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Calculating Life for a Dying Empire
$2000 per dead child! That's the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the "collateral damage" which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington's aggressive actions accumulate in number, the US military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents.
Eight years into a war deemed "necessary" by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the death and destruction visited upon Afghan civilians seems reducible to neat and cheap compensation packages. And, yet, the real physical and psychological damage inflicted by the war-makers remains strangely abstract and without comprehension of the very real unintended consequences. The anger of Afghan families in the earliest days of US military intervention undoubtedly persists and may even fuel the continuing insurgency. According to a June 28, 2002 Los Angeles Times story about one Afghan who had lost his wife, mother and seven children to a US air attack, he bitterly lamented: "I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray that they will have the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine."
While not suffering this kind of tragic loss in just one family, US families have paid a price with increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Afghanistan. More generous with their compensation packages to families who have lost a loved one in military operations in Afghanistan, even the $100,000 offered cannot excuse the needless loss of life promulgated by the Pentagon and their so-called civilian bosses.
The squandering of billions of dollars, however, in prosecuting this war and the other imperial campaigns in the Middle East and Central Asia is responsible for other hidden costs to children in the United States. In 2009, the US continued its falling ranking in infant mortality to 33rd in the world, behind the much poorer, but medically wiser, nation of Cuba. In addition, infant mortality among African-Americans is estimated to be twice as high as that of whites.
On the other hand, the terrible toll on Iraqi children, as a consequence of policies pursued by the United States since the first Gulf War, has been enormous. From the use of depleted uranium by the Pentagon under Bush Sr. and Jr. to sanctions preventing medical supplies from entering Iraq under Clinton, the death and disease suffered by Iraqi babies is directly attributable to the United States.
Even in the absence of war and aggressive policies pursued by Washington, the imbalance between the United States and the developing world, made worse by the recent financial crisis, is deplorable. It is estimated that the average inhabitant of the United States uses 250 times the resources of the average Nigerian. That average US citizen, if a baby born in the 1990s who reaches 75 years of age, will have generated fifty-two tons of garbage while utilizing close to 4,000 barrels of oil. The amount of energy consumed by the average US resident would be equivalent to 531 Ethiopians.
When UNICEF reported, as is did in 2002, that ten million children under the age of 5 died each year from preventable causes, such as malnutrition, unsafe water, and the lack of the most basic health care, we should, in the words of ethics philosopher Peter Singer "know that others are in much greater need...and learn to think critically about the forces that lead to high levels of consumption and to be aware of the environmental costs of this way of living."
Yet, to attain that level of consciousness would require confronting the legacy of being part of an empire and benefitting from its ostensibly unequal privileges. Trying to come to terms with all of the human and planetary consequences of empire as a way of life may be especially difficult now that the empire is dying. Let's just hope that we can help to diminish the further destruction produced by an empire in its death throes.
71 Comments so far
Show AllWhen Washington, including the president, talks about the new deficit reduction commission, they repeat over and over that "everything is on the table," and then mention entitlement programs.
Where is it written that the rest of the world is "entitled" to the U.S. military maintaining 1,000 bases and thereby, theoretically, keeping the whole world safe by having our military close at hand? (Including maintaining not just the bases, but the Pentagon's almost 800 golf courses for soldiers looking for recration in their spare time.)
Is it fair for one moment for the U.S. taxpayer to be "entitled" to bear the financial burden of this worldwide presence when so many needs at home go unmet?
It's time that we demand that the troops be brought home and we stop waging war around the world!!! We need to pay attention to President Eisenhower's dire warning about the potential danger of an overpowering Military Industrial Complex. He states in the following excerpt from his farewell speech . . .
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"The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight."
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It seems as though we are totally disregarding the dire warning contained in this President's grave and prescient statement!!!! How are we doing as "an alert and knowledgeable citizenry???"
While we are demanding healthcare for all our citizens, we are simultaneously killing innocent women and children in the Middle East!!! Our nation has become the Jeckle and Hyde of the world!!! Perhaps this Empire deserves death so it can rediscover its founding principles!
