2025 came to a close in an atmosphere of anxiety: attack in preparation against Venezuela, looming danger of world war, threat of global economic collapse, soaring prices and an assault on hard-won freedoms in so-called democratic societies. 2025 is also another year of horror marked by the continuation in Palestine of a genocide announced in advance and committed in full view of the world. On the other hand, 2025 once again demonstrated that force alone is not enough to prevail; the American-Israeli aggression against Iran was thwarted; the strengthening of American-Israeli grip over the Middle East and the fragmentation of the region have not succeeded. The project, however, has not been abandoned.

Temporary retreat of American imperialism

The most important development of 2025 is that the United States is acknowledging its relative weakening. The Trump popcorn spectacle and the individual’s antics conceal a major historical turning point: globalist, unipolar, neoliberal-neoconservative imperialism, claiming to dominate the entire world, is running out of steam. It has gone from failure to failure: financial crises (2008, a succession of stock market bubbles), deindustrialization and offshoring, impoverishment of the population and widening inequalities leading to social tensions, societal divisions and deep “cultural” antagonisms, the deterioration of its infrastructure, and defeats on the international stage (Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine). The most measurable indicator of impending disaster is the public debt, which has surpassed $38.5 trillion (38,500,000,000,000) and is increasing every second. It stood at $9 trillion in 2007. The bank bailouts during the 2008 crisis triggered its ascent, and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the pace.

Here lies a ticking time bomb for the American order and the global imperialist system. This debt consists of purchases of Treasury bonds and other American financial instruments, and it is 30% financed by foreign investors. They place their money in the U. S. as part of the American imperium based on military might and the primacy of the US dollar. Their contribution props up this currency, which would have collapsed long ago without the continuous infusion from abroad. This foreign contribution allows the U. S. to import more than its economy can export and to live beyond its means. It is a perfect illustration of the rentier status of an imperialist power that siphons the world’s wealth towards itself by exploiting its hegemony.

But the Achilles’ heel of this arrangement is that it relies on investors’ confidence that their funds will not lose value, that they will be available to them and that they will be returned to them. However, doubt is creeping in, and Treasury bond offerings are struggling to find buyers. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, for example, is reportedly currently seeking $3 trillion to finance the US debt. Raising interest rates to attract buyers risks further slowing an already sluggish economy, and increasing the money supply would exacerbate inflation at a time when price increases are already alarming. All it would take is for one large investor, or several smaller ones, all of whom are already holding back, to throw in the towel, take the plunge, sell their Treasury bonds and withdraw, for panic to set in, triggering a mass exodus, a technical bankruptcy of the US, a suspension of payments, and a plunge in the value of the dollar. This is a major danger for an imperialist country that parasitizes the world and lives off its resources.

This is why the US is changing its strategic posture. It must attract fresh capital from abroad, through persuasion or coercion. Hence the requirement imposed on Europe and Japan to invest in the United States $700 billion and $500 billion respectively, sums neither country possesses. The US must also reduce its military spending by transferring some of it to its European, Asian, and Canadian subordinates (“allies”) and by pressuring them to allocate 5% of their GDP to their military budgets (the American military industry would benefit from new orders). Vassals are being called upon to prop up their master, in accordance with imperialist logic.

Adding to the economic insecurity is a growing awareness that the US lacks the resources to achieve its geopolitical ambitions. The failures of the aggressive policies of the neoliberal-neoconservative globalists (the “endless wars,” waged repeatedly and everywhere), who have been in the driver’s seat in the West since the 1980s, have been clear for several years. The US is not capable of dominating the entire world. It cannot confront two major powers, China and Russia, simultaneously. The most grievous defeat is the recent one in Ukraine, where every possible effort was made to bring down Russia, but to no avail. The situation in the US resembles that of Great Britain after 1945: a faltering economy, an empire that was too vast and costly to maintain, and exhaustion. This has resulted in imperial collapse, a prospect that the US now faces.

