US Empire/West Decline

PART 1 — Media, Culture and Information Sovereignty By Jan ObergTFF co-founder and director January 20, 2026 This is the first of four TFF-created idea portfolios designed to curb the global reach of the United States and, in both the short and long term, help catalyse a worldwide nonviolent resistance to what many observers describe as the Trump administration’s uniquely confrontational, destructive and world-threatening policies. These portfolios outline what governments and citizens across the world can do through dynamic diplomacy, creative initiatives, and strictly nonviolent means. They are typical TFF works in that we do not only tell what the problem is and how bad it will go – as 90+% of all commentators, experts and scholars do – we tell what we think can be done, inviting you to think of what you think you can do. It seems painfully clear to me that the current political dynamics in Washington increasingly resemble the most...

Introduction to TFF’s forthcoming four Idea Portfolios of Diplomatic and Nonviolent Resistance By TFF’s Board & FoundersPascal Lottaz, Biljana Vankovska, Annette Schiffmann, Christina Spannar & Jan Oberg January 19, 2026 “America, you are too arrogant.” — Martin Luther King Jr. Over the course of Trump’s first term and now a year into his second, the world has witnessed a consistent pattern of actions that challenge the basic long-standing norms of international cooperation, weaken multilateral institutions, and ignore the global norms and legal frameworks established by the UN Charter. During these years, we have witnessed military operations in Iran, Syria and Ukraine without UN authorisation; the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani; repeated strikes across the Middle East; and the launch of tariff wars against allies and competitors alike. We have seen a renewed emphasis on nuclearism and zero interest in arms control and disarmament negotiations. Pentagon is now The Department...

And why the world, especially the EU, must now declare itself independent of the United States. UN’s 80th anniversary This year, the United Nations celebrates the 80th anniversary of its founding. The UN was formed after the scourge of the Second World War, in which 70 to 85 million people were killed and many countries were destroyed. That war came on the heels of the First World War, which also killed between 15 and 22 million people. After the Second World War, especially after the use of nuclear weapons by the United States, which marked a turning point in the history of warfare that could result in the end of civilisation as we know it, humanity decided to move away from the era of empires and big power politics and usher in a new era of peace, freedom and cooperation. These were the principles enshrined in the UN Charter. The United States...

World BEYOND War,TFF Associate For years, World BEYOND War and other peace groups from around the world had been attending peace conferences in Cuba. When I visited Cuba this past January it was with a visa for that purpose. I published here the remarks I made at the conference. We shouted as loudly as we could about January’s conference in websites, social media, emails, and media interviews. The notion that there could be anything wrong with it — or that some institution could punish us for it — never entered our minds. Legally, you’re allowed to go to a peace conference in Cuba. Nobody has so much as hinted that I’ve done anything illegal. But on Thursday June 5th I got a bunch of letters in the mail telling me that on Monday June 9th the U.S. bank accounts of World BEYOND War and the private accounts of all of my family members...

With a few words about the US’ domestic authoritarianism and NATO’s reckless expansion and re-armament where everything else but that is needed. George Orwell’s prophetic book, 1984, was written in 1948 and was published on 9 June 1949. So, today is the 76th anniversary of the publication of that important and prophetic book. The book centres on the consequences of the decline of democracy and the rise of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people’s behaviour within society. The book was influenced by totalitarianism under Stalin and censorship and propaganda under the Nazis. The book is not about any particular society but refers to any society that falls under the influence of those oppressive policies. The book is basically about the power of propaganda and indoctrination employed in the service of authoritarian rulers and regimes. Orwell warned us that the manipulation of the public in the service of autocracies did...

1.  Definitions and Hypotheses: An Overview Definition: An empire is a transboundary Center-Periphery system, in macro-space and in macro-time, with a culture legitimizing a structure of unequal exchange between center and periphery: Empires have different profiles.  The US Empire has a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner: “The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault.  To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing”.[1] In other words, direct violence to protect structural violence legitimized by cultural violence.[2]  The Center is continental USA and the Periphery much of the world.  Like any system it has a life-cycle reminiscent of an organism, with conception, gestation, birth, infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, senescence and death.  Seeded by the British Empire, the maturing colonies honed their imperial skills on indigenous populations,...

I am very pleased with Thomas Karat’s very well-conducted interview and the perspectives he chose to focus on with me. I recommend his fine YouTube Channel warmly. I hope you will like it and share it – and, of course, leave your comments below. You may also go to the interview on YouTube and see the wonderful comments. The interview happened before the Western-supported al-Nusra terrorist regime-change in Syria, but that is, of course, on par with the two conflict areas mentioned in the video title. You’ll find many more videos on TFF’s Video Library on Substack.

“No Extermination without Representation,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024 TFF Associate & former Board member On November 5, the American people go to the polls in one of the most consequential elections for the United States and the world. Normally, outsiders should not interfere in other countries’ elections, although the United States has a habit of interfering in other countries’ elections, often overtly and sometimes with the use of coups, plots, subversion, etc. However, as the Americans chanted “no taxation without representation” when they were fighting for their independence and tried to shake off the yoke of a foreign power over their lives, it is now appropriate for the people of the world to say “no extermination without representation.” If the rest of the world cannot have representation in US elections, at least we are entitled to express a view about it, especially when it affects the well-being or even...

In 2021 the administration said it would pursue ‘relentless diplomacy.’ They call it something else today in Ukraine. Ted Snider October 9, 2024 It is said that Henry Kissinger asserted that little can be won at the negotiating table that isn’t earned on the battlefield. In several wars in recent weeks, U.S. officials have echoed that approach. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller recently said that the U.S. “supports[s] a ceasefire” in Lebanon while simultaneously recognizing that “military pressure can at times enable diplomacy.” Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has expressed the doctrine as doing “all that we can to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield so it has the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” This article was published first by Responsible Statecraft on October 8, 2024 here But during the Biden administration, the iteration of Kissinger’s doctrine has gone well beyond the generals supporting the diplomats. The...

In its recent analysis – “How Four US Presidents Unleashed Economic Warfare Across the Globe” – The Washington Post illustrates what I have called “sanctionitis” – the disease of (over)using sanctions as a means to conduct foreign policy and cause great harm to the world economy, the US economy but also to millions of innocent people who suffer from the consequences of them. But the WP merely points out that sanctions are inefficient from a US point of view in that they have not achieved what was intended, indeed sometimes the opposite. It uses various kinds of pejoratives like “dictator” about leaders of states the US sees as enemies. It fails completely to point out that sanctions – particularly long-term sanctions – are, mostly, grossly immoral because of their humanitarian consequences. Be this as it may, something has happened when Washington Post does publish such an analysis and calls it...

Photo by Tim Mossholder “We’re the greatest nation on the face of the earth… I have never been more optimistic about the future of our country… There’s no country in the world better positioned to lead the world than America… Just remember who we are. We are the United States of America, for God’s sake.” Joe Biden, US President The Democratic Party is waging its 2024 electoral campaign by focusing on two themes: first, a denunciation of all that Trump proposes to bring to the presidency, centering on the destruction of American democracy if elected, and secondly, a positive domestic record of the Biden years with several notable benefits for the American people including jobs and wages, climate, energy policy, social protection, gun control, and a stock market at record highs. What is missing from this rosy picture of America and even more so from Democratic Party advocacy is neither...