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Is the US on the Path to Becoming a Failed State?
The deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.
Jun 09, 2025
The United States has entered a phase that resembles the early stages of state failure. What once seemed impossible in a country with vast resources and robust democratic traditions now appears increasingly plausible.
The signs are evident. A government that has turned inward and become both self-protective and vindictive. An economy that is straining under a combination of political hubris and international estrangement. A population facing widening inequality and the fraying of social bonds. Historical examples of state collapse reveal that such trajectories, once set in motion, become difficult to reverse. For centrist Democrats who have long believed in the resilience of American institutions, it is essential to understand the historical precedents and the structural forces at play.
State failure is not typically marked by a single event. It is a process that begins with the corrosion of political legitimacy and ends in the disintegration of central authority. In the United States, this erosion of legitimacy can be seen in the deliberate politicization of the civil service and the Justice Department, the relentless attacks on the press and civil society, and the hollowing out of regulatory agencies through mass firings and loyalty tests. Historical parallels can be found in the final years of the Roman Republic, where the Senate’s inability to manage domestic discontent and external pressures created a vacuum for strongmen like Julius Caesar to exploit. In a more modern example, Weimar Germany’s democratic institutions were systematically undermined by the combined effects of economic crisis and political extremism, leading to the Nazi seizure of power.
The United States has survived grave challenges before, but its survival has always depended on a functioning state that could reconcile competing interests and adapt to new circumstances. Today, that state is being systematically dismantled.
Economically, the United States is facing a self-inflicted crisis. The decision to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike has triggered a trade war that has cut the country off from vital imports and provoked retaliatory measures. The stock market crash of 2025 is a direct consequence of these policies. Historically, protectionism in the face of global integration has often led to economic collapse. Argentina in the 1940s under Juan Perón embraced similar trade isolation and industrial autarky, leading to decades of stagnation. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, though a different context, was a catalyst for the downward spiral of the global economy in the Great Depression.
The military and security apparatus in the United States has also been turned inward. This is a hallmark of states on the brink of collapse. The administration’s decision to conduct loyalty tests for federal employees, to dismiss or sideline those deemed “insufficiently loyal,” and to demand public fealty to the president’s personal narrative mirrors the tactics employed by autocratic regimes throughout history. In the final years of the Soviet Union, a similar pattern emerged: The KGB was weaponized to target internal dissent as the economy faltered and the central government lost its grip on reality.
Domestically, the climate is one of deepening polarization and mounting distrust. The forced departure of civil servants, the targeting of universities and independent journalists, and the use of the Justice Department as an instrument of political retribution have weakened the structures that once mediated conflict and enabled compromise. In 1970s Chile, President Salvador Allende’s government was destabilized by economic sabotage and political violence. While the American situation is not identical, the deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.
Internationally, the administration’s decision to pursue annexationist policies—expressed in rhetorical claims to Canada and Greenland and actual negotiations over resource extraction in Ukraine—has isolated the United States from its historical allies and weakened its standing in the world. Such expansionist fantasies do not typically succeed in a world defined by interdependence. They more often result in international sanctions, economic isolation, and domestic overreach. This was the fate of Benito Mussolini’s Italy when it attempted to carve out an empire in North Africa, only to find itself diplomatically and economically encircled.
The cumulative effect of these policies is a government that no longer serves as an impartial arbiter of competing interests but as a factional tool of the leader and his inner circle. The normal functions of governance—delivering basic services, maintaining order, managing foreign policy—are subsumed under the political imperative of loyalty and control. This is the point at which states enter the final stage of failure. In 1990s Yugoslavia, the central government’s failure to mediate ethnic and regional disputes led directly to the violent fragmentation of the state. In the American context, this dynamic is playing out along lines of political affiliation, class, and race. The militarization of border policy, the collective punishment of protest movements, and the repeated targeting of minority communities reveal a state that is no longer willing or able to accommodate the diversity of its population.
The question of when collapse occurs is not easily answered. Historical examples show that once a state has entered the spiral of delegitimization, economic contraction, and political repression, collapse can follow within a few years. The Soviet Union’s dissolution took less than three years from the final economic crisis of 1988 to the official end in 1991. Yugoslavia’s collapse began with constitutional disputes in the late 1980s and culminated in violent disintegration by the early 1990s.
The timeline for collapse in the United States is likely to be similarly short if current trends continue. The economy, already battered by tariffs and retaliatory measures, will see further contraction as foreign investment dries up and domestic confidence evaporates. Political violence, already simmering, will become more organized as the state’s capacity to maintain a monopoly on violence wanes.