Sioux Rose
FRANK S: The admonition is more pertinent today than it was when uttered, although all the inroads to a private covert tactical force capable of toppling governments (under the radar) began in the late l940's. It's become quite "good" at what it does, and its secret members all think they own some kind of badge of impunity. Interesting how the 007 character glamorized such notions in movies that were produced soon after these programs came into being!
Your post is right-on. I am with you 98%. However your use of the term WE is too generous. It is not "we" when elites make decisions that are diametrically opposed to the will of THE PEOPLE. And for those millions who seem to go along, how many citizens would back these "theaters of war" if they saw the REAL footage of massacred children, or the babies being born with deformities in Iraq, or the blood-soaked wedding parties "mistaken" for terrorist meetings? The U.S. population in some ways resembles the off-shored prisoners in that it's essentially blind-folded and kept on noise pollution (via an incessant media machine generating 90% nonstop nonsense), so it loses contact with reality...result? We're all Stockholm-Syndromed now.
You're absolutely right, Sioux Rose - I agree with you 100%!
Excellent post. Thanks for the fuller-length Eisenhower quote, it is more powerful with more context.
In regards to 'entitlement' packages, all of our elected officials and those appointed are 'entitled' to get paid for doing nothing for those who elect them. Social Security and Medicare are paid into over a long period of time. They should stop referring to them as 'entitlement' programs. These same people who refer to universal health care scream 'That's Socialism.' The very fact that they have a taxpayer funded health care for them and their families forever and ever is what they are screaming against. Those persons do not have a legitimate reason to offer anything to a debate as there is a direct conflict of interest and they should recuse themselves or give up their taxpayer funded health care.
As long as war profiteering is immensely profitable and generates huge campaign contributions to the Corporate Puppets in the White House, Congress, SCOTUS, and all state legislatures, the Empire will continue, regardless of human suffering abroad or here.
And as the Empire's Ministry of Propaganda, TV & newspapers are all part of the Imperial War Machine. G.E. owns NBC & MSNBC. Even on the allegedly "liberal" PBS, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing sponsor shows. So don't expect the truth about the U.S. Empire to appear anywhere on TV.
When an entire system itself is sociopathic, mostly sociopaths gravitate to it and serve it. And since these greedy, parasitical sociopaths write the laws, it is nearly impossible to drive them out by changing to full public funding of all elections and prohibition of all corporate contributions. We are stuck in a Corporatist-Militarist State.
The depth of US depravity is fathomless. In the stead of our Manifest Insanity I proffer the solution of simple Desistance!
What can I do to stop this madness? I've written to my elected representatives and they do nothing. How is collateral damage different from premeditated murder since it always occurs when
airstrikes are called. Germans and Japanese were hung for these same actions. Will the Americans go unpunished?
Collateral Damage is for other nations.
When 'collateral damage' is visited upon US citizens, they become martyrs for the Corporate cause,convenient bloody rags to be shown to the mob to whip it into a foaming frenzy that demands war and blood as the only justice.
Only when the suffering of others nations is visited on the US on a comparable scale, with the same kind of sneering superiority the US shows it's victims, will the people of the US understand what it means to suffer.
And in all likelihood, the agent of that suffering will be the US government lashing out at it's own citizens in it's final economic death-throes.
Collateral damage is premeditated murder that does not target specific victims.
In that it is similar to of other serial killings by people generally discussed as psychotics or, perhaps more properly, psychopaths.
Since the government kills more people at once, they claim that the murder is unintentional because they cannot tell in advance exactly how many people they will kill or which people.
Some Nazis were not caught until decades after Berlin fell.
'
Tick tock.
//Will the Americans go unpunished?//
It depends on who "wins."
Sioux Rose
MAESTROM: I think if you consider life in the inner cities, the disproportionate number of persons incarcerated (many for non-violent crimes thanks to the bogus "drug war") and the families impacted, the rising rates of cancer, Diabetes, obesity and depression, the financial roller coaster the Wall ST gamblers have put most of us on (without our consent), and the environmental upsets now apparently speeding up... you realize that the boomerang of karma is already impacting citizens of this nation. I seldom see happy faces, and I must say, in this Bible belt so many look like they are positively angry, ready to lash out at the slightest provocation. Our children are being turned into amoral, passive consumers; our national parks may soon be sold to China; our leaders are unresponsive to citizens' needs; and our media is owned by the same agents that are largely responsible for many of these trends (or their fall-out).
