I get that collapse is a slow ongoing process but when the history books are written, what do you think will be considered the US' own Battle of Ravenna? What will occur that historians can point to it and say, "this was the effective end of the American empire." ?

  • zxcvbnm [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    End of the petrodollar. Belt and Road Initiative. I think it'll be an economic realignment, because even if an aircraft carrier gets sunk, there are 10 more of those behemoths.

  • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The president's pants and belt falling down to his ankles on live national tv and China making fun of his heart-print boxers

  • jabrd [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Feels like it’s what’s going on currently in Ukraine. Just waiting for the new adult in the room to come to the table and settle the matter because it’s clear US hegemony has waned so far that it can no longer keep the lid on the pot. I mean that’s what the Suez Canal crisis was for England right? New powers superseding the old as the old powers show their inability to grasp the crises of the moment

  • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    US tries regime change in Saudi Arabia, fails obviously which starts an oil war with OPEC. Oil becomes so expensive the global economy goes into a great crash 5x worse than 2020. Because of pure ideology the US refuses to put a price control on fuel/food. Cool zone happens.

  • Straight_Depth [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It'll probably be a seemingly inconsequential moment in its foreign policy where it is suddenly incapable of carrying out or maintaining a foreign policy decision that in the 60s or even the 90s would've been a no-brainer walk in the park to achieve but that it is unable or unwilling to do in its contemporary state. It can be something as simple as allowing one of its vassal states to remove US troops/bases from its territory or catastrophically bungling a coup ( a real, actual coup, not sending three guys into Venezuela).

    • BurningVIP
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      deleted by creator

    • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
      ·
      3 years ago

      A part of me thinks it even started with 9/11. The seemingly impenetrable United States showed that it wasn't invincible. Bush's decision afterwards only made the country seem more unhinged.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Didn't the US lose the Korean War and the Vietnam War? They've been screwing up wars since they became the top hegemonic power after WWII.

        • Frogmanfromlake [none/use name]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Yes, but 9/11 for a lot of people showed that the US mainland wasn't impenetrable. I remember hearing that from people expressing shock that "the most powerful country can have that happen." And this is from a non-American perspective.

    • AcidSmiley [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      interesting take. i've often wondered in recent weeks if the unprecedented US propaganda effort i'm seeing in my country's press rn is the result of the state department deciding they never want to hear an "i am not convinced" from us ever again.

    • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      As long as there is no real "punishment" from the international community (lol), this doesn't mean much. The US military is big enough that it can do anything on its own. Warhawks just wanted more nations for optics.

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    right when I get my grill dialed in, my tiki torches all set up, and the smoker stocked with apple wood. the ribs are getting close, I got my feet up and I'm about to roast a spliff. the heat of the grill is keeping the cool evening air from making goosebumps.

    :grillman: :grill:

    that's when it will all go tits up.

  • Ideology [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    IMO, if the US fails to reverse the Solomon Islands/China deal, then it will formally solidify China as a rival geopolitical power and increase global south buy-in to the Belt and Road Initiative and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Ukraine is a failure in hard power, but losing the Solomon Islands would be a loss in Soft Power, the idea of America as World Police, and an increased regionalization of international cooperation as it become more expensive to travel and move goods over long distances.

  • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Not with a bang, but a whimper.

    The end of "empire" is when the Imperial Core can no longer wield influence over its subjects.

    Seeing as the US basically sees the entire world as its subjects then any fall of the global currency in the petrodollar (collapse or alternative available) and other institutions such as IMF and such mean the death of the US empire as we know it.

    • invalidusernamelol [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Empire collapses from the periphery inwards. As the colonial holdings cease to turn out super profits, the exploitation will return to the core and the reserve army of labor parked in managerial positions will be liquidated to fill the vacuum of productive/manufacturing labor.

      The conflict between the international bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeois middle class will elevate into some form of civil war as both classes fight over who gets to profit off this shifting status quo and as usual the proletarians and those drafted into the proletariat from the managerial reserves will be used as the tools of this conflict.

      Wars will continue to break out both within and without of the core as an attempt to regain colonial super profits and maintain profits using domestic labor.

      None of this will be overnight (aspects of it will be, like Iraq and now Ukraine), but a long simmering collapse over the next 100 years or so.

      The core cause being the inability of capitalism to maintain social order as it is inherently cannibalistic and destroys the environment and social fabric that it's profits are drawn from. Any "events" that occur during the collapse are just symptoms of the primary contradictions between capitalism and it's own source of profit.

      • SaniFlush [any, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        All I can pray for is that this is the last empire- that the age of martial, colonial and economic domination will finally come to an end, and we can just... be people.

    • SaniFlush [any, any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I sure as hell HOPE it's not a bang, because the bangs this country is capable of would turn the entire surface of the Earth into glass.

  • ssjmarx [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    The fall of Washington DC during the Second American Civil War. America's global empire gets replaced with a fascist regional one.

    • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I was thinking this too, that China's ability to get it under control without shutting down their economy for more than 2 months, compared to America which is still dealing with wave after wave of it, is a sign that there is already a new global leader.

        • bigboopballs [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I wouldn’t call it democratic socialist

          Canada hasn't even had socdems in power :( It's really not all that great, just less insane and shitty than the USA

  • Quimby [any, any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    I think it may actually be an event that has already happened. It's the sort of thing that seems more clear looking back 300 years from now on a 100 year period.

    • captcha [any]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      Reminds me of how the Chinese years of humiliation are conventionally marked by the first opium war but no one in China thought that was the start of the end at the time. They went through that, the Taiping rebellion, (which was the bloodiest war in history until WWI), and the second opium war thinking these were just setbacks.

      It took the first Sino-Japanese war for the Qing to come to terms with just how bad things were. So in American terms that's like going through our own civil war, having other nations ransack New York, but not getting it through our heads until Mexico takes back Texas.

      • Quimby [any, any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        exactly! history is often exactly like that. looking back, we might see something starting entire generations before the people back then actually recognized it.

  • Owl [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Assuming a long, slow collapse, I think the popular choice of event will be when a US carrier group is completely wiped out by some Latin American country (let's say Chile) armed with surplus hypersonic missiles from China.

    • Horsepaste [they/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I love the idea of a LATAM nation taking out the literal flagships of American imperialism

      • Owl [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        The gradual loss of the US's ability to project its force worldwide will mean having to extract more from South America. The carrier fleets aren't going away until they're destroyed. The technology to defeat a carrier group is already out there, and any military technology is going to slowly spread around the world. So I think it's very likely to happen eventually, if the US doesn't suddenly eat itself first.

      • Lovely_sombrero [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Sure, but the US is not a rational country. The response would probably be a nuclear strike.