A weakened imperialism faces a choice between two paths: stubbornness or retreat. Two camps are engaged in a struggle to the finish in the US. The first, that of the globalist neoliberal-neoconservative imperialists of the Clinton, Obama and Biden ilk, wants to continue the policy of unipolar domination against all odds. Its members persist in fabricating narratives of a Ukrainian victory and of a Russia on the verge of collapse in order to continue the anti-Russian war. Their hope is that, even after nearly four years of fruitless efforts, the sacrifice of Ukraine will eventually bring Russia to its knees. This would then allow them to turn against China. The other camp, that of the Trumpists, positions itself on the terrain of imperialism with a nationalist flavor (” America First”). They are more aware of the economic fragility of the US and the limits of its power. They acknowledge the failure of the globalist approach and the impossibility of inflicting the desired “strategic defeat” on Russia. Prioritizing the confrontation with China, they are attempting a tactical retreat, leaving open a return to the globalist path at a later date. This accounts for their attempts to extricate themselves from the Ukrainian quagmire, which the US itself created, by negotiating with Russia.

Globalist imperialism permeates the majority of the American political, economic, media, and academic establishment. More recent, born from the failure of the former, nationalist imperialism is a minority view and hampered by the proponents of the first type. The tug of war causes the vacillations, hesitations, inconsistencies, contradictions, U-turns, and 180-degree turns of a President Trump who pivots like a weather vane and is incapable of implementing a coherent foreign policy.

The risk of imperial disintegration lies at the heart of the National Security Strategy published on December 4, 2025. Reality is shattering illusions, ideology, and narratives about the universal leadership of an exceptional and indispensable nation. Less verbose about global hegemony, and instead painting a picture of military appeasement, the document focuses on a sphere of influence: the Trump administration announces that it will set its sights on the Americas. Naturally, neither the opinion nor the consent of the peoples of the Americas is sought. This resembles a return to the territorially delimited imperialism of the past. In international relations, it declares the abandonment of crusades allegedly for the defense of “values” and a preference for a transactional approach.

Is this the end of global imperialism, in place since 1990? Certainly not. This is a pause to regroup, restore ailing finances, and attract foreign capital. It is also about driving China and Russia out of the Americas. With it rear consolidated, the US would resume its path to global domination. Will the world be divided into blocs? Nothing is less certain because, while the US claims the Americas for itself, it does not allow others to establish their spheres of influence and will not cease interfering in them. Despite the rhetoric, the US is not turning its back on Europe or Asia, if only to harm Europe, Russia, and China. There is no question of giving up from global ambitions, which go hand in hand with the modus operandi of imperialism, namely the pumping of wealth and capital from everywhere.

Europe’s Suicide

The most astonishing discovery of 2025 is the behavior of European leaders. The world is learning that they are more belligerent than their American counterparts, an unexpected situation after decades of American warmongering. The war hysteria they are stirring up in their countries is astounding. They beat the drums of war as they once sang the praises of a happy globalization. If they are to be believed, a Russian invasion is imminent, and Russian tanks would be rolling down the Champs-Élysées if their path was not blocked by armed force. In the movie The Russians Are Coming (1966), the intruders emerged from a submarine that had run aground on the American coast; in 2025, they would converge from everywhere.

The timetable for the presumed direct Euro-Russian confrontation is periodically announced by these leaders. The countdown has supposedly begun, even though most European countries lack armies capable of waging high-intensity conflicts and risk annihilation in the face of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. They cling to NATO and the US presence in Europe, listen to Trump like schoolchildren lined up in front his desk, and call him “daddy” to stroke his ego, all to no avail. Do they think they can start a war, hoping to draw the US into it? That is a risky gamble. Do they imagine the US would be forced to come to their rescue, perhaps following a false-flag operation blamed on the Russians? The charade of “Russian” drones flying over European cities in September 2025 may have been a rehearsal. But the US ignored this blatant staged event. They also ignored the “threat” of the three MiG-31s that allegedly entered Estonian airspace and flew over the Baltic Sea, which has become “NATO Lake” since Finland and Sweden joined the organization.