So long as Hollywood, some religions, and sporting events continue to program people to think in terms of teams and being on the "right" side for safety, the paradigm that spends all on defense instead of building a sane, healthy society will remain the "norm," "Antoher World is Possible," beyond our grasp.
I think Mother Nature is gearing up to play teacher in ways that will not be easily ignored.
"Let's just hope that we can help to diminish the further destruction produced by an empire in its death throes."
Let's just hope that the USA doesn't take 300 years to collapse like Rome did.
The best outcome is for it to fall apart quickly like the USSR did.
Insanity? Yes. Tragic? Without doubt.
But you, we, all better hope the "empire" turns things around sooner rather than later, and work to help.
You'll like the Chinese Empire or an Islamic Empire a whole lot less.
Bill in Canada
You worry about the fascist running your own country, slave.
After WWII the British lost their empire. Britain has not been taken over by the Chinese or the Muslims.
After 1990, the USSR gave up trying to be an empire. Russia has not been taken over by the Chinese or the Muslims.
Canada isn't exactly an empire and it has not been taken over by the Chinese or the Muslims.
These nations have lost of lot of lives through warfare or have had their entire populace affected dramatically by it, much of that from WWII. I'm not great with Chinese history but there has been some pretty atrocious deeds done there in the name of war also. Canada not so much 'cause we weren't much of a contender.
America hasn't really had the shit kicked out them yet. Look how panicky they get when something bad does happen. That place would go bat shit if they had to undergo, say 6 months of continuos bombing like the Battle for Britain. Maybe then though they wouldn't be so happy to bring it to someone else's back yard.
Of course Canada has troops over seas too, but like someone above mentioned a lot of that is just us getting caught up in the tide of what America is doing, most people I talk to arent happy about our troops being there. Other nations get pulled in too.
Maybe some of these nations have realized there are easier ways to get what you want than fight for them. Just buy and sell your nations resources and labour and collect the riches, for the top percentile anyway...
Did I detect an intelligent comment? My meter is reading 0.5 ; sorry try again.
Thanks for your reply Ardent. Ironic that you should consider what I wrote as coming from the right, as I'm a member of Canada's main Social Democratic- read socialist- party, and my views would be considered very left wing there, and about as far from fascist as you can get, though among the mainstream here.
But I failed to make my point, judging from other comments. Its true that after the decline of the British Empire- who did empire very well by the way- they were not taken over by a Chinese or Islamic empire- it wasn't an option then. They were taken over by yours, as has been the world. I too wish that we could do without empire, that we could all just get along, in some type of small L liberal democratic mutually respectful, prosperous and tolerant enlightenment. Its not going to happen. Some ones going to be in control, and its going to be military, like it or not. Terrible mistakes will be made. Innocent people will die, human rights will be abused. And as far as Canada is concerned, the current government does not have my support or the majority of Canadians. But we count for squat in the big picture. You are the big picture.
There is corruption, and official torture, and brutality, and lies, and hegemony. And that could describe every empire both ways from the Roman. But ask yourselves who you would rather have in control? Its not going to be the Swiss, or the Norwegians, or Canadians. Its going to be you, with all your warts, or the Chinese, or, if our absolute worse nightmares come true, the Islamists.
Better to work towards keeping your empire in charge and to reducing its more unpleasant manifestations. Its still a participatory democracy, in spite of the corruption, corporate power and the growing dangers- apathy, frustration, racism, poverty. You can work for change, without wishing for its destruction in some nihlist armageddon. Recognize those parts of your Empire worth condemning- the power of the military-corporate control for example, and fight against them. Recognize also those parts of value- your First Amendment for one- and realize what the alternative could be if you don't make this work. We should all be very careful just what we wish for.
