2025
Comparisons
As the American empire completes 249 years one could compare it to other hegemons. First, to clarify, we believe it was born as a hegemon because at birth itself, it defeated the British empire. Hence, we can see it as an empire from its inception.
- The British empire can be mapped from the conquest of Jamaica from the Spanish in 1655 to 1947, when it lost India and the circum-India states shortly thereafter = 292 years
- We can place the Spanish empire between 1521 (the conquest of the Aztecs) and its 1898 rout by USA= 377 years.
- The start and end of the Portuguese empire are a little murkier, but we could say it lasted between the conquest of Goa in India and the loss of its many African possessions: 1975 - 1510 = 465 years.
- French empire ~1605 gain of Canadian possessions to the 1962 fall of Algeria: 1962 - 1605 = 357 years
- Russian empire: 1547 Ivan the Terrible becomes Tsar to tsar Putin (present)= 478 years
For a comparison, the Hindu empires within the subcontinent are generally short lived:
- the marAThA empire (from the Chatrapati’s indrAbhiSheka 1674 to the fall to English in 1818= 144 years
- gupta empire ~ 230 years
The US empire is structurally different from both the Russian and the Western European states but continues the legacy of the latter as the last great predatory Europoid state.
In contrast, its enemy, Russia, is more a continuation of the Khaganate legacy: its roots lie the Khaghanate of the Rus modeled after the “Altaic” Khaghanates.+++(4)+++
Current state
Some political analysts like Mearsheimer think the multipolar world is here. But we disagree. The US has amply demonstrated in the recent days that it is the sole world hegemon. The rUs have not yet collapsed but are nowhere in the league of the US.
The American empire had two religious phases: the Christian phase and the Judaeo-Christian phase (for a comparison, the rUs are in the post-Judaeo-Christian phase with some Christian structure still in place).+++(5)+++ Certain things about this religious structuring are so central to analysis of American power that they cannot be safely discussed in a public forum like this.
The American society has developed serious problems which are culmination of both its religio-ethnic structuring and movements with ultimate roots in Europe (e.g., “Enlightenment”, socialism, racism). These could be seeds of its ultimate unraveling, but it is hard to predict when that could happen.
Unreavelling
Right now there is no extrinsic peer competitor to push them to the brink like it happened with the British or the Spanish. (IMO the chIna-s are not a peer competitor of the US nor do they have the mind set to form containing alliances with others.)
However, when the social problems are coupled with imperial overreach they have a Spenglerian endpoint and its effects could bear fruit in about 3 decades, exacerbated by the potential perturbations of technology. It need not be with a bang like the collapse of the Soviet rUs. The Americans will most likely face a secular decline starting in the coming decades unless some of the expected future wars deliver hard knocks.
Kennedy
Finally, we come to Kennedy addressing the decline of mahAmlechCha empire: He, as a historian, correctly accepts that fact like all other empires, this one would also fall. However, he hopes for a soft-landing. In our opinion, there were structural fractures but they were not fatal when he was writing. However, he correctly realized that if the politicians did not properly manage them, things could go worse. The breakout of navyonmAda from the walls of the American left-liberal academia into the real world – Marxism with American characteristics – has changed things in away he would not have expected. The jinni is out of the bottle & is not going inside because a good part of the kids of the American elite has contracted navyonmAda. The duShTa-s who have put piNDaka & paDbIshapuruSha in their Asandi-s are now the rulers.
Essentially, it looks as though nAri~NgapuruSha might have been the last democractically elected American president (there could be a little julian effect here and there) but the direction looks set. Lysenko-istic delusions, a cultural revolution against the meritorious, & lack of introspection regarding AI, energy & health is going to stir up this pot for the mahAmlechCha, who still remain a frontier society. Hence, we are increasingly inclined to think that the landing is not going to be soft. As with the Soviet rUs, the hard part is the when.
Kennedy in 1988 as a career historian studying the rise and fall of empires knew they Soviets were wobbly but probably did not realize the collapse would be that soon & swift. That certainly can happen even with the mahAmlechCha; though, the differential between the Judaeo-Anglo-Saxon center & the Judaeo-rUs one being a real & large could mean a slower burn of the fuse, whether it ends in a fizz or a bang. At least that’s our current intuition.