seems likely that only the American Empire falling apart and involuntarily losing its hold of the world’s reins of power will save the world. And it seems like we are headed toward that outcome perhaps more rapidly than ever. This may be good for the world—though not if the US fights so hard against its demise that it takes the rest of the world down with it.
I don’t understand very well the details of what is going on right now. Obviously, we see a shocking assault on the federal government by the newly installed Trump administration, an assault that seems ill-considered, ill-planned, vicious and destructive for viciousness’s and destructiveness’s sake. At the same time, I do not trust or respect most of the critiques of Trump, et al, that come from Democrats and the mainstream corporate media.
It seems like an extremely important sensibility for me—though I see little evidence of this in most of the discourse on our current situation—to see that both sides in our current political alignment in this country can be, in fundamental ways, wrong. Trump’s (and his acolytes’) horrifically misguided visiting what may be irreversible damage on our country does not negate the Democrats’ own misguided politics.
I actually don’t know which side of the political aisle has been more destructive of peace in our current world. The Republicans lay waste to the remnants of American democracy, but the Democrats have moved us closer to nuclear war. I strongly supported Bernie Sanders in the 2020 presidential campaign. I still clearly remember the genuine sense of hope I felt when Bernie won the Nevada primary in February 2020. At that moment, he seemed to have a clear path to victory, and I believed he would seek to be an agent of actual change. However, the tide turned in shocking rapidity. The establishment of the Democratic Party, seemingly orchestrated by Barack Obama, rallied behind the to-that-point failing campaign of Joe Biden. Most of the other candidates dropped out, and the wheels of power squashed the Sanders campaign.
The COVID pandemic worked in Biden’s favor. Trump’s incompetence in responding to it increased his unpopularity. The greatly shrunken public context for the campaign helped lessen the proven inadequacies of Biden as a presidential campaigner. He rallied from being an afterthought in the campaign in mid-February to being president-elect in November. Biden carefully did not to over-alienate the progressive forces that had rallied behind Sanders (and to a lesser degree, Elizabeth Warren). He even campaigned on some humane policies. However, clearly from the start Bidens’s foreign policy intended to continue to seek American global hegemony.
Biden did manage to defeat the unpopular Trump and also managed to be joined by small Democratic majorities in the both the House and the Senate. So, Biden began his administration with some great opportunities. It seems to me that the Sanders campaign had demonstrated strong support among the Democratic base for various progressive policies. What the Democratic Congress managed to pass in Biden’s first two years only weakly furthered those policies. Some good came from those bills, but most will now be turned back by Trump.
Biden’s disastrous warism
The Biden people (it is now clear that Biden’s diminished cognitive capacities, apparent already during the 2020 campaign but mostly kept out of sight, affected his leadership significantly) operated with fewer restraints from progressives with regard to foreign policy. From the start, Biden, et al, exacerbated tensions in the simmering Ukraine-Russia conflict and offered on-going essentially unconditional support for the Netanyahu government in Israel in its efforts to squash the people of Gaza and the West Bank.
By the time these two sets of conflicts reached boiling points, any possible Democratic Party dissent from Biden’s policies had become impossible. So, the US proceeded full steam ahead in pouring billions of dollars’ worth of weapons and logistical support into both conflicts leading to so much death and destruction—and a refusal to use US power to push for negotiations and peace agreements.
Ironically, the Biden, et al, push for war in Ukraine—driven by and justified by expectations that this war would greatly diminish Russia’s power (as well as pour billions of dollars into the coffers of American weapons makers)—has backfired in major ways. The sanctions against Russia actually pushed the Russians to expand their economy in other directions to their great benefit. And the hostility from the US/NATO elites toward Russia provided the occasion for Russia significantly deepening its growing alliance with China. Russia also strengthened its connections with the other countries that have joined together in the BRICS alliance attempting to provide global alternatives to the US-centered world economic order that so hurts most of the countries of the global south.
The other big problem for the American Empire in Ukraine has been the failure of the Ukrainian forces to wage the war effectively despite all the weapons and support from US/NATO. We are on the brink of a Ukrainian collapse and decisive Russian victory. The Russian military forces, viewed with scorn by many of the Western elites prior to the war’s acceleration in February 2022, have proven to be more than a match for the US/NATO/Ukrainian forces. This war has been a disaster for the US/NATO in many ways. The negative consequences for the nations of Europe will continually be made apparent in the months and years to come.
The wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine demonstrate the ability of both sides of our political polarity between conservatives and liberals to be wrong. The liberals legitimately criticize the anti-democratic and terrifying frenzy of the Trumpists who willy-nilly tear apart our bloated and only partially effective federal government with no apparent concern with actually making the government better serve the wellbeing of the American people. However, along with the legitimate criticisms, almost every liberal commentator adds complaints about Trump’s efforts to back off from the self-destructive proxy war in Ukraine. The Democrats have only wanted to double down on the disasters of the Biden policies that have been so destructive of life in Ukraine and so self-defeating for American national interests.
Where to turn?
I find only a few analysts to be trustworthy in offering guidance about how to think about these issues. The “liberal” media (New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic) that I consult all seem hopeless. And the conservatives turned away from reality a long time ago and offer even more distorting propaganda than the liberals.
There are only a few scattered voices that I trust these days. Aaron Maté may be the best. I like John Meiersheimer and Jeffrey Sachs among the more mainstream and prominent thinkers. Caitlyn Johnstone is a passionate and insightful anti-empire humanist—as is Chris Hedges. Julian Macfarlene, an obscure Canadian living in Japan, has thoughtful commentary as does the anonymous writer on the Moon of Alabama blog. Helena Cobban, a British Quaker journalist, Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian political scientist, and Brian Berletic, an American now living in Bangkok, are also people I find helpful. But there are precious few others.
I find myself remembering priorities I have focused on in past times of stress and distress. I can’t really do anything to overcome this dire situation we are in where every realistic political option in the US is actually an option for death. What I can do is double down on my core convictions and try harder to learn from history. Better understandings always seem to help at least a little. So, for example, I go back to the main elements of the Bible’s teachings that have shaped my commitment to pacifism. And I read books such as the 678-page Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine by Scott Horton (The Libertarian Institute, 2024).
Thinking Pacifism 
I don’t have any real insight as to whether US Empire can “fall” (unwind or whatever) and the US lose world domination without also failing as a democracy (even the only-partial one it is currently).
I AM convinced the next few months, POSSIBLY years will be crucial. Trump suffers from the same sick hubris that all dictators (or wannabes) do. Thus we’ll see him moving to make himself the “unified executive”, above the law, and “for life” (essentially dictator). It’s possible our two-party duopoly (increasingly an authoritarian corporotacracy) will prevent this.
However, a much better way will be deliberative democracy, via a Transpartisan movement, which already has pretty firm roots and is growing.