Date: Monday, 29 June 2026
https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/proof-that-the-us-empire-is-ending
https://theduran.com/proof-that-the-u-s-empire-is-ending/
Proof that the U.S. Empire Is Ending
28 June 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)
An empire has two phases, growth and decline; and in the decline phase — its ending phase — it cannot any longer deny that it over-extended itself and must accept, and does accept, the loss of some of its territories. Typically this happens even as the empire continues for yet a while longer its efforts to acquire new territories — to expand. However, the very fact that it is already shedding territory proves that its growth-phase is over. Only gradually does an empire adjust to the inevitability of its ending. This is its decline-phase. Whereas greed and arrogance dominate increasingly during an empire’s growth-phase, desperation and reality-denial dominate increasingly during an empire’s decline-phase. So, this is now the era of desperation and reality-denial throughout the Deep State that controls the U.S. empire — the world’s only remaining empire. The empire is in the contraction-phase now. And for all individuals who are deluded still to believe that the empire carries the worldwide torch of democracy and of freedom, whereas the countries that it hasn’t yet acquired carry instead the torch of dictatorship and enslavement — for all such deceived persons, who self-identify with the empire against its intended victim-nations — this phase, decline, is a horrific disappointment (such as this example of that disappointment from Stephen Bryen).
On June 27th, Simplicius76 headlined “New Report Reveals True Extent of Devastation of US Fifth Fleet HQ in Bahrain” and opened:
Another ‘bombshell’ has been released by WSJ regarding the extent of the damage dished out by Iran onto US regional bases, corroborated by detailed new satellite photos:
[He linked to the Wall Street Journal article, and I provide here the article’s opening and both that direct link and also a link to an archived copy of it (for individuals who aren’t subscribers to the WSJ).]
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/iran-us-naval-base-bahrain-e87bbca3
VISUAL INVESTIGATION
How Iran Devastated an American Naval Base—and Caused a U.S. Recalculation
Satellite imagery reveals for the first time the extent of what Iran destroyed at Naval Support Activity Bahrain
25 July 2026
When the Iranian missiles and drones came for the nerve center of America’s naval operations in the Middle East, some of them hit their mark.
The U.S. Navy base in Bahrain was repeatedly targeted between late February and June. Strikes that got through caused extensive damage, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of satellite imagery, social-media footage and interviews with current and former servicemembers — damage that the Pentagon hasn’t publicly acknowledged. Hit hard were the command headquarters and at least a dozen other buildings, along with two satellite communications terminals. ]
The most shocking revelation from the report surrounded findings about the US’s NSA (Naval Support Activity) Bahrain base, where the Fifth Fleet Headquarters are housed.
Less than 150 miles from Iran’s southern coast, NSA Bahrain has been the anchor of American naval power in the Middle East for more than three decades. The base can host every type of ship in the U.S. fleet, and has played a critical role in countering Iranian weapon smuggling, minelaying and tanker attacks.
They report that the US Fifth Fleet Headquarters has been rendered “unusable”—at least in part—after taking a huge ballistic strike:
Fifth Fleet headquarters
Iran damaged part of the headquarters for the Navy's Fifth Fleet, which covers the Middle East. The building is no longer usable, according to a U.S. official.
Estimated construction cost: $200 million
That building alone, according to the report, is estimated at $200 million. The total for the rest of the Bahrain base was double that:
The damage to that HQ and other bases was so extensive that the US is apparently considering moving some of them “further west” rather than rebuilding them:
The military is now considering revamping the base in Bahrain, reducing the U.S. presence in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and moving some bases or base functions west, farther from the reach of Iranian missiles and drones, according to the officials familiar with the deliberations.
Structures that were attacked may not be rebuilt. Command and control nodes could be moved underground. And military capabilities could become more spread out across the region, the officials said, though they cautioned that no decisions had been made.
They write that the CSIS estimated the damage to the bases could be as high as an eye-watering $5 billion dollars:
Pentagon comptroller Jay Hurst told Congress last month that the department’s estimated cost of the war, then at $29 billion, didn’t include damage to U.S. bases.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated in a report published Tuesday that the total cost of the war was about $40 billion. That estimate included their calculus of $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion in damage to U.S. bases, based on structures that CSIS identified as damaged.
