‘American Century’ Project Precipitated American Decline: Analyst

“The way the US left Afghanistan was extremely demoralizing, and puts an exclamation mark on the general American view of this war as a complete disaster; every bit as bad as Vietnam,” said Dr. Kevin Barrett, author, activist and journalist, while sharing his views on the decline of the United Sates in an interview with the secretariat of the 2nd International Conference on the Decline of the United States: The Post-American World.

“The plan of war in Afghanistan was to dominate Afghanistan, to remain in Afghanistan,” he maintained. “The historians will look back on this as the final nail in the coffin of the American empire. The Americans are still threatening people and some of their threats are taken seriously more so than others. So, I think that this nail in the coffin, in a way, is more the event that set the trajectory in an inexorable direction towards the clear collapse of the empire; but there may be something else in the future.”

“Syria was in some ways another kind of landmark moment,” he added, “when the US thought it could get its way in Syria and walked right up to the brink of possible war with Russia and then stepped back. The combination of Russian air power and Iranian diplomacy and friends on the ground helped save the Syrian government from a regime change attempt. So, that was a totally failed US regime change attempt. And, indeed, the US has failed everywhere with these 9/11 wars, with the arguable exception of Libya. But even there they couldn't build anything. All they could do was tear down Libya.”

“The big change has been that the empire is no longer particularly interested in administering its far-flung territories,” Barrett went on to say. “It’s now simply punishing different countries for not going along with its orders by imposing chaos and suffering. But it can't build anything. It’s now on the stage where it can tear down but it can’t build. And, of course, that is a sign of terminal decline.”

“Typically, when we think of the fall of an empire, we think of direct loss of a significant amount of territory,” he said. “And we think of a military power that suddenly falls apart and it's no longer a military power at all. The US is halfway there, but it’s not all the way there yet.”

“I do hope that the collapse isn’t quite as extreme as happened to Rome in Gaul in the early 400s,” Barrett stated. “But it might be that extreme if the war party gets its way and they decide to try to go down fighting in a major way. We could see tremendous suffering on a world scale or possibly just a huge collapse here in the US with hungry people and chaos, violence and so on. And things do seem to be moving in that direction. It seems like it's kind of a done deal. It's inevitable, but it's not so obvious that everybody openly admits it.”

Talking about the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) Barrett said the think tank was created to represent the neoconservative wing of American strategic establishment but “really failed abysmally and precipitated the very decline they pretended they were trying to prevent. Thus, it’s not going to be an American century; it won't even be an American half century. So, then who’s century will it be? It’s likely that to some extent it will be a Chinese century. The Chinese economic growth has been so strong that the US attempts to stop that economic growth or slow it enough to prevent the rise of China to a number one world power status is probably doomed.”

“I suspect that the COVID-19 pandemic stemmed from a US bio attack on China and Iran or perhaps the Israelis are the ones who attacked. And I think that might have been a reckless move by neoconservative types who believed that trying to stop China’s economy or inflicting damage on China’s economy is the only hope they have left. And it’s even conceivable that they might have considered the possibility of this becoming a global pandemic and decided that it would be to their advantage in that it would slow the world economic growth that is the engine of China’s growth.”

“China will become the biggest economic power but China won’t impose its ideology, which is a combination of nationalism and a sort of soft Marxism, on the whole world,” he predicted, adding, “I think this overreaction in the direction of materialism could lead to a pendulum swing back in the opposite direction and this is where I think the Iran and its Islamic revolution are very interesting. Even somebody as extremely non-religious as Michele Foucault saw that there was something really new and promising in the Islamic revolution in Iran and in the Islamic renaissance around the world that it was part of; the Islam that goes back to its history of being very open and protective of other faiths as well and sees its role as not so much proselytizing, per se, but as in protecting spirituality. And I think there will be a spiritual awakening and an awakening to the truth of the idealistic philosophy and the falsehood of the materialistic philosophy.”

When asked about the role of America and its inclusion in the multipolar world, he said, “It depends on how events play out. If the United States does withdraw from its imperial role peacefully then I think that it would be easier to include it fairly quickly. It would have to be some kind of a situation where there would be a nationalist ideology that would camouflage this withdrawal from a global empire. Then the world would have to tolerate a certain nationalist rhetoric coming out of the US. On the other hand, if the US chooses to go down by accelerated escalating warfare and this COVID-19 possible attack, then it will lose its empire through a military defeat. But any US or Anglo-Zionist attempt to prop up their empire through a preemptive war would make the US an international pariah.”

The 2nd International Conference on the Decline of the United States: The Post-American World will be held on November 2, 2021, by Imam Hussein Comprehensive University and the Secretariat of the Expediency Discernment Council, in cooperation with the universities and research institutes.

For more information, interested parties may visit the conference website at www.usdecline.ir and the virtual pages of the conference secretariat on social media at @usdecline