On July 5 of this year, the New York Times published an article titled “America Lives on Borrowed Money.”
It states that borrowing is expensive. A rising portion of federal earnings, money that could be utilized to help the American people, is returned to investors who buy government bonds in the form of interest payments. Instead of collecting taxes from the rich, the government pays the rich to borrow their money.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government will spend more on interest than on national defense by 2029, and interest payments will account for 3.6 percent of national GDP by 2033.
The authors of the article believe that the situation is becoming more and more alarming and painful, and therefore radical decisions should be made.
However, with the growing division of US political forces, these alternatives are no longer visible, especially since “Joe Biden’s global vision is too timid and pessimistic,” according to the British-based Economist.
The fact that President Biden has been indicted with impeachment by the Republican-led House of Representatives cannot be overlooked: On June 22, the House voted 219 to 208 to send two articles of impeachment to the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, one for abuse of power and the other for dereliction of duty.
What is interesting is the evaluation of the current scenario made not only by Americans but also by political analysts from emerging countries. For example, the Saudi-based Arab News reported on June 25 this year that the United States’ political system is in disarray and the country is extremely fragmented.
The author puts the current problem in the United States on a par with the fall of the Roman Empire: “You cannot be a world leader if your society is crumbling and your leadership is divided, indecisive, and weak.” Especially when the media, once lauded as a strong weapon of truth, has devolved into a tool of political bias motivated by profit rather than principle, and free speech is dead in America.
According to the author, American influence in South America and Africa is likewise dwindling: America has never been weaker than it is today in its relatively short history.
On June 19, this year, Marwan Bishara, a senior political analyst for Al Jazeera TV, noted that signs that the American-dominated world order was crumbling had become increasingly visible over the previous decade and that America’s political and economic decline had affected its global influence and credibility.
Attempts to resurrect US leadership through the so-called “rules-based international system,” according to the author, have failed. This system was perceived as a rigged arrangement that benefited the West over the rest of the world and violated international law.
Back in the spring, well-known American journalist Ross Douthat determined that the elites of the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia favor Russia and China, and that public opinion in emerging countries is more sympathetic to Russia and China than to America.
Richard Haas, a respected American political analyst who led a prominent think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, for more than 20 years, went even further in his analysis: “The collapse of the American political system means that for the first time, the internal threat has surpassed the external threat. Instead of being a reliable anchor in an unstable world, the United States has become the deepest source of instability and an unreliable model of democracy.”
In September 2022, current US President Joe Biden spoke of American democracy being on the verge of collapse, clinging by a thread.
In response to this, Gulf News, one of the UAE’s leading publications, said that America today is a house divided. More and more Americans acknowledge that the country’s current status is abnormal.
The summer of 2020’s street violence and instability revealed the actual mental state of the world’s most powerful nation. The United States has long had one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, and deteriorating public order has expedited the spread of firearms. The United States ranks first in the number of privately owned guns. Researchers at the Small Arms Survey estimated that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million available civilian guns, about 46% of the world’s civilian gun stockpile. According to the same publication, there are 120 guns per 100 Americans. According to the Pew Research Center, 48% of Americans believe that gun violence is a major issue in the country.
According to polls, only 17% of Americans believe the US criminal justice system treats everyone fairly, according to the USA Today website.
Currently, the issue of migration in America has seriously escalated.
Of course, there will be ups and downs in American domestic politics, but one of the most notable trends in recent years has been the growing polarization of the elite, which could lead to a major split of the country.
A new presidential election will be held in 2024, and many objective observers believe that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, will protest the results. Since 2000, contesting presidential elections has been a tradition.
When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, the Democratic Party functionaries became full-time election deniers, emphasizing that the Democratic Party leadership and journalists, its supporters, had done nothing wrong: Vladimir Putin and the Russians were to blame, having hacked the election.
In 2020, Trump claimed that his loss to Biden had been the result of election fraud: the election had been stolen. Within weeks, the Republican Party’s mantra became “stop the stealing.”
A recent study found that more than half of Americans now expect another civil war “within the next couple of years,” with numerous forecasts for the end of America.
One of them says that if Trump, or any other Republican, occupies the White House, Californians are taking serious steps toward withdrawing from the United States.
Another scenario that is being seriously studied assumes that red, or Republican states will launch an independence movement if the Democratic Party wins, including Biden’s second term.
Many analysts are debating the prospect of a significant civil conflict in the United States. Meanwhile, some political analysts have noticed a discernible strengthening of the so-called neoconservative positions among the American ruling elite, who are adamant that Washington should be in charge of the entire world and harshly punish those who disagree with them. Their stance on the Ukraine issue has the potential to push the world to the verge of a nuclear war. This group’s careless acts have already generated a sizable number of issues and fresh crises.
In order to find a way out of the current impasse in international affairs, more and more developing countries are turning to Russia and China. They place their expectations in this respect, above all, on the approaching BRICS conference, where the enlargement of this association may be announced.
Veniamin Popov, Director of the “Center for Partnership of Civilizations” in MGIMO (U) MFA of Russia, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Candidate of Historical Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.