Date: Wednesday, 11 February 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/the-us-empire-in-decline-grows-more
https://theduran.com/the-u-s-empire-in-decline-grows-more-aggressive-like-the-roman
The U.S. Empire in decline grows more aggressive like the Roman Empire did.
10 February 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
I just asked Google AI "Did the Roman Empire become more aggressive toward its end?" and got this:
"Did the Roman Empire become more aggressive toward its end?"
Yes, the late Roman Empire became more aggressively militarized. ... The military became more dominant, with the army doubled in size but with decreasing effectiveness.
AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE: In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the empire, particularly in the West, relied on frequent, violent, and often punitive campaigns against Germanic tribes and the Sassanid Empire to maintain control, rather than sustainable diplomacy or fortification.
FAILED SECURITY STRATEGY: As borders became harder to defend, the empire moved from preventing invasions to "active defense," attempting to repel invaders with local forces, which proved costly and inefficient.
INTERNAL CHAOS AND BRUTALITY: The late Empire was characterized by civil wars and frequent coups, where armies fought each other for the throne.
Economic Collapse: This constant, desperate fighting, combined with the need to pay off large standing armies, severely crippled the economy.
I think that that is a fair and accurate summary of the late Roman Empire in decline, and also of today’s late American empire (which, unlike Rome’s, is an undeclared though even more real empire) in decline.
An article by a brilliant Tanzanian, Kennedy Mmari, placed both the Roman Empire and the American empire into the broader context of empires throughout history (something that standard accounts of the Roman Empire’s fall, such as this, don’t do, because very few historians possess the ability of an investigative historian), and so I present here links to that full article by Mmari:
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“Echoes of Desperation: The Violent Twilight of Fading Empires and Lessons for the Modern World”
The echoes of Rome’s relentless military campaigns, the Byzantine Empire’s catastrophic sackings, the Ottoman Empire’s violent suppressions, and the British Empire’s brutal repressions are not just distant memories but relevant warnings.
16 July 2024, by Kennedy Mmari
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That article makes clear something very important: As an imperial power — a nation which has foreign colonies (or ‘allies’ that it uses various coercive means in order to control especially the colony’s foreign policies) — is in its declining phase, the imperial country becomes increasingly aggressive, like the U.S. is now. Therefore, the question in our own time is: Will the U.S. Government go all the way to using nuclear weapons in order to further expand its empire (such as to acquire Russia or China, or to re-acquire Iran) or else to prevent one of its existing colonies from leaving its empire? The signs are unfortunately unfavorable: it is heading in that direction — toward World War Three.
Donald Trump has announced his intention to increase U.S. military spending by an additional $500B per year above what he calls “the $1 Trillion Dollar number” that is currently being expended by the Department of War. (The actual current annual War Department budget is instead $900B, but he wanted to overstate it by $100B so that his proposed amount $1.5T would seem to be only a $500B annual increase instead of the actual $600B annual increase that he’s trying to get.) However, each year, the U.S. Government spends around 40% of its annual military expenses outside of the War Department, in such Departments as Veterans Affairs, Energy, Treasury, Homeland Security, and others, so that the public won’t know the full amount of the federal budget that’s going toward the military. He has also terminated all arms-control treaties so as to allow the Pentagon (the War Department) to skyrocket its armaments-purchases, which are enormously profitable to America’s billionaires.
None of the empire’s think tanks (all controlled by its billionaires) has yet done a fair analysis of what Trump’s proposal would do to America’s fiscal standing (one of them says it will cost only $5.8T over ten years, which is less than even the $6T cash costs of the hikes, without any interest being additionally due on them; so it’s just ridiculous), but the American Enterprise Institute, a far rightwing think tank, issued a 10-page study, “How to Provide an Increase of $600 Billion for Defense”, and so the billionaires’ neoconservative propaganda orientation about this matter is clear. And this is what we should expect on the basis of the increasing military aggressiveness of empires during their declining phase.
Right now, each year, the U.S. Government expends 65% of the entire planet’s annual military expenses. Obviously, such a country is a dictatorship by its super-rich and NOT any sort of authentic democracy.
On February 8th, I headlined “America Must Be Regime-Changed” and documented that if the U.S. dictatorship — which craves to encompass the entire world — will not soon be defeated, then we’ll head straight into WW3.
The mechanism by which past empires became increasingly aggressive toward the end is that the wealthiest class always controlled each of the political Parties and deceived their publics to believe that the cause of the people’s problems was ‘the other’ Party, instead of the super-rich who controlled all of the Parties. In America, the billionaires play a good-cop-bad-cop routine with us: they provide the Democratic Party as ‘the good cop’ and the Republican Party as ‘the bad cop’ while BOTH “cops” carry the billionaires’ neocon-neolib policy-agenda but on the DOMESTIC-POLICY side the ‘good cop’ Democrats soften that neoliberalism enough to draw progressive voters and so to make this two-Party fascist country a ‘democracy’. However, since international affairs (foreign policies) are simply too abstract for most voters to have any ability rationally to understand, BOTH Parties are (in congress) at least 98% neoconservatives. Sadly, even progressive voters don't notice it; and, therefore, the Democratic Party can get away with being just as neocon as is the Republican Party is. And the billionaires care more about foreign affairs than about domestic affairs; so, the imperialistic country routinely does illegal (unauthorized by the U.N.) sanctions, subversions, coups, and invasions, and all other forms of international aggressions, which can very easily provoke a nuclear response from a country such as Russia or China whose essential national-security “red lines” get crossed by either the imperial power itself or or else by its slave-states (colonies — ‘allies’). That’s how the world could end, and it could happen soon unless there will soon be regime-change in America to end its empire — a breakup of the empire that is endangering everything. America’s billionaires (like Israel’s) are desperate for more power (more money) — they are addicted to it, and this might become a world-terminating addiction that they have, unless it can be overcome soon.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