For his part, the hawkish NATO Secretary General urged the population to adopt a wartime mindset and, like some military commanders called on to exacerbate the war psychosis, warned them to prepare for a conflagration on the scale of the one their grandparents and great-grandparents had experienced. In an explicit and widely publicized speech, the Chief of Staff of the French Armed Forces, Fabien Mandon, declared that the population would soon have to accept sacrificing some of its children. A NATO admiral suggested a preemptive strike against Russia, the world’s leading nuclear power. Political authorities in London, Paris, and Berlin were not to be outdone. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz predicted that, this time, Germany would carry out what it had been prevented from doing in the East from 1941 to 1945. The avowed warmongers of the Baltic states were now joined by Western leaders. Military budgets are set to explode, even as countries are cash-strapped and their economies are stagnant or in recession. A similar rearmament is planned in Japan, with China as its target.

Russophobia and warmongering are taking on pathological forms. From October 7, 2023, onward, the imposition of the Israeli narrative, the instrumentalization of antisemitism, and the suppression of critical thought facilitated the genocide of Palestinians and further exacerbated the dogmatic drift. On both Palestine and Ukraine, unanimity is demanded under the banner of a new McCarthyism. The cult that surrounded Zelensky, an idol deified in 2022, comes to mind. Any viewpoint that deviates from the prevailing orthodoxy is labeled pro-Putin or anti-Semitic and is outlawed. The mainstream media openly assume the role of mouthpiece for political authorities and bulwark against the expression of any dissent. Commentators like Colonel Jacques Baud, analyst Xavier Moreau or activist Nathalie Yamb who, instead of parroting official tales, stick to the facts, are placed under embargo (“sanctioned”) and silenced. There could be no better proof of the flimsiness of the official narrative and the need to protect it. Freedom of expression is trampled by the very people who rail against authoritarian regimes, but only those they have in their sights, not others. As bad as the situation may be in the US, where, at least, alternative media exist, it is worse in Europe.

Quo vadis, Europe? This western promontory of Asia dominated the world, for better or for worse, for half a millennium. It is the cradle of modernity and the discoverer of the great principles of the contemporary world, but also the perpetrator of numerous abominations. Today, it is discredited by the blindness, amateurism, incompetence and attachment to routine of its elites. All indicators point to the relative decline and marginalization of a continent overtaken by the evolution of a world over which it no longer has any control.

The war in Ukraine provides a stark demonstration of this fact. A series of disastrous policies and misjudgments have led Europe into a historic impasse. Let us recall the recent past. During the 1970s, Western Europe sought to import cheap Soviet natural gas, and the US did everything in its power to dissuade it. The American objective has always been to hinder the natural complementarity between European industry and the abundant and readily available raw materials of its eastern neighbor. The relationship with Russia intensified after the collapse of the USSR. It is vital for German industry, and Chancellor Angela Merkel firmly rejected the US’s attempts to halt the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline (2018-2021). Until 2014, Europeans were not particularly keen on an aggressive policy in Ukraine, unlike the Americans. In 2008, fully aware of the provocation to Russia, France and Germany opposed the American plan to integrate Ukraine into NATO.

They were not in favor of regime change in Kyiv. On the eve of the Maidan coup in 2014, France, Germany, and Poland sponsored an agreement between the Ukrainian government and the protesters. But, a few hours later, neo-Nazi groups, supported by the US, overthrew the elected president, and the US Under Secretary of State, the neoconservative Victoria Nuland, selected the new government born of the coup. In February 2015, France and Germany negotiated the Minsk agreements with Ukraine and Russia to establish a ceasefire in the Donbas and constitutionalize the autonomy of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. But their position was already shifting. In December 2022, Merkel and François Hollande admitted that their intention in 2015 had been to give the government in Kiev time to rearm. In fact, NATO was undertaking the expansion, equipping and training of Ukrainian forces (their numbers were estimated at some 600,000 fighters in 2022, making them the second largest European army after Russia), as well as the construction of sturdy fortifications on the edge of Donbass (those that the Russian army is currently conquering).

When the US launched its proxy war against Russia in early 2022 by forcing it to intervene, Europe immediately joined in. It accepted the “sanctions” that would deprive it of Russian hydrocarbons and quadruple the price of its energy imports. The sabotaging of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in September 2022 confirmed an intention announced by Biden as early as February 2022, alongside an impassive Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Europe is the first victim of these “sanctions.” Why does it accept this self-inflicted wound? The reason is that it is complicit in the fundamental error at the root of this war.