For those who have long believed that the American system is immune to these forces, it is time to reconsider that assumption. The United States has survived grave challenges before, but its survival has always depended on a functioning state that could reconcile competing interests and adapt to new circumstances. Today, that state is being systematically dismantled. The institutions that once checked presidential power are being turned into instruments of that power. The economy, once buoyed by global integration, is being sacrificed to nationalist fantasies. The courts and the press, once the guardians of democratic accountability, are being brought to heel or driven into irrelevance.
There is still room to change course. Historically, states have a narrow window to reverse the downward spiral once it begins. In some cases, a determined opposition or a political realignment can restore legitimacy and rebuild the social contract. In others, collapse proceeds until the state is no longer recognizable and must be rebuilt from the rubble. The examples of Spain in the 1930s, where collapse was narrowly averted but civil war followed, and of Greece in the 1940s, where foreign intervention postponed state failure, show that external shocks and internal realignments can interrupt the cycle of collapse, though at a high human cost.
What lies ahead for the United States is not yet written in stone. But the pattern is clear and the examples from history are stark. State failure is not a single moment but a cascade of failures that begins with the corruption of political institutions and ends with the disintegration of social order. The evidence is already present in the hollowing out of the federal government, the weaponization of law enforcement, the trade isolation, and the embrace of expansionist policies that have no place in the modern world. If these trends are not reversed, the United States will become another entry in the long history of states that lost their way and collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.
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Trump’s Animosity Is Bringing Europeans Closer Together and to the Rest of the World
There is an emerging consensus among European policymakers and experts alike that Trump wants to do to the E.U. what he is doing to the U.S.—destroy its civil society.
Jun 03, 2025
The European Union came into existence in 1992 with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which led to a single market, border-free travel, and the euro. Since then, the E.U. has evolved in various ways, although it has stopped short of developing a centralized fiscal authority and setting up a European army. Moreover, the E.U. has long been plagued by a number of legitimacy problems that have given rise to Euroscepticism among both left-wing and right-wing citizens.
Nonetheless, certain recent global developments are forcing the E.U. to upend many long-held ideas and norms about its own security and relations with other countries. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the sudden shift in U.S. policy toward Europe have made both policymakers and citizens across the continent more aware of the need not only for deeper integration and a new European governance architecture but also of the historical necessity to create a new world order. While Russia’s war in Ukraine has forced the E.U. to rethink its energy policy and compelled countries such as Finland and Sweden to become full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is U.S. President Donald Trump’s hostility toward Europe and its institutions that is bringing Europeans closer together and even making them realize that the E.U. is a safe haven when all is said and done.
Indeed, the latest Eurobarometer survey, which was released on May 27, 2025, reveals the highest level of trust in the E.U. in nearly two decades and the highest support ever for the common currency. The overwhelming majority of respondents also displayed support for a common defense system among E.U. member states and opposition to tariffs. Equally impressive is the fact that a huge majority agreed that the E.U. is “a place of stability in a troubled world.”
Trump is trying to remake the United States in his own image and also to destroy the E.U., which he says is “nastier than China.”
These findings come just days after Trump told a rally in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania that he will double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50%. This move, which will take effect on June 4, prompted the European Commission to announce that Europe is prepared to roll out countermeasures in order to retaliate against President Trump’s plan to increase steel and aluminum tariffs. It said that it “strongly” regrets Trump’s threat and that “if no mutually acceptable solution is reached both existing and additional E.U. measures will automatically take effect on July 14—or earlier, if circumstances require.”
The concern among many Europeans is that U.S.-E.U. relations are not only seriously damaged but that the U.S. has now become Europe’s enemy. Since coming to office, Trump has launched an active campaign against European democracy, with members of his administration not only bashing Europe but openly supporting far-right parties across the continent.
The common perception about Europe is that it is indecisive, too slow to act, even when major crises come knocking at its door. There is an element of truth in that, as the E.U. has shown a proclivity for reactive rather than proactive political behavior. But the Trump shock appears to be rousing Europe from its geopolitical slumber. The E.U. is standing up to the bully in Washington and is looking after Europe’s own interests with greater zeal than ever before. This is because there is indeed an emerging consensus among European policymakers and experts alike that Trump wants to do to Europe what he is doing to the U.S.--i.e., destroy its civil society. MAGA hates Europe for cultural and political reasons. For Trump, as Célia Belin, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and head of the Paris office, aptly put it, “Europeans are an extension of his political opposition at home... and Europe is thus a symbol of the political ideals [that] Trump seeks to eliminate, transform, and subjugate.”
