“Suicide of a Superpower” – Tracking America’s Accelerating Decline
Perhaps no other factor is more responsible for the decline of American civilization than the existence of the Federal Reserve.
Pat Buchanan’s 2011 book, Suicide of a Superpower, asked the question – Will America Survive to 2025?
Enumerating its political and cultural maladies, Buchanan argued that America was in severe decline and unlikely to last much longer.
In a prescient summary towards the end of the book, Buchanan provided five key reasons for this decline (in fact, he provided seven but two of them are vague and unconvincing). In reviewing those reasons today it’s clear that, exact timing aside, the pace of decline has only quickened, and the long-term survival of America in its current form is increasingly unlikely.
“Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have cost us 6,000 dead, 50,000 wounded, and over $1 trillion. These wars destroyed our post 9/11 national unity, alienated the Islamic world, and enlarged the pool in which Al-Qaeda fishes.”
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continued, and the figures got much worse. Over 7,000 Americans died, 50,000 were wounded, and somewhere between $2 trillion and $8 trillion was spent. In the case of Iraq, hundreds of thousands of innocents died as a direct result of either false or fabricated US and British intelligence.
The war in Afghanistan against the Taliban lasted 20 years, with the final US action a bungled and embarrassing withdrawal that left back billions worth of equipment and thousands of Americans and Afghan allies. The Taliban took back power within days thereafter, and latest reports indicate that they have not implemented action items stemming from the over $1 billion of US taxpayer money spent on gender studies there.
In addition, the US funded and armed Islamist rebel groups in Syria during that country’s civil war, accelerating its demise into a patchwork of hell holes.
In both Syria and Iraq, wars there resulted in the decimation of their respective Christian populations. Both countries previously contained a 10-15% Christian minority. Those Christians are now down to 1%, squeezed out in one way or another by Islamic sectarian power struggles that were simmering prior to these wars and ended up being catalyzed by them. Thus, a group that made significant contributions to the cultural and business environments of both countries is now effectively lost.
All of these wars were ideologically misguided and their execution poorly conceived. Cheer-led by swamp creatures like Victoria Nuland and Dick Cheney, they illustrate an empire on the wane throwing trillions in borrowed money at situations beyond its ability to control or comprehend. Far from spreading prosperity, these wars have sown chaos. As Calgacus said of the Romans, “where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
In our own country, the primary products of this warmongering are economic insolvency and deep resentment from the Arab and Islamic world, which together comprise 25% of the global population.
“Our imperial arrogance caused nations to unite to resist our hegemony, and we deliberately antagonized nations like Russia that wanted to associate with us. People treated like untrustworthy friends and potential enemies often end up becoming so.”
NATO was formed in 1949 to provide collective security against the Soviet Union. Over 30 years after the collapse of that contemptible union, NATO continues to exist, and expands evermore up to Russia’s boundaries. Persistent expansion occurs despite the irrelevance of NATO’s original mandate and the clearly articulated Russian position that such expansion, particularly into Ukraine and/or Georgia, has always been considered the “brightest of red lines.”
In addition to ignoring the famous “nyet means nyet” memo, the US went further and participated in the 2014 coup against the corrupt yet democratically elected Yanukovych regime. The extent of US participation is debated but ranges from meddling to outright orchestration, again reeking with the swamp stench of Victoria Nuland.
Today, the US continues to prop up a 2-year old war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and cost the US taxpayer hundreds of billions of dollars – all for a Ukrainian “democracy” that suspended democratic elections and outlawed everything from religious groups to political parties to television stations that don’t align with the current regime.
As the US continues to throw its increasingly meager and obnoxious weight around, its influence predictably weakens. Recently, BRICS countries have been discussing an effort to promote a gold-backed bloc currency that is just one of many instances of global de-dollarization – the attempt by other countries to reduce their dependence on the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Paraphrasing Buchanan, a country that must borrow from the world in order to protect the world is not sustainable – it’s simply a con that enables foreign policy elites to continue playing the empire game.
“The financial meltdown [of 2008-2009] brought on by the collapse of a housing bubble that government policy created, the easy money policy of the Federal Reserve, and the amorality and casino mind-set of Wall Street.”
Perhaps no other factor is more responsible for the decline of American civilization than the existence of the Federal Reserve. A purely political body with the power to create money ex nihilo removes any checks on the desires of politicians to appropriate the livelihood of citizens for nefarious purposes, from waging endless wars to inflating endless bubbles.
The meltdown of 2008-09 alluded to by Buchanan was born out of a mix between two misguided ideas pushed by government. First, that homeownership is a “right” that must be enjoyed by all, especially the uncreditworthy. Second, that monetary policy can facilitate the achievement of this “right” through the provision of cheap credit.