In the end, for what it's worth, we'll be with you anyway, at least I for one hope we will be. There doesn't appear to be any realistic alternative. But, as Ghandi noted, all empires fall. Always. Its only a matter of time, and we may be close.
But thinking of what the alternative to your empire might be should keep us awake at night.
-Bill in Canada
"Some ones going to be in control, and its going to be military, like it or not."
"Its going to be... (sic)".
- What's this "it's going to be ", white man? Who're u to speak for the future? U a time traveller? U came back from the future to tell us how "it's going to be"?
Let me remind you that the main characteristic of the future is that IT HASN'T HAPPENED YET. - We're all together in the process of making the future. We get to choose!
How about a community of nations respecting and balancing each other, checks and balances instituted in mutual interest through the UN (being the main purpose of that body)? Can you think that thought? If you can't, that's a self-fulfilling lack of imagination for you: someone's going to dominate you because you think that's how "Its going to be".
Maybe the next "force of empire" will be a collective consciousness of humans existing as a tightly knit tribe - as in fact we do - letting us all in a de-dramatized (and demilitarized) way benefit and harvest happiness from all the cooperative structures we humans have developed, understanding how preciously ingenious they are, and valuing that over control-strife and destruction.
The future hasn't happened yet, so that just might happen. If we think it enough and want it enough.
Think of everything levelling out into a continuable global society of about 1.3 percent sustainable annual growth, equalling our natural decay, technologies shifting like a grand wheel magnificently turning, slowly, fairly predictably - rather than at breakneck competitive speeds - and people growing steadily greater understanding inwards while our natural empathy rules outwards.
It'll be a "duller" (in the sense of less violently dramatic) society, but much more interesting and benefitting.
Think of that, and it just may happen.
We're not so sure:
Forget drones for a second and have a look at this new crowd
control device:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17609
A Chinese empire is highly unlikely, they're too smart. They have
control-on-the-cheap using our money.
An Islamic Empire is technologically and otherwise impossible in the foreseeable future because there is no global Islamic Empire currently on the horizon,
just loose-knit groups. The real one is the American one, and the only
one worthy of discussion.
“Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”
---John Kenneth Galbraith
Well, it used to be that we had "wounded civilians here." This morphed into "Collateral damage."
Now our clever little computer gamesmen piloting the drones over the Middle East have changed that to "bug splats."
Bug splats. That is what you get on your windshield when driving in the summer. That is what you get when you use a fly swatter.
Those men, women, children, husbands, wives, sons and daughters; they are not human beings, they are "Bug Splats."
If We the People ever wake up and decide we want our Constitution and Bill of Rights returned, intact and functioning, to the Halls of Government, we may see the drones overhead here in the US. Many of We who Resist will become "bug splats" right here in the United(?) States.
The Dark Side of the Force is vey strong here.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Too bad this wasn't an article using WorldWatch like stats to actually calculate how much time the U.S. empire has remaining on the clock before the secondary TARP market bubble implodes and the whole Machine collapses. I'm curious to see what the population vs. resources gurus are saying about that myself. They've probably been threatened to hush up about it, and a lot of it, no doubt, depends on how much more of the predatory behavior of the U.S. the rest of the world's nations are willing to stand before dropping the dollar as reserve currency and starting massive boycotts of what little non-weapons items the U.S. still exports to them. If only more of them would boycott the weapons and weapons systems as well.
btw Metal, just wanted to let you know that I read all your posts on CD that I run across and I like them.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
Thanks Kitaj. You might have noticed I've been a little fed up with certain things lately. Hopefully when the weather warms up a bit I can get outside and work out more to get rid of some of my anger.
The MIC is nothing but a cabal of terrorists that are sybarites worshiping at the altar of mammon! The best metaphor would be like Chavez said: we are an Empire of Vampires that cannot live without blood and fear the new dawn.
Viva Chavez!
Good reference to Hugo; Bob Marley said something very similar in his song "Babylon System" in 1978:
"..The Babylon System is a Vampire
A Falling Empire
Sucking the blood of the sufferers...]
Bob only had a 6th grade education, but his wisdom was towering.
Sioux Rose
PROF: Well-said!
Our own military is killing us.
