Military, economic prowess can't stop America's inevitable collapse: Analyst

The United States is on a downward spiral towards losing its superpower status no matter how much it spends on its military power and how hard it tries to gain influence by taking aggressive approaches towards other nations, says a political analyst in Chicago.

Stephen Lendman, an author and political commentator, made the remarks in reaction to comments by former Republican congressman Ron Paul, who predicted that the American empire is teetering on the edge of collapse.

In his latest Ron Paul Liberty Report broadcast, the former US presidential candidate, named aggressive US foreign policy, self-destructive monetary policy and the national and individual debt load as signs of America’s expected collapse.

“It is astonishing how little US policymakers know, who are supposedly or at least in their own mind the smartest people in the room, that despite spending countless billions of dollars on militarism, weapons development … the US is a declining empire,” Lendman told Press TV on Wednesday.

He said politicians in both ends of the political spectrum in the US, meaning either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, were under the illusion that having the upper hand in terms of military prowess and taking aggressive approaches against others is a winning strategy.

“But what is happening is, the more the US becomes more belligerent against other nations the less powerful it becomes,” he argued. “It makes more enemies than friends.”

“It is the same for all empires, they all meet the same fate,” Lendman further argued. “They spend too much, they overreach, they think they could do things that are impossible to do.”

He said the United States’ power was on decline no matter how much dollars Washington spends to save it.

This decline, Lendman said, comes as Russia, China and several other countries gain power and will continue to rise until they overtake the United States economically and militarily.

PressTV-American empire teetering on collapse: Ron Paul

Former Republican congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has said that the American empire is teetering on the edge of collapse.

He predicted that the decline, while fast, was far from a sudden collapse and Washington would have another few decades before eventually losing its superpower status.

Nuclear war a possibility

Lendman said the United States would try anything to stop and reverse this decline and in doing so, would consider it vast nuclear arsenal as an asset.

Noting that a nuclear war would spell devastation for humanity, Lendman said there are still people in Washington that would nurture the idea of such a conflict if the question ever pops up.

“There are crazies in Washington, there has always been crazies in Washington” who would advocate using nuclear weapons to save America’s power, Lendman said.

“The US is hell-bent on being a dominant global power, wanting it to be unchallenged by any other nations and the harder it tries to pursue and achieve this agenda the further away it gets from actually accomplishing it,” Lendman further argued.

Repeating his earlier point that the US would eventually hit the bottom, Lendman said: “The only thing I fear is when it goes will the world be a better place or will the US take everybody else with it?”

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