The American predicament: Why the Empire seems doomed [American Politics #21]

Ted Grimsrud—October 21, 2026

I keep paying attention to our current global situation, but I have not found clarity about what to say so have been pretty quiet. But I have some thoughts today. It is almost exactly fifty years that I have been a critic of the United States’s foreign policies and general stance in the world. I came of age at the end of the Vietnam War when my growing awareness of the evils of that war combined with new understandings of the message of Jesus to lead me to take a pacifist stance. My Jesus-inspired pacifism and my antipathy about the American Empire have continued to reinforce each other and deepen in the years since.

I have a book newly published (see comments for a link) that tells much of this story—Love is the Way: A Christian Pacifist in the American Empire. What I offer here is kind of a coda to that book (or maybe the outline for a sequel). In all these years since my epiphany about Empire and the gospel, I have believed that the Empire’s days were numbered. Now, those days are fewer than ever before. I have brainstormed a list of reasons why the end seems nigh.

This is just a beginning of a thought process. The list is suggestive, not complete. I don’t have a particular order of importance yet.

THE US CAN’T LOSE WARS

(1) It could be that this first point may be decisive in the short-term fatal dynamics: The US is congenitally unable to lose a war. Due to unrealistic estimates of our military capabilities, we have initiated two wars in the 2020s against Russia and Iran that, to be blunt, we are certain to lose (in reality, already have lost). However, the leaders of our country cannot acknowledge that reality and thus take steps to make the best of the situation. Instead, they seem to have no option but to blunder ahead and make things worse and worse. Our proxies, Israel in Western Asia and NATO in Ukraine, certainly fuel the wars. No one can say where the proxies end and the Americans start—all these entities are intertwined. The corporate war machine cares only about short-term profits. It will not allow its paid-for minions in political leadership to take steps to break the warring cycle and actually move toward peace.

Americans have long refused to admit defeat (Lyndon Johnson famously said back in the sixties when he realized the American war effort in Vietnam was hopeless, “I will not be the first American president to lose a war,” and continued the failed war for many more years). However, today the US cannot simply step back and retain its dominant world position. Russia and Iran are more powerful than other countries we have aggressed upon over the past eighty years. They have both long prepared for defensive wars against American aggression, developed advanced military technology that now surpasses the American’s, and joined together with each other and China in a loose network of mutual support that enhances their strength versus the US. The US theoretically could step back now, negotiate peace with Russia and Iran, and find its way as one great power among several. But our system simply cannot allow such a change of course.

PROFIT-, NOT PURPOSE-, DRIVEN MILITARY

(2) In contrast to its adversaries, the US has a profit-driven military system. China, Iran, and Russia all have purpose-driven military systems (actual national defense in face of American aggression). After World War II America’s emerging National Security State locked into place the enormously profitable nuclear weapons regime and adversarial dynamics of the Cold War. For a long time, the investment in military hardware and a global system of military bases provided an illusion of unstoppable American military power. American military interventions always made a lot of money for the corporations, but they also seemed to display great American power. American wars could be seen as successful due to preventing the emergence of important parts of the world that would be independent of American hegemony.

Problems are now apparent with our system that pours so much money into weapons programs producing great profits but inferior products. In the face of the current unprecedented stresses on the system as we pursue two wars of aggression against highly capable adversaries, the American system’s profound weaknesses have become all too apparent. The US spends many times more money on its military than Russia and Iran but has been outperformed. Factoring in China, we see three nations with some degree of central planning that focus their resources on supporting “reality-based” militaries that insure the defeat of the much richer US and its allies.

BIPARTISAN WARISM

(3) The US has pursued this self-destructive warist path because, since the end of World War II, national politics have reflected a powerful bipartisan consensus in favor of warism. Amidst the illusion of unprecedented partisan polarization in 21^st-century America, greatly expanded military budgets have sailed through Congress without a blip. For example, one of the great slight-of-hand moves in modern politics has been the portrayal of President Trump as pro-Russian as a way to gain support from Democrats for the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

The US sails into interventions with scarcely a peep from Congress. Many strong war supporters are Democrats—who receive much money from warist corporations. Support for warism stems from and serves corporate profits. It has little to do with concerns for the actual security of Americans. The American Empire races toward doom because it pursues warist policies and treats conflicts around the world as money making opportunities and invests virtually nothing in actual peacemaking. Because of the bipartisan character of the legislative branch’s embrace of warism, a turn away from this self-defeating path seems unimaginable.