In its attempts to find a new role in world affairs in the Trump era, Europe is not merely reacting to Washington’s whims but seeks to implement policies that reinforce its own strategic autonomy, both internally and externally. The European Commission has updated its industrial strategy by speeding up clean energy and pursuing new trade agreements with reliable partners. While some European leaders see both Russia and China as representing a threat to the rules-based international order, there have been numerous calls by various policymakers across the continent for a closer collaboration between China and the E.U. in light of “Trump’s ‘mafia-like’ tactics.” European Union leaders will travel for a high-stakes summit to Beijing in July after failing to convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Brussels for a summit marking the 50th anniversary of E.U.-China diplomatic relations. And France has called for a stronger E.U.-China alignment on climate action amid the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Paris agreement.
China is the E.U.’s second-largest trading partner. Europe is, in fact, not only growing more dependent on China for manufactured goods but, in spite of differences in bilateral relations, such as China’s position on the war in Ukraine, is actually warming up to the idea that the E.U.-China relationship is an essential vehicle for tackling global challenges and safeguarding international multilateralism.
Europe is also looking into other regions of the world as part of a concerted effort to promote ever more vigorously its own strategic autonomy. Since Trump took office, the E.U. concluded a free trade agreement with Mercosur, an economic bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia, with scores of other countries (among them are Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru) as associate members. Mercosur, or the Southern Common Market, is the fifth-largest economy and encompasses more than 285 million people.
The E.U.-Mercosur agreement, which had been in the making for 25 years, still needs to be ratified, and Argentina’s far-right Milei government, which is in close political-ideological alignment with the Trump administration, could prove to be a stumbling block to its ratification. Argentinian President Javier Milei is, in fact, more interested in signing a free trade agreement with the United States, which would be in violation of Mercosur regulations.
After many years of negotiations, the E.U. is also close to finalizing a free trade agreement with India. The 11th round of negotiations between India and the E.U. concluded on May 16, and there is a firm commitment by both sides to strike a deal by the end of 2025. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, this agreement would be “the largest deal of its kind anywhere in the world.”
If ratified, the E.U.-Mercosur free trade agreement will create a market of around 800 million people. When finalized, the E.U.-India free trade agreement will create a market of close to 2 billion consumers.
Trump is trying to remake the United States in his own image and also to destroy the E.U., which he says is “nastier than China.” One would like to believe that it is probably unlikely that he will succeed in remaking the U.S. in his own nasty image, but it is positively certain that he will not succeed in destroying Europe and its institutions, even though there is a lot that needs to be done to create a fairer and more inclusive Europe. In the meantime, however, Trump’s “mafia-like tactics” are bringing Europeans closer together and the continent ever closer to other regions of the world.
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Third Federal Court Ruling in Less Than 24 Hours Puts 'Unlawful' Trump Tariffs on Path to Supreme Court
The trio of related rulings are more than likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
May 29, 2025
Update:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Thursday put a stay on a lower-court ruling from a day earlier, which put a block on a large portion of President Donald Trump's tariff regime.
The latest intervention from the federal courts, according toAxios, "will deepen the chaos around the Court of International Trade's Wednesday order, which threatens to upend global commerce."
The appellate ruling only makes it more likely that the cases involving Trump's tariff order will find their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation's highest court could take the case as early as Friday.
Earlier:
For the second time in less than 24 hours, a federal court Thursday blocked tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump earlier this year, ruling he exceeded his presidential authority with the sweeping and arbitrary nature of the orders.
U.S District Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee who serves in Washington, D.C., determined Trump's orders were "unlawful" as he could not unilaterally declare emergencies in order to justify the imposition of tariffs against other nations.
The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, by which Trump justified his ability to impose the tariffs, "does not authorize the President to impose the tariffs set forth" in the series of executive orders issued, said Contreras in his decision. The ruling was accompanied, according toPolitico, "by a preliminary injunction on the collection of the duties on the two plaintiffs who brought the case."
Contreras, however, stayed his order for two weeks "so the parties may seek review in the Court of Appeals."
Thursday's ruling comes a day after a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade unanimously ruled against Trump's tariff policy, a decision that was seen as a significant blow to the president's chaotic tariff agenda which has resulted in wild swings in the global economy.
In a filing on Thursday in reaction to Wednesday's ruling, the Department of Justice asked a federal court of appeals for a stay to the decision in anticipation of a likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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