Only some of us. The arms industry is doing very well. Veterans benefits do help many. Those actually in the military are not in poverty and have health care. There are entrenched constituencies that are making out very well.
Power company calculations for an American life as of some time around the middle 1980's stood at $75,000 per person, though one might adjust for both location and geographical changes to purchasing power.
(Seriously disabling an American cost more; we might profitably ponder that.)
Perhaps this relates to the oft-repeated consideration that in some parts of the world "human life is cheap."
When rank-and-filers criticized company calculations as callous, executives countered that no more adequate way to calculate value existed. They claimed that they had to use some fixed number in order to make profit and loss calculations and thereby determine whether and when to put human lives at risk.
They acknowledged, even insisted, that in personal practice they themselves favored some human lives over others, just as we did.
Oddly, some appeared to find this reassuring.
I wonder whether a chart that itemized who was worth more, who less, and fixing a dollar amount in each case would not have clarified some things about company position.
This case gives a nice view of how this works. If one can calculate how small a percentage of the cost of killing an Afghan child that $2,000 of hush money actually is, and how likely the involved corporations are to shuffle the charge to taxpayers (can we choose 100% as a round figure?), one can get some idea how little Afghan grief means to remote American decision-makers.
This is a distance augmented by geography and by different cultures, but there are considerable differences within the culture. So, for instance, one may assume that there is a fixed standard amount in calculation for the life of an American soldier, and that it is less if he or she dies than if he or she is wounded and permanently disabled, and that it is considerably less because soldiers cannot effectively sue for damages or wrongful death incurred in combat (and combat is defined very loosely).
Hence the long history of invasive and often lethal experiments on American soldiers, from exposure to nuclear fallout to exposure to chemicals, bio-weapons and antivenins, and various types of contamination from DU ammunition.
Hence also the long history of American experimentation on the effects of torture and brainwashing on prisoners.
All these, not so incidentally, are intrinsic to the corporate format of decisions based on cost-benefit and profit-loss analyses: the scalpel poised, the flesh will yield where profit dictates, as calculated between the margins of a certain spreadsheet on a certain desk at a certain point of time.
Sioux Rose
BARDAMU: Interesting post. I remember an article published in Harper's about 7 years ago that looked at this same question through the prism of what insurance company actuaries determine an AMERICAN citizen's life to be worth. The factors considered viable are so mundane as to be funny were the matter not so serious in the first place.
1. Oppression creates awareness.
2. There is a power greater in not speaking words than in saying them.
A man stated recently that he realized that he had gone "underground." Many will follow.
Hope Ms. Shor's book is more coherent than this article. She begins by talking about the consequences of wartime killing and the wretched price for a child's life in Afghanistan and ends up talking about how much garbage a US citizen produces in a lifetime. Her point is...um...I forgot. Yeah, there will be payback for US military atrocities; yeah, the US infant mortality rate is terrible; yeah, we consume lots of energy compared to others. So, your point is...?
The point is: listing the many facets of our insane way of life and showing the interrelationships between them. Granted it was a short article, but I think this is the intent.
The article's perfectly coherent. All the facts enumerated by the article are symptoms, effects, and byproducts of Empire's activities and machinations.
Including, yes, the high U.S. infant mortality rate: indeed, the lack of proper health care and services suffered by so many people in the U.S. is due to the fact that most of our taxes go to stoke and maintain Empire, i.e., its hundreds of military bases established all over the world, its militaristic adventures (resources wars and geopolitical occupation of other lands), its stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and its enormous and very costly multiple intelligence agencies.
bligh4
The last UN statistics say that 69% of the civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2009 were caused by the Taliban-mainly suicide attacks, roadside bombs, and targeted killings (like when they pulled civilians off a bus and shot them).
How much is the Taliban paying? The U.S. should at least match that figure.
Sioux Rose
BLIGH: They said the same thing, plus or minus a digit or two, about the in-fighting in Iraq after a callous invasion. And if they have the "chance" to break yet another nation (Iran) they will likely use this fig leaf for an excuse as well. Nothing like blaming a victim, it's a time-tested tactic of abusers. (I realize the Taliban are not exactly nice guys either; but this tendency to make the locals responsible for the carnage that results from a foreign invasion is cowardly as well as dishonest.)
