The Predatory Empire Has Turned Cruel, Criminal and Corrosive

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 30 Mar 2026

Jan Oberg, Ph.D. | Transnational Foundation – TRANSCEND Media Service

The Portable War Memorial (1968) by Ed Kienholz

27 Mar 2026 – Kindly invited by China’s esteemed Global Times to write about the US Empire as predatory as part of a series, I wrote this manuscript on March 17, 2026. In the note at the end, you’ll find a link to the diluted version that was ultimately published after the editors shortened and rewrote it.

The moral image and perceived legitimacy of the United States are now lower than at any time since 1945. There are numerous perspectives on this unique situation; here are three I consider central.

First, despite its skill in marketing itself as a global force for good, it is striking that it has taken so long for so many to recognise the sad truth that the U.S. has always acted as an exceptionalist imperial power, convinced that it had—literally—God on its side as contemporary history’s most war-fighting country, a self-appointed global policeman.

If empires are not predatory from the outset, they become predatory over time. Together with economic exploitation and fragmentation, the US empire has rested on military power – and killed millions of people on its self-appointed watch – more as victims of economic sanctions than of warfare, according to a recent analysis in The Lancet, covering the period 1971-2021.

Some observers have reached this conclusion only now because of the Trump Regime’s unpredictable, norm-, and law-violating, MAGA-lomaniac behaviour. And some of them still hope that Trump, Pete Hegseth, and their real-estate-based “diplomats” represent only a four-year deviation from a better America that will return afterwards.

Having followed the U.S. as a European peace and future researcher for over 50 years, I cannot support such wishful thinking. I see the Trump Regime as the last, dangerous and self-destructive administration of the United States Empire.

This leads to the second perspective.

What the world is witnessing are the final system spasms of that Empire. This may be bad news to some, but the good news is that it will be the last empire in human history. Neither China nor anyone else wants—or is value-wise destined—to repeat what the West has done for so long: universalise its own norms while simultaneously destroying them at home, from media freedom to democratic consultation.

When the Bible was not enough, the Sword followed. Fortunately, the one-system, one-truth world is over.

Empires have always fallen. Macro-historical indicators include over-militarisation, over-extension, weakened legitimacy, shrinking cultural power, and a compulsive need to teach others lessons—while remaining constitutionally unable to learn from its own failures or from others. Number One in any system is bound to slide down if it lacks humility, empathy and adaptability.

As these decline-and-fall indicators accumulate, wounded empires grow grumpy and aggressive, like a patriarch on his deathbed.

The third perspective is that, in this Titanic-like phase of the decline, the red thread through everything the Trump Regime – it is no longer a democracy, thus the Regime word – does is militarised resource control.

It got a deal to control Ukraine’s resources; it “wants” Greenland and Canada, it has already violently appropriated Venezuela’s resources and those along Gaza’s coast. And while the US has harassed Iran in numerous ways since its coup in 1953 and suffocating sanctions since 1979, its present war there can also be seen as the consequence of a wishful dream of controlling that country’s tremendous resources – or, to put it bluntly, do a Venezuela on Iran. It is doomed to fail but with enormous costs.

And the purpose of this resource-grabbing?

To secure the future of the United States when the world has basically turned its back on it. One may call that the United States of Autarchy serving to substitute other-reliance and cooperation by a personal, seemingly independent Empire – killing people and international norms and laws for material satisfaction.

Beyond doubt, this will turn out to be delusional because the rest of the world is moving towards interdependence and ever-closer, mutually beneficial cooperation, the Belt and Road being the foremost example.

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Those best placed to help the U.S. Empire go down with a whimper rather than a bang—its European allies—have regrettably failed. The EU and Euro/NATO, despite their rich history, culture and resources, have never become the New Benevolent West. They still see the U.S. as “the Father,” applauding Secretary of State Rubio when he reassures European elites that the U.S. will always see itself as Europe’s Child, as he did at the recent Munich Security Conference.

In this light, there may be a glimmer of hope in European and other leaders now saying ‘No’ to Trump’s appeal for help in the Hormuz Strait. On the other hand, Europe never managed to distance itself from the US-enabled Israeli genocide on the Palestinians, nor to condemn the clearly unprovoked attack on Iran.

The risk is therefore increasing that the U.S. Empire will fall thanks to a combination of domestic chaos and warfare abroad. When the Eastern West—the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact—dissolved, Gorbachev knew how to avoid such an ending. Now, as the Western West declines, it has no Gorbachev – nobody with the intellect and ethics to go down with grace.

Can anything soften this relatively dark scenario? In my view, at least two things can:

a) A broad, all-Western citizens’ movement of nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience against US policies in general and militarism/warfare in particular; the moral resignation of Joe Kent, Trump’s Counterterrorism Director, is a most significant nonviolent protest – and may stimulate followers.

b) That the 88% of humanity living outside the West continue—and accelerate—their cooperative endeavours, pursue alternative human security and nuclear abolition instead of war-promoting deterrence, and reach out positively to the dying patriarch whenever possible. Not because he deserves it, but because it is in the best interest of China and all others working wisely and constructively for a shared humanity within the rapidly emerging, softer, cooperative multipolar world.

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Note:

Here is the version published by Global Times on March 24, 2026, as the second of two contributions to its theme of the predatory empire.

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Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the independent Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research-TFF in Sweden and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. CV: https://transnational.live/jan-oberg
https://transnational.live.

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