Notes on The Decline And Fall of an Empire

Edited by Sam Thielman 

IT USED TO BE I took a conservative attitude the handful of times I've been asked, "So, is the American Empire on the verge of collapse?" My typical answer has been that decline can last a very long time before collapse occurs. I consider the Tanzimat reforms of the late 1830s to be the pebble that spiders the windshield of the Ottoman Empire and ultimately leads to its fatal car crash in World War I. Others put it at Napoleon's landing in Egypt 40 years before, which simultaneously cost the Ottomans functional control of Egypt and demonstrated the potency of European nationalism that would rend the empire apart internally. I don't know if they're right, but if they are, it backdates Ottoman decline to more than a century before the end. 

Nor does decline—even outright fall—preclude rejuvenation. In 1204, one of the most epic betrayals in history happens when Venice reroutes the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople and renders the Eastern Roman Empire a vassal until the 1260s. Then the Palaiologian Dynasty recaptures Constantinople and reestablishes a Roman state that survives for nearly 200 more years. 

The points I'm driving at are these: History is full of uneven stories of how great states collapse; decline may not be a choice, exactly, but it sure is the result of many choices; and relative decline is not the same thing as collapse, despite what primacy enthusiasts believe. You can see me laying this out a couple years ago when I wrote about hüzün. When the United States economy ceases to be the largest in the world… it will be the second-largest. 

At least, so I thought. The evidence of recent days sure has me rethinking such assumptions. 

Here I fully concede I am not an economist, and Sam, an actual business reporter, can correct me. But my understanding is that usually during periods of market volatility, people throw their money into Treasury bills, considered to be a far safer place to ride out panic. But now that's not happening, and alongside the dollar underperforming, Piero Cingari of Euronews writes that what's underway is a rejection of the long-held assumption that the world's largest and most dominant economy is a reliable bet. "This is the crisis of the US exceptionalism trade," a Goldman Sachs analyst tells Cingari. [I’m asking for my next paycheck in krugerrands.—Sam] Then there's this analysis from Deutsche Bank, via the Wall Street Journal: 

Markets are dedollarizing, they said, citing the lack of evidence that investors are hoarding dollar liquidity— a dynamic that in previous market routs fueled Treasury and U.S. dollar rallies but this time is leading to declines in the prices of both.

So now we're about to face massive tariff-based inflation while capital markets lose confidence in the dollar. I can only imagine that foreign capitals are discussing steps to untether themselves from the dollar as a reserve currency. 

Bretton Woods wasn't burned in a day, but it sure feels like history taking a turn when China, Japan and South Korea decide to coordinate their tariff response. Insulation from American capital appears to be a theme at the ASEAN finance minister summit underway, where, on Tuesday, representatives from the three major Asian economies—all historical enemies—met for what's reported to be the second time in eight days. I defer to Van Jackson on this, but it sure seems like foundational pillars of American "Great-Power Competition" strategy in Asia, the world's richest region, are coming unmoored. 

At home, the capital flight apparently underway from U.S. markets  [Bain Capital’s David Gross tells Goldman Sachs that he’s “bullish on Japan” and expects it to become “a really big buyout market,” presumably for firms trying to find a home for their newly liberated dollars—Sam.] seems to raise pretty major questions about who's supposed to be putting up the investment money to re-industrialize, the alleged point of all of this, if it's even worth considering the Trump administration's stated goal of the tariffs on its own terms. Via Lever, Moody's has a report indicating that, instead, private equity is "accelerating the looting of [tarriff-struck small and medium-sized] companies by sending them into debt to fund dividend and stock buyback payouts to their investors," in Lever's words. And while Trump decimates what passes for the social-services aspects of the federal government, he's embracing a $1 trillion defense budget. A whole lot of that money is going to go to the constellation of Silicon Valley-VC-backed defense contractors aligned with DOGE. 

Public wealth is being massively redistributed upward to the factions of capital bandwagoning with the president, which is why I described what DOGE is doing as a smash-n-grab. "Let the badge and guns do the badge and gun stuff, everything else, let’s contract out," Border Czar Tom Homan said at this week's 2025 Border Security Expo, a collection of homeland-security contractors and aspiring contractors. That's a succinct description of the present MAGA governing philosophy, but Homan and his allies were focused on something specific. The Michigan Advance's Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports that the acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, told the confab he wants the deportations-renditions operations currently underway to operate "more like a business… like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings." 

Like Amazon Prime but with human beings. 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court paused a lower court's order to return the rendered man Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the CECOT nightmare-prison in El Salvador. Apparently the justices are using the pause to review the case. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor laid out the meaning of the authorities Trump is asserting, and they're in line with what this newsletter warned about on Monday. "The implication of the Government’s position is that not only noncitizens but also United States citizens could be taken off the streets, forced onto planes, and confined to foreign prisons with no opportunity for redress if judicial review is denied unlawfully before removal," she wrote. Not long after, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the president is open to rendering U.S. citizen "criminals" to CECOT.

Like Amazon Prime but with human beings. 

So, I don't know. I'm going off vibes and am out of my lane here. And there still is enormous material reality—the world's largest military, the only one capable of global operations across all domains—behind enduring American power, even within the context of rising multipolarity. In the time it took me to write this and Sam to edit it, Trump blinked and paused non-China tariffs for 90 days, and the financial markets are reacting like they've gotten a stay of execution. Not exactly something that would make client-states say "now that's a stable and reliable patron," but still. 

But if I were to write a fictional account of an American collapse, it wouldn't be as imaginative as the developments that have coalesced since "Liberation Day" last week. We may soon start backdating our choices for hinge points along the path to the end of the American Empire. I sure know what I consider a major milestone. 

I'M GOING TO BE ON A LONG-PLANNED FAMILY VACATION for the next two weeks. Come what may in the world—and here I have in mind the U.S.-Iran talks in Oman scheduled for Saturday—FOREVER WARS is going to go dark until the last week this month. Yes, that will include my inside-the-issue writer's notes on IRON MAN #7, a major issue, highly likely to be extremely controversial, to the point perhaps of jeopardizing my standing with the Iron Man fans who gave me such a warm and engaged welcome in this AMA from Friday in which I answered over 200 questions. I'll do that when I get back—it'll probably benefit from the distance of writing it after the dust settles. (The issue is out next week, on Wednesday, April 16.)

One quick comics thing that doesn't have to do with me: before Monday, April 14 ("final order cutoff"), tell the people at the comics shop where you buy IRON MAN that you want FREE PLANET #1 from Aubrey Sitterson, Jed Dougherty and Image Comics. I have not read this comic yet, but apparently it's a geopolitical space opera about stopping an intergalactic oligarchy from capturing a "free planet's" resources. After listening to Aubrey's interview with Matthew Rosenberg on Ideas Don't Bleed, I'm gonna buy everything this man produces. I think you'll want to get FREE PLANET #1 when it's out on May 7. 

As you can probably tell from an edition that's me getting far, far out of my lane, I need a break and a recharge. I love you, FOREVER WARS readers, more than I can express. I get to have this newsletter as my primary job because of you, and I'm so so grateful that in this hard economic time, you're sticking with this newsletter, and even recommending us to others you think will benefit. Thanks especially to all of you who emailed—who are still emailing!—with your preferences for the frequency and focus of this newsletter going forward. Take care of one another while I'm away. 

WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! Bulletproof is also selling signed copies of my IRON MAN run with Julius Ohta, so if you want those, buy them from Flatbush's finest! 

No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.