The Empire Has Collapsed

April 1, 2025

Recently the Paul Bogle Action Network (PBAN) interviewed Dr. Horace Bartilow, Ph.D., Author and professor of International Political Economy and American Foreign Policy at American University, Washington D.C. to discuss China in the context of the current state of the world economy, the crisis of US imperialism and the outlook for the BRICS economic and Trade collaboration.

PBAN: It has been reported that China has sold most of its Treasury holdings for gold; and we also see that now BRICS is expanding. Given the current state of the US economy, can the United States with its idiocy of Tariffs, afford a quote/unquote “trade war?”

Professor Bartilow: No, I mean no! The answer to that is clearly no. You can talk to any of the leading economists in this country or the world, Tariffs are not going to do anything in fact it is going to backfire on the United States. This is so because number one, China has been preparing for any kind of sanctions or Tariffs against Chinese products; they have been preparing for this going on for maybe seven years. China has been creeping up on the US economy I would say for maybe more than seven years. The first sign of it was maybe seven or eight years ago, when they dumped huge chunks of their US Treasury bills that they were holding. China and many countries went in and provided financing to stabilize the US, economy, and when they did that they bought a lot of US Treasury bills. When it came out that China had sold the Treasury Bills, I said that this was not a good sign; this is a sign that the Chinese are slowly “decoupling,” they have been “decoupling” from the United States. I mean they still trade, but they have been “decoupling” from the United States. The Chinese strategy is that they recognize a couple of things: The Chinese strategy is not to replace the United States as a hegemonic power, people always think that; or, that they want to be the international reserve currency to replace the dollar, no that is not their strategy.

China and a New World Order

What China wants to do is certainly to end American hegemony in the world, but they are doing it by helping to create an alternative world order. The problem is, when you listen to most western analysts, what you are hearing is their perspective on China; they can only see China through their eyes as a colonialist, because they are colonialist themselves. That is why they cannot understand, they do not understand China. China’s strategy is that they are creating an alternative world order, and they have been slowly doing this. They have been doing this in a very democratic way, they are not imposing China’s will on anybody; China is not a colonialist, they are not imposing China’s will on anybody. They are not saying that China’s renminbi will become the world’s currency, in fact the Chinese have rejected that idea and have said no. We want a world order where all the trading partners of BRICS can settle their international transactions  using their own currency. So if you are in the West you cannot understand that because all the Western world orders have been colonial world orders. During the British empire, the pound was the international reserve currency, so they expect that any country that replaces them would do the same thing. Its over for these folks on so many levels. Ontologically its over for these folks, because they cannot understand a new world order from the old world order perspective. The new world perspective is completely beyond their capabilities of their understanding; they see what is happening to them but they cant stop it, because they do not understand it.

New Conditions Require New Thinking

You have an entire academic industry in this country especially on international relations, which is based on this idea of what is called “power transfer theory.” What that means is that, whenever a new challenger to the existing world order emerges, it must end in war because the new challenger will challenge the status quo’s power, which in this case is the United States, and it must end in war. Do not get me wrong, there is a lot of evidence for that. Where that evidence comes from is the European experience, that is what they do; the British did it to the French. They have what I call a colonial ontology, which is how they think the world and reality is, and so they do not have the ontological basis to understand emerging trends that is coming from a part of the world that is not like them or looks like them. They just do not have it and their colonial arrogance and sense of superiority, (this is where white supremacy comes in now,) prevents them from learning from people who do not look like them. Not only can they not understand it they cannot learn from it either, but that is also the essential problem with the West. They cannot understand and they cannot learn; and if you cannot understand and you cannot learn its done.

The Decline and Collapse of  Western Civilization

Someone does not have to show me facts like the GDP of China is growing at a faster rate, I know all of those things, absolutely that is true; but the fundamental problem of the West is that it cannot understand and it cannot learn. In other words they cannot understand and they cannot learn to make whatever adjustments there may be, to stop the decline of Western civilization. That is what we are now witnessing in the world, you and I are living in one of the most important times of our lifetime, we are living, literally living, in a time where Western hegemony everywhere: political hegemony, economic hegemony, the hegemony of thought is collapsing. The West is now in a process of collapse, they were in a process of decline for a long time, what I mean by decline is this: decline is always relative to others so after the mid to early 1970’s the United States entered a process of relative decline to other countries in the world. Most  of those other countries at the time we now call the BRICS, the East in terms of birthrate. That is one of the reasons why the Nixon administration recognized  that we cannot run the world economy like we did right after world war II, things have changed.

Scholars at the time have said well yes decline is necessary and other countries are going to catch up in terms of the growth rate, and the gap between the United States and everyone else is going to narrow. There is some truth to that argument but there are also some limitations to that argument. The limitations are that what it does not recognize is not that others are not catching up, but it is not doing the things that it needs to do to sustain its own growth and development. So the decline continued throughout the 70’s and the 80’s and every American president, believe it or not, have acknowledged the decline. They do not say it to the American people but you hear it in their words. So for example Ronald Reagan, he was the one that coined the term “let’s make America great again” it is not Trump, emphasis on the again. The again meaning that we are not who we used to be, so it is an acknowledgement of decline; then after Reagan every other president, we can go all the way up to Barack Obama, when he says his Presidency is to restore America’s credibility in the world, from what? You lost it and is trying to get it back.