The neoconservatives in power on both sides of the Atlantic were convinced, or wanted to believe, that Russia was weak and that its collapse would be swift. The anticipated military setback and the economic strangulation caused by the “sanctions” were supposed to produce a Maidan in Moscow and the fall of the regime. From this perspective, the cost of the “sanctions” for Europe would be quickly recouped through control of Russia’s raw materials after its defeat. This calculation proved wrong within the first few weeks. Russia’s potential had been underestimated. For nearly four years, NATO improvised strategies that consisted of escalating the conflict in the hope of salvaging the original plan, even as the balance of power became increasingly favorable to Russia. The war was lost. But, far from seeking to end a conflict that was ruining their economies, European leaders moved heaven and earth to keep the flames burning.

In 2025 came Trump, propelled by a voter base reluctant to pour hundreds of billions into a distant bottomless pit while they tighten their belts. Trump has always prioritized confrontation with China. The war against Russia is a diversion that backfired when Russia could not be dispatched as quickly as planned. Trump is trying to extricate himself from a bad situation and halt unnecessary spending. But European leaders bristled as early as the 2024 election campaign and, interfering in US domestic affairs, made known their preference for the Democratic candidate, the mouthpiece of the globalist neoliberal-neoconservative imperialism to which they subscribe.

When Trump announced his intention to negotiate with Russia in February 2025, the neoconservative outcry in the US and Europe was so great that he gave in. This episode revealed the balance of power, one more favorable to globalists nostalgic of the unipolar era than to Trump supporters, and established the pattern for future events. Trump’s weakness lies in his reluctance to unilaterally withdraw the US, as his enemies would blame him for the defeat. He created the fiction that the US is an intermediary or mediator in a Russo-Ukrainian war, when in reality it is waging a proxy war against Russia. The Americans are in command of NATO, which is conducting this war, and the US is Kiev’s primary source of arms and funding. Trump wants Zelensky to be the one to make concessions and sign the agreement. But Zelensky knows that he would be simultaneously signing his own death warrant at the hands of the radicals. Moreover, he is harnessed by American and European warmongers to maintain the fantasy of an imminent victory, derail negotiations and continue the war, whatever the cost to Ukraine.

Within these parameters, 2025 was devoted to Trump’s chaotic attempts to negotiate a US disengagement and to neutralize the efforts of US and European neoconservatives to sabotage it. Far from seeking a settlement, European leaders are raising the specter of a major general war. While, under the weight of “sanctions,” European economies are in freefall, prices are skyrocketing, European taxpayers are bearing the burden of billions paid to Kiev, social divisions are deepening, tensions are undermining political institutions, and the far right is making electoral gains, they are pursuing a headlong rush into militarization and war. It would be convenient to be able to justify Europe’s poor state by invoking wartime conditions. Only the fear of the euro’s collapse is preventing them from seizing Russian sovereign assets. As if the break with Russia were not enough, these same leaders are now picking a fight with China. They claim to forecast a general war in 2029 or 2030, but their short-term strategy seems to be to wait for the midterm elections in November 2026 to reinstate their globalist allies in the US Congress and hamstring Trump supporters. Of course, they will have to prop up Kiev and keep it in the conflict for the next 10 months. But ultimately, weapons will have the final say.

Such stubbornness is striking. One would have thought they would have joined the American negotiations to turn the page on the mistakes they have made since 2022, or even before, and perhaps to re-establish the trade relations with Russia that they so desperately need. However, their reluctance to be held accountable for the mess they leave behind, their fear of losing power, and their self-deception through their own anti-Russian propaganda keep them trapped in denial and clinging to a parallel world awaiting a hypothetical Ukrainian victory. They are so subservient to the globalist neoliberal-neoconservative American imperialism of the Clintons, Obama, and Biden, so thoroughly subjugated by it, that they are incapable of converting to the Trumpian nationalist variety. Formatted in the unipolar era and not having been reset, they continue to function like a robot or a device on autopilot. One can only watch in stunned disbelief the drama of a slow-motion crash of Europe.