It seems that the US-led capitalist Empire is being besieged on every front: financially with skyrocketing government debt, obvious environmental threats, its rather desperate attempts to limit criticism of it s policies through censorship, and the backfiring efforts to wage economic warfare on key nations. The latter is what this article illustrates.
The new Indian deals with Russia, the statements from the Russia-India summit and the continued oil buying from Iran are huge defeats for the Trump administration's anti-China, anti-Russia and anti-Iran policies. Its global strategy to rescue the 'unilateral moment' for the U.S. has failed over India's recalcitrance.It's not clear to me that this economic warfare strategy is entirely Trump's strategy. Economic warfare has along with military warfare (and military threats) have always been the main strategies (in addition to outright subversion) of the US Empire as it deals with its opponents. Trumps attempts are only more transparent. It seems that both of strategies are no longer functional in the capitalist Empire's pursuit of world dominance, and perhaps Chris Hedges is right that the Empire is now collapsing.