AMERICA’S COLLAPSE: While It Is Happening, and After It Has Happened

8 August 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

Following here are two excellent articles — one that I received via email, regarding America’s heading for collapse; and the other being from the Web — regarding the collapse that America is heading for, and what its impact will be afterward, for the American people:

RE: The Final Settlement Terms for the Ukraine War, by Eric Zuesse, Aug 7, 2025; https://theduran.com/the-final-settlement-terms-for-the-ukraine-war/

Terrific piece on the Duran. Considerations —

1. Trump is an astute campaigner and was well aware the war on Ukraine was becoming increasingly unpopular. Thus, on the campaign trail Trump set an unrealistic timetable for negotiations, proclaiming he would end the Ukraine conflict in 1 day. After the election, this period has been transformed into 100 days, 6 months…..

2. Trump faces the same constraints on ending the conflict as previous Presidents. These include:

• The Pentagon has not ‘won’ a war since 1945,

• The deteriorating strategic position for the US/NATO in Ukraine follows on the heels of the $2 trillion/2 decade-long military/strategic debacle in Afghanistan.

• Military disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, along with looming debacles in Ukraine & Gaza, have vividly shown the limits of US military to the global community. Thus, the Pentagon is reluctant/incapable of extricating itself from these conflicts, as doing so is an admission of failure and, by extension, military weakness.

3. It appears Russia has deliberately refrained from occupying land stretching from Kherson, located at the southern end of the Dnipro River to Odessa and linking up with the predominantly Russian-speaking population in Transnistria (Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic). It seems likely that NATO is transferring weapons from bases in Romania into Ukraine via Odessa. Russia is now increasingly targeting sites in Odessa, presumably to soften up what remains of Ukrainian resistance in the area. Should Russian forces occupy this region, whatever is left of Ukraine will be a land-locked rump state, whose access to the Black Sea & Sea of Azov is blocked. Once this happens, the negotiating position of Trump/NATO will be even weaker.

4. From my perspective, the conflict in Ukraine needs to be examined within the context of the accelerating decline of late-stage American capitalism, the culmination of decades of neo-liberal economic policies: multiple tax cuts for the wealthy, Wall St. bailouts, job outsourcing, financial deregulation, + spending astronomical sums of taxpayer $ on the military.

Video of potential interest follows.

Best,

Phillyguy

See: Dmitry Orlov: Trump’s Threat to Russia? USELESS! Here’s Why Russia Doesn’t Care Dialogue Works Thurs, Aug 7, 2025.

—

I (Eric Zuesse) might add that in http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259 on 4 December 2006, Orlov (who knew well both the Soviet Union while it was collapsing and the U.S. as it was already in the process of collapsing) headlined “Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US”, and here are highlights from that, from Orlov, in 2006:

US faces many of the same problems that contributed to the Soviet collapse:

- Unwinnable wars (Afghanistan, Iraq…. Iran?)

- Declining oil production (Soviet oil production peaked a couple of years before collapse)

- Out of control military budgets

- Unsustainable deficits and foreign debt

- Balky, unresponsive, corrupt political system, incapable of reform

- Delusions of grandeur prevent honest discussions of problems

——

Economies are susceptible to “cascaded failure”

- Unsolvable problems accumulate over time

- Downward slide takes on a momentum of its own

- Political system remains intact but suffers paralysis

——

AFTER COLLAPSE:

——

Housing [in U.S.S.R. v. in U.S.]

- U.S.S.R.: Owned by state, Free rent, Accessible by public transportation, Everyone stays put

- U.S.: Owned by banks/corporations, Foreclosures/evictions, Largely inaccessible except by car, Flood of refugees from suburbia

——

Transportation

U.S.S.R.: Public, Continues to run, Compact cities along railways, Maintainable infrastructure

U.S.: Private (mostly cars and trucks), Breaks down due to fuel shortages, Sprawl and dead downtowns, More potholes than roads

——

Employment

U.S.S.R.: Predominantly public, Slowdowns, Salaries delayed, Massive levels of inventory, Continued access/barter, gradual transition

U.S.: Predominantly private, Shutdowns, Mass layoffs, Just-in-time inventory, Liquidation

——

Medicine

U.S.S.R: Public, Free basic care, Focused on basic care and prevention

U.S.: Private, Focused on geriatrics, chronic care, emergencies

——

Education

U.S.S.R.: Public and free, 8 grades generally enough, Children walk to school, Small neighborhood schools, “The Lost Generation”

U.S.: Crippling student loans, 12+4 years produces many semi-literates, Children bussed or otherwise driven to school

Huge city-wide schools, Illiteracy and ignorance

——

CONCLUSION:

The Soviet Union was much better-prepared for economic collapse than the United States is.

—

That, from Orlov in 2006, is still, today, an excellent summary of the situation, 19 years later.

Another good example of foretold events turning out subsequently to have been true, is that the brilliant geostrategic analyst Alexander Mercouris has long been saying that when Russia defeats Ukraine in its cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, Russia will not only have won all of Donbass (the most economically productive part of Ukraine) but will then be positioned to invade and take over any other part of Ukraine that it will need to take over (in order to prevent the U.S. from ever placing a nuclear missile in Ukraine near enough to The Kremlin so as to be able to blitz-decapitate Russia’s central command). For example, one news-story said about Mercouris on 22 May 2024, “According to the expert, the end of the fighting over Donbas will be brought about by the fall of the last major stronghold still under Kyiv's control - Slavyansk-Kramatorsk." And, now, on 8 August 2025, Mercouris headlined “Donbass cauldrons force US to deal with Russia”, and he explained in detail why this is finally happening, and why the defeat of the U.S. and its NATO in Ukraine will be coming soon thereafter. So, even if Trump is ignorant of these realities due to having hired too many neoconservatives as his advisors, Putin can be expected to report it to him if the two wil meet privately (as is expected soon). If Trump had been following daily Mercouris’s news-reports instead of domestic U.S. ‘news’ (propaganda — all of which is neocon) — then he woud have been able do plan much better, not failed (as he is doing).

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.