The result of these ideas was widespread and severe malinvestment. The uncreditworthy did in fact become homeowners, but not for long. Accelerated by absurd floating rate loans and securitized mortgages from Wall Street, they quickly became deadbeats facing foreclosure en masse.
Unfortunately, there were no lessons learned from that crisis. The loose money policies that followed it seem almost quaint and restrained compared to the deluge of money printed in the wake of the covid panic.
Beginning in early 2020, in a fit of monetary madness, the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve nearly tripled in less than two years, leading to pronounced asset bubbles across capital markets as interest rates simultaneously neared the zero bound.
This widespread loose-money policy, closely coordinated between the Federal Reserve and the White House, has warped the psychology of the average American while at the same time robbing them through price inflation. As a result, the merits of productive effort have receded in the minds of Americans, replaced only by a compulsion to speculate in the stock market.
As Buchanan aptly put, such irresponsibility can only end badly. “… [deficits will continue] until the world realizes America will never repay her debts in dollars of the same value as the ones she borrowed. Then the crisis will come.”
“The failure of the U.S. government to secure our border with Mexico and stop a poor peoples’ invasion that is bankrupting our states and will, left unchecked, end our existence as one nation and people.”
Both American political parties have failed to realize the impact of an open southern border and act accordingly. The democrats open borders to consolidate political power by bringing in a people largely reliant on welfare goodies and supportive of the party that provides them – Hillary Clinton’s “broader base on which to build a coalition.” The republicans, on the other hand, fail to secure the border because, for them, failure is endemic. The ability to put action behind rhetoric continues to escape them.
As a result, at least 12 million illegal immigrants now reside in the United States, with some estimates putting that figure well over 30 million. Ancillary industries like drug smuggling and human trafficking thrive, organized by Mexican cartels and accentuated by a misguided “war on drugs.”
By their nature, illegal immigrants do not share traditional American values of merit, order, and self-reliance – otherwise, they would not enter illegally. Rather than recognizing this, the ever-growing diversity cult in America mindlessly repeats slogans like “diversity is our strength” while the country gets weaker by any rational measure.
If not already the case, continued illegal immigration risks splitting America fundamentally into two camps, as described by H.L. Mencken - “those who work for a living and those who vote for a living.”
“A blindness in our leaders to see that the interdependent world for which they and we were made to sacrifice so much…is a mirage. Nations put national interests first.”
The mind virus of collectivism is both a national infection and a global one. Organizations like the IMF, UN, NATO, and EU are abysmal failures that operate on the premise that all cultures and countries are meant to be equally prosperous. They attempt to affect that demented ideal by redistributing capital from rich and productive countries in order to fund the poor and indolent.
By the same token, the US now spends over $70 billion annually in scheduled foreign aid obligations, including over $11 billion to the Arab world and over $17 billion to sub-Saharan Africa – cultures so backward and at odds with traditional American values that no return on that investment is to be expected. But expectations of a return on investment are at odds with the deranged spirit of those contributions. American policy is only an investment in the sense that it’s meant to spread influence. But when the US must borrow from some countries to provide aid to others, who is influencing whom?
Rollin’ Downhill
The US is fundamentally bankrupt. Thirty-four trillion dollars in federal debt, and far more in off-balance-sheet liabilities, on the back of thirty years of low interest rates is a problem that would be unsolvable even if there was the political will to address it. There is no such will.
The US is determined to police the world, but can’t police its own borders. It pushes easy money on its citizens while incapable of paying the interest on its own debt. It preaches collectivist concepts like multiculturalism and diversity while relying on the most productive individuals to fund its annual budgets.
Roughly fifteen years ago, when Pat Buchanan questioned America’s ability to survive, it was in far better shape than it is now. Perhaps the better questions to ask pertain not to whether America will survive, but to what type of death it should experience.
Buchanan's predictions are, unfortunately, even more pertinent today. To this list I would add (and it interweaves with many of these items) the pervasive welfare state and mentality. Workforce participation, for example, was above 66% throughout the late 80s, 90s, and through 2009 but now struggles to stay above 62% (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/). In fact, labor participation in the U.S. is even below the OECD average (https://data.oecd.org/emp/labour-force-participation-rate.htm). It is nearly impossible to find people in this country, including me, who do not receive some kind of illicit "benefits" from the state--social security, Medicare, SNAP, government contracts, student loans--because the welfare system has succeeded in creating dependence.
As you note, the Fed is a prime contributor to this and the aforementioned problems, and it gets to operate largely in the dark. I know of few people who are even aware of what the Fed does, let alone how it impacts their lives every day. At least congresspeople may get irate phone calls and emails from their constituents, but I doubt Jay Powell gets much hate (or fan) mail from ordinary Americans.
Thanks for another insightful article.