{"id":12839241,"date":"2025-08-29T11:35:26","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/?p=12839241"},"modified":"2025-08-30T02:31:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T06:31:37","slug":"decline-and-fall-of-the-american-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/2025\/08\/29\/decline-and-fall-of-the-american-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Decline and Fall of the American Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header\" role=\"region\" aria-label=\"Post header\">\n<h2 dir=\"auto\"><a href=\"https:\/\/paulkrugman.substack.com\/p\/decline-and-fall-of-the-american?utm_source=flipboard&amp;utm_content=user%2FSubstack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Decline and Fall of the American Empire<\/a><\/h2>\n<p class=\"subtitle subtitle-HEEcLo\" dir=\"auto\"><strong>Alliances were what made us great<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-paddingBottom-16 pc-reset\" role=\"region\" aria-label=\"Post UFI\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-paddingTop-16 pc-paddingBottom-16 pc-reset\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-gap-12 pc-alignItems-center pc-reset byline-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-reset\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-row pc-gap-8 pc-alignItems-center pc-justifyContent-flex-start pc-reset\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-row pc-alignItems-center pc-justifyContent-flex-start pc-reset ltr-qDBmby\">\n<div class=\"profile-hover-card-target profileHoverCardTarget-PBxvGm\">By <a class=\"pencraft pc-reset decoration-hover-underline-ClDVRM reset-IxiVJZ\" style=\"font-family: Verdana, BlinkMacSystemFont, -apple-system, 'Segoe UI', Roboto, Oxygen, Ubuntu, Cantarell, 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;\" href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/@paulkrugman\">Paul Krugman<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-display-flex pc-flexDirection-column pc-reset\">\n<div class=\"pencraft pc-reset color-pub-primary-text-NyXPlw line-height-20-t4M0El font-meta-MWBumP size-11-NuY2Zx weight-medium-fw81nC transform-uppercase-yKDgcq reset-IxiVJZ meta-EgzBVA\">\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p><em>Even Kaisers need allies<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Last Saturday I posted a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/paulkrugman.substack.com\/p\/talking-with-phillips-obrien\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">conversation<\/a>\u00a0with the military historian Phillips O\u2019Brien, much of which was devoted to the war in Ukraine and what has passed for U.S. diplomacy the past few weeks. But we also talked about his new book\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.hachettebookgroup.com\/titles\/phillips-payson-obrien\/war-and-power\/9781541606975\/?lens=publicaffairs\" rel=\"\">War and Power<\/a>, and I was struck by one of his points: The importance of having good allies.<\/p>\n<p>As he noted, Germany lost both world wars in part because it was confronted by powerful alliances while its own allies were \u201cterrible\u201d \u2014 Austria-Hungary in World War I, Italy in World War II. He went on to say<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-size: 16px;\">The key of the United States has been that it has maintained arguably the most successful alliance system in history since 1945. What the U.S. maintained with NATO, an alliance which kept Europe very much on the American orbit, in the American orbit, both economically and militarily, also with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and countries in Asia is, they constructed this alliance system which hugely amplified both America&#8217;s economic possibilities but also its strategic possibilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And Trump is throwing all that away.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/paulkrugman.substack.com\/p\/decline-and-fall-of-the-american?utm_source=flipboard&amp;utm_content=user%2FSubstack\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">More here &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alliances were what made us great Even Kaisers need allies Last Saturday I posted a conversation with the military historian Phillips O\u2019Brien, much of \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":12839243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1,12,25391,11],"tags":[371],"class_list":{"0":"post-12839241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-available","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"category-phils-favorites","10":"category-members-corner","11":"category-portfolio-review","12":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12839241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12839241"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12839241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12839428,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12839241\/revisions\/12839428"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12839243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12839241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12839241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philstockworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12839241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}