The base was like a small American city, with all its trappings and excesses:
“We’ve been there for more than 50 years, and the base grew up the way the base grew up,” said retired Vice Adm. John “Fozzie” Miller, who commanded U.S. naval forces in the Middle East. “I think there are some things we would do differently.”
As the only U.S. posting in the Middle East where families could live, the base functioned like a small American city, with a softball field, restaurants, a naval exchange and a school. Sailors who spent weeks at sea would pull into Bahrain and head to the base to decompress.
Retired Marine Corps colonel Mark Cancian laments that last time he was at the now-ravaged base, troops were taking part in an innocent little rite of imperial hedonism, or in other words a “dance party”:
“When I was there last time, they were having a dance party,” said Cancian, who was based at NSA Bahrain twice.
Sailors and Marines dancing at Naval Support Activity Bahrain in 2014. Michael J. Lieberknecht/U.S. Navy
As the saying goes, I guess “the party’s over.”
And this closing from the WSJ piece truly emblemizes that:
“We defended our installations admirably, but the munitions that got through hit infrastructure required for us to conduct operations,” said Dr. Ravi Chaudhary, a former assistant secretary of the Air Force. “This is the byproduct of 10 years of Iran adapting its strike technologies for greater range and accuracy.”
The decisions the U.S. makes now—what to reconstruct, what to abandon, how far to pull back—will define its presence in the Middle East for a generation.
The US has long been lax, never expecting anyone to dare strike its bases directly, probably as the Romans didn’t expect Odoacer to sack the throne in their final terminally ill period. Or maybe they just didn’t care anymore. The US had coasted on its aura of “invincibility” for so long that its core had been hollowed out; by the time Iran struck, the once “feared” US was a shell of its former self, and its bases were vaporized with little effort.
The entire Imperium is disintegrating at the peripheries and the US no longer has the tensile strength left to keep a grip on it. All its remaining resources are wasted to be shuttled back and forth, plugging gaps and putting out fires, here in Ukraine, there in the Gulf region.
But hey, the dance parties sure are sweet! …at least until the hypersonic screams start drowning out the DJ’s tunes.
The Empire has no clothes, as has been revealed almost daily, with the latest affirming news that F-35s are in fact now being delivered to the US Marine Corps without any radars:
https://www.twz.com/air/its-official-f-35s-are-now-being-delivered-without-radars
The above news had come months ago, but many “experts” claimed it was being misinterpreted and that F-35 jets were not actually being delivered with no radars.
Now we’ve got the final word on the matter straight from the head of the F-35 Joint Program Office this week:
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Masiello, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO), disclosed the acceptance of the six radarless F-35Bs at a hearing before members of the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week. This came as part of a larger back-and-forth between Masiello and Senator Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and a retired naval aviator, about F-35 readiness rates across the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy, which have long been a point of concern.
“We have accepted six aircraft for the Marine Corps that do not have a radar installed. That is correct,” Masiello confirmed.
Kelly then asked if this was due to a lack of available AN/APG-85 radars, which Masiello also confirmed.
When it comes to the continuing saga of the AN/APG-85, F-35s are now being delivered without any radars, and it could be years still before that changes.
Read that again—it could be years before F-35s can be delivered with radars.
The even more devastating revelation was that the F-35 mission readiness rate has plunged to an abysmal 25%:
Two weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a Congressional watchdog, released a report stating that the average F-35 full mission capable (FMC) rate across all variants had fallen from 38 to 25 percent between Fiscal Years 2020 and 2025. GAO defines FMC as an aircraft “that can perform all of its missions.” The F-35 JPO has not disputed GAO’s figures directly, but has openly disagreed with the methodology it uses to determine FMC.
That means only 25% of all F-35s are able to perform all their missions at any given time, while the rest suffer through hangar queen syndrome.
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MY CLOSING COMMENT:
That from Simplicius76 is the myth-busting — the entirely scientific — analysis that explains both the Democratic and the Republican Party lies to the contrary, lies that the billionaires who fund both Parties constantly pump to their suckers who vote for their candidates, because billionaires crave for the imperial military-industrial-complex and extraction-industries’ gravy-train of exploiting the world to keep on running for as long as they can, and so they need for those voters to believe that THIS is “democracy,” and that the countries they’ve not yet acquired are “dictatorships” which should become such “democracies.”
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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.