That same process has happened thousands of times over in the history of "Imperialism".
A Country is "stable" and its resources sought by an Imperialist power. Said power looks to ethnic and religous differences inside that country and exploits them.
The Imperialist power send agents inside the latter to arm one faction exploiting their sense of "Victimhood" and indicating that "They can have it all with our backing". Conflicts arise. The Imperialist country then claims they must Invade to "keep the peace". In order to remain the Imperialist power continues to fuel the conflicts behind the scenes.
This is how Britain Conquered India. This is how Belgium took over the Congo. This is how the USA inserted itself into places like Colombia, the Honduras, Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is why Blackwater is in Pakistan today. Plant a few bombs..blame it on Anti Government forces.
Hey, Bligh, wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone on Earth were just Amerikkkan?
Then we wouldn't have such nasties as the Taliban any more, right?
bligh4
Well no. Personally, I never wanted us to get involved in either Iraq or Afghanistan.
Tiny little inconsistency though-while you guys are trumpeting the rights of the Afghans for self-determination, over 90 % of the population does not wish for a return of the Taliban. It would then follow that this is not a popular uprising, but a small minority trying to lord over the rest.
If that is the case, then it is not "blaming the victim" to point out that the Taliban is killing close to 70% of the civilians who are killed. (heck, and they don't even pay the lousy $2000). It is simply pointing out that the other side is even less (far less) welcome than the coalition forces, are killing far more people, are paying nothing, are not even indigineous, yet are being given a complete "free pass" by you good folks.
"Tiny little inconsistency though-while you guys are trumpeting the rights of the Afghans for self-determination, over 90 % of the population does not wish for a return of the Taliban."
I don't believe that most of us here wish for the Taliban to return. The second US involvement in Afghanistan were to stop, especially from the CIA, the Taliban would disappear in a New York minute. None of us like the Taliban but if you were to compare today's situation in Afghanistan to before 9/11, it has come to the point that neither the Taliban nor the US/NATO forces are welcome in Afghanistan. Listen, you are a lucky American even if this nation is actually a lost soul and I plan to discuss this soon but the Afghans don't share your fortune thanks to our reckless politicians and vested business interests collaborating with the warlords and puppet leaders in that nation. People in Afghanistan are very desperate and poor that they will even accept the smallest of generosities from the Taliban all thanks to the US/NATO involvement. Think of getting the US/NATO forces out as hitting two birds with one stone.
Yes, the USA Empire is dying. You only need a handful of brains to figure that out. But what will be the manner of its death?
Not pretty. And the top layer of arch-criminals will mostly just skip the country to some tropical pirate banking enclave.
Where the acid seas will swell up in a giant storm surge and wash away their villas and the creeps that built them. And Mother Nature will grin her savage little grin.
Gary
"Nature is just enough; but men and women must comprehend and accept her suggestions."
-- Antoinette Brown Blackwell
I'll tell you what I think.
When the USA goes down, it will leave a smoldering, chard, ruin around the entire globe.
Not one human, or higher life form will be alive. And there is no god to pull the world out of this coming end.
Another addition to the "doom and gloom boom". Luckily a self-destructive mind-set, freeing the rest of us to better aspirations.
Somewhat similar to slow-growing prostate cancer---often the victim dies of old age before the cancer itself kills him. In a similar fashion America won't crash into a wall, it will just coast into the wall and its gears will grind to a halt as it tries to accelerate to push the wall down.
Wow. Some seriously Apocolyptic responses!
My answer is:
Voluntary dismantlement of the apparatus of Empire along the lines of Great Britain.
Return to normal nation-state status assisted by Global Democracy movement.
Continuation of strong cultural and economic influence due to resources, size, and population but mitigated by more independence on the part of the Individual States.
Prevention of rise of any new Imperial Aspirant through International Cooperation.
Why people think that A) "the Empire" means the actual country and nation and B) it's dismantlement will doom us all even though we are so prewarned about it that we have books about the Death of the Empire, I just don't get.