DEMOCRACY NOT FUNCTIONING

(4) Our democracy barely seems to be functioning. On issue after issue, the American people have little power to shape the policies of the federal government. It is not only warism. We may point to a few, perhaps only partial, exceptions, but basically the policies that emerge on virtually all major issues reflect the interests of the rich and powerful not the sizeable majority of Americans. One consequence is that the chances for an uprising by the majority of the American people to turn the tide from the slide toward national catastrophe—the big selling point of a democratic system—seem virtually nonexistent.

In various ways (such as large donor financing of political campaigns, the corporate takeover of the judicial branch of the federal government, the non-democratic electoral college, etc.) the American political system is set up not to be responsive to public opinion. This non-responsiveness greatly reduces the potential of the one main strategy to challenge our warist status quo—empowering the people to insist on having their interests served by the government.

WEAKNESS OF HEGEMONIC MILITARY SYSTEMS

(5) The current wars in Ukraine and Iran make clear the inherent weakness of forward-oriented, hegemonic military systems vis-à-vis fundamentally defense-oriented military systems. In the post-World War II era, the US has fought only wars of aggression. The less-than-successful character of all these wars has a lot to do with both the difficult logistics of managing wars in distant lands and the motivational dynamics of the nation gearing up for costly wars and accepting large losses of life. When there is no good reason to be fighting, a society is not likely to be willing to pay much of a cost—even when the costs are largely hidden from the people.

In contrast, for America’s adversaries, these wars often are existential threats to their national survival. Having the wars close to hand gives them an advantage with logistics. And the emotional dynamics of facing possible eradication generally tend to strengthen the adversaries’ resolve and to pull together previously divided factions within the countries. We see no sign that the US can step back from these inherently disadvantageous dynamics. The Empire seems irrevocably committed to global dominance and to the sense that such dominance may be achieved only through a kind of brute, coercive force that seems certain to fail.

DEBILITATING CORRUPTION

(6) As the US military system’s main purpose became profit generation for the military contractors, a consequence has been the growth of debilitating corruption. The Pentagon has little accountability for where its money goes. The budget is never audited, in spite of legislation that requires that it be. A revolving door between leaders of the military and government moves back and forth to extremely lucrative positions in the corporate sector. Arms makers face little accountability for cost overruns, for defective hardware, and for regularly missing deadlines for delivery. Though our propaganda system effectively mutes public awareness of the influence of war profiteers in steering American policy toward choices that prioritize corporate income, the policies that follow continually undermine the health of the Empire.

The consequences of such long-term corruption become unavoidably apparent in face of the dismal performance of the American military in our current wars. In spite of our current failures, pulling back from the suicidal spiral of American warism remains politically unimaginable for our legislators. In fact, the failures enhance short term profitability as failed systems must be replaced. Those in power are beholden to their corporate benefactors way more than to the American people.

COSTLY LINKAGE WITH ISRAEL

(7) American linkage with Israel is costly. America’s most significant foreign alliance over the past sixty years has surely been the one with Israel. After Israel’s 1967 victory in the Six-Day War, American foreign policy leaders decided to pursue a full commitment to Israel. For the past sixty years, though occasionally voicing criticisms of Israel’s violence toward its Palestinian neighbors, the US offered mostly unconditional economic and logistical support for Israel’s warist institutions and policies. This seemingly unstoppable commitment to Israel no matter what seems now to be playing a key role in the breakdown of the American Empire.

Following the October 7, 2023, uprising in Gaza, the dynamics have moved to a more intense and dangerous level. The US fully funds and provides logistical support for Israel’s overwhelming devastation of Gaza that has reached genocidal proportions. Following on the violence in Gaza, the US joined Israel in attacking Iran. The Iran conflict immediately revealed American and Israeli weaknesses and became an un precedented US foreign policy disaster. The worst consequences are still to come due to impending extreme global economic trauma. Powerful supporters of Israel shape Trump’s choices to pursue this war. The Americans and Israelis did not account on the effectiveness of Iran’s preparations for such an attempt and as a consequence find themselves stuck in a conflict that they can’t win but also can’t withdraw from.