Now how do we get from decline to collapse? Well when decline begins to affect domestic institutions, and when domestic institutions begin to decay you are in the process of the empire collapsing, because the institutions on which the empire stood are now in decay, they are rotting. Since the 1970’s you can look at all kinds of Gallop Polling data when they ask Americans their perspective on what they think about Congress; the trust, and respect and the credibility of Congress have been declining for the past forty or maybe fifty-something years. Same thing for the Party System, now, most Americans have no trust or respect for the Presidency; at one time they say most Americans do not respect or trust Congress, they see Congress as ineffective and is always embroiled in gridlock. Congress cannot get anything done, they do not have any trust in the Congress although they say they trust their Congressperson but the rest of Congress is another matter, that’s decay. At one time they say most Americans trust the Supreme Court the judicial system, which is now gone; one time they say most Americans trust law enforcement that is gone now too; at one time they went to civil society, they say most Americans have faith and trust in their churches that is gone too, a lot of church scandals. They have no respect for trusting in corporations or corporate elites and corporations.

The Collapse of Empire and The Role of Authoritarianism

The only institution that Americans still trust is the military. You only trust the military when decay rots all of those democratic institutions: civil institutions including law enforcement. Most Americans do not trust the police especially in minority communities, they see the police as an invasion force, police kill unarmed black people on a daily basis, so that is gone. So if the only institution that is left is the military, what you are talking about is the end of the collapse of an empire and a military takeover, militarism, and the people will call for that. That is the unfortunate thing about it, the people will say we cannot trust any of our politicians, we cannot trust any of our democratic leaders, we cannot even trust our churches, we cannot even trust law enforcement; the only people we can trust is the military, we want them to run the country. Believe it or not, that is a pattern you see in all previous empires in the world, every single one of them. One may ask if the United States is an empire, yes the United States is an empire. Most people do not know that the United States has more military bases in other peoples country more than there are countries in the world. If you think about the Pentagon as a country it would be the largest country in the world; so it is an empire, the United States has always been an empire pretending to be a democracy. Every empire at heart is an autocracy but every empire in order to legitimize its autocratic rule, presents itself as a democracy. But when it begins to decline and decline turns into decay and decay turns into collapse, then you see the real naked face of what the empire has always been, the naked autocratic face. What Americans are going to see in the years to come even when Trump is gone, even if you have a Democratic Administration, you will still see the naked face of empire. People believe that Trump is the initiator of this process, this process started long before Trump; the process of collapse help to produce Trump not the other way around.

The Working Class and The Failure of Empire

What is the American elite doing in the process of hegemonic, the decline of empire? They do what elites have always done when empire starts to collapse, they “off-load” the cost of collapse on everyone else, you and I. When was the last time Americans got a Minimum Wage increase? When was the last time the wealthy got huge tax cuts and they are going to get another one in a couple of months under Trump. Every American president whether they are Democrat or Republican have always given the rich huge tax cuts; the debate has never been should the rich receive tax cuts, the debate between the Democrats and the Republicans is magnitude. Democrats tend to give less of a magnitude Republicans give more of a magnitude. You do not have an administration that says, “no, rich people shouldn’t get any more tax cuts, they’ve gotten enough.” You will not hear that because you are in a process of hegemonic collapse, and both parties are beholding to the American economic elite; and the economic elite requires to “off-load” the cost of hegemonic collapse.

What does this looks like in Policies? Among them is huge tax cuts for the rich. When you have huge tax cuts for the rich, you are now engaged in a kind of income distribution, what is called reverse income distribution. You are taking money from working and middle class people and you are giving it to the rich. That is why the American middle class is shrinking, so you have a reverse income distribution. You are taking money from middle and working class people and you are giving it to the rich and you are also cutting all kinds of subsidies to the poor. This is part of the “off-loading.” Also you are beginning to encroach on public spaces, this is what privatization is doing; they are privatizing public spaces. After a while parks will no longer be public, they will be owned by some private corporation; and if you need to go to the park you will need to pay this private corporation to use the park. Beaches will eventually be private, this scenario has already started in many Caribbean countries and people are protesting against that. These are all aspects of what happens when a hegemonic, when an empire starts to collapse, the ruling elite begins to “offload” the cost of collapse on everybody else.

Next week we will publish professor Bartilow’s analysis on BRICS and the impact for the Global South.

  Paul Bogle Action Network (PBAN) is an organization of concerned Jamaicans, helping to facilitate the development and nurturing of working-class organizations in Jamaica where absent; and where they exist, strengthen their focus. Questions and information request can be sent to: paulbogleactionnetwork@gmail.com