CHRISTIANITY FUELS IMPERIALIST NATIONALISM

(8) The relationship between Christianity and the American Empire fuels the problematic imperial character of the nation. The United States has often been labeled a “Christian country.” Most American people have understood themselves to be Christians, national leaders have readily used Christian language in public, and quite often the explicitly non-Christian self-identification of the main American adversaries has fueled the sense that US warism carries the favor of the Christian God.

The place of Christianity in the American Empire makes resistance to the self-destructive elements of the Empire less possible. To see the policies of the Empire as divinely blessed makes opposing them to seem to actually oppose God. The biblical story, I believe, does provide resources for stepping away from the Empire. However, as long as American Christians give their highest loyalties to their homeland, these biblical resources will be very difficult to access. The role that Christianity has played in the United States down through its history to our present day in practice has enabled the worst elements of its imperial identity.

PRESENCE OF WHITE SUPREMACY

(9) The presence of white supremacy has always characterized many American leaders. I have been interested in American history my entire life, but only very recently have I begun to appreciate just how foundational to our national identity two founding dynamics have been—the genocidal wresting of the land from its indigenous populations and the violence embedded with the enslavement of African peoples. These two dynamics established at the heart of the nation a distain for the Other that made genocide and enslavement possible. This embedded white supremacy has continued to shape American warism down to the present. Note the racial component of most of America’s wars from the conquest of the indigenous North American peoples through the various wars of conquest and imperialism throughout the world down to our present aggressions toward Asian peoples, west and east.

Various factors have contributed to the failures of current American military interventions, but surely the importance of the almost instinctive disrespect American leaders have toward the Other (usually racially Other) we seek to dominate has led both to willingness to seek to kill them and to underestimate their capabilities. White supremacy has played a major role in the American Empire’s inability to organize itself in genuinely democratic and life-enhancing ways for most of its people. This inability weakens the Empire in many ways, including at the center a failure to guard itself against self-destructive inequalities and ambitions.

MYTH OF REDEMPTIVE VIOLENCE

(10) I limit my list of reasons for the demise of the American Empire to ten items, mainly in hope to keep the list somewhat manageable. I am sure I could think of quite a few more. With number 10, I will name as the American belief in the myth of redemptive violence. The American people and especially American leaders believe that violence is the solution to many of our seemingly intractable problems. Hence, they devote truly unbelievable amounts of money to warism that dwarfs the amounts within the federal budget for any other kind of expenditures and dwarfs the amount of money any other country in the world spends on warism.

The big problem with such devotion to this myth is that, like other myths that become the bases for our idolatries (e.g., money, domination of nature, white supremacy, patriarchy), it profoundly distorts the perspectives of those who affirm it. Violence does not resolve our problems; it only makes them worse. We see from points one through nine above that America’s belief in violence will lead to its self-destruction. The idol of warism fools people to believe in its efficacy and then draws them deeper and deeper into its web of deceit. It becomes virtually impossible for the downward spiral to be arrested. The 10 elements on the overall list above reinforce each other. These items cannot be dealt with one by one in isolation from one another. We have here a web of brokenness almost guaranteed to get ever worse in the days to come.

Conclusion

I believe that the important question that emerges from this list of elements of the American Empire’s doom is not, “how may we fix this?” so much as “how may we live humanely in such a context?” A key first step may be truly to give up on the Empire. To me, such a step means no longer giving my loyalty to this nation state, no longer trusting what its leaders say, no longer imagining that the country of my birth in any sense acts as an agent of God in the world. This step of disbelief may be necessary to find creative space for constructive paths moving forward. And the constructive paths may mainly lead to local options, face-to-face connections, simply finding ways to be human in the face of growing darkness and chaos and not trying to figure out how America can be fixed.

My energies right now are going into studying and thinking and writing about the story of Jesus. One of the main questions I ask is this: What do we learn from Jesus about living with little overt political power in the face of a ruthless empire? What may we hope to do that will promote life in a culture of death? I suspect this question will take on more urgency as the doom the US Empire faces becomes ever more apparent.

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