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The United States is a declining empire. It was able to lose the war in Vietnam and still continue. It was able to lose the war in Afghanistan and still continue. It was able to lose basically in Iraq and still continue.
Now we have a new stage in the decline of the American Empire. A war that it is losing because the other side not out endures it, but because the other side matches it in the resources it can bring. It hasn't helped the United States that it has an army and a navy and an air force because those failed. They didn't solve the problem. They brought the navy in, can't do it. They had a blockade, didn't change anything. They had their air force come in, they it doesn't solve the problem. They can't solve the problem. That's what they're discovering. And so they don't know what to do.
Richard Wolff says what we're watching in the Middle East is much bigger than another war. Sanctions are escalating. Critical shipping routes are under pressure. Russia and China have become increasingly important to the economic equation. And Wolff believes the consequences are now reaching back into the United States itself. But his biggest warning goes beyond Iran. He argues that the global system America dominated for decades is being tested in ways Washington may not be prepared for. And if he's right, what comes next could reshape far more than the Middle East.
And then this silly nonsense about sanctions. You know, sanctions didn't work real well for the United States when they applied them to Russia starting many years ago. They keep doing it. They keep doubling back and doubling down on what has not worked. They've been bombing Iran now for many, many weeks. It's not working. The Iranians are not getting down and begging for anything. They haven't stopped their warfare. They are increasing it as you point out. Bab el-Mandeb is now going to be blockaded. That forces ships to have to turn around and go out the Suez Canal, which increases the cost of everything being shipped through there. It increases the time it takes. It's a major blow on the oil front because it means Saudi oil can't come back. And the desperation of the United States, it was revealed today. They know that this is hurting them. That's why this morning they decided to agree to let Saudi Arabia have nuclear weapons. What? What's that about? We just justify a war against Iran so that we don't have the spread of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, he's spreading nuclear weapons. And if I know anything about the history of the complicated relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia, if you give nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia, you have just increased the incentive for Iran, if it doesn't already have them, to go and get them.
Last thing about sanctions. There's an immense literature in economics. Remember, I'm an economics professor, that shows that sanctions, are they an irritant? Yes. Do they cost some money to the country that suffers them? Yes. Do they change the basic geopolitics? Almost never. They can't do it. Why not? Because it's relatively easy to work around them. To hide what you are doing by going to third parties. Will Iran be able to evade the sanctions? And the answer is more than any sanctions, these will be evadable. Why? Because the two major allies of Iran, Russia and China, are in a position to help the Iranians sell their oil, ship their oil, and get out of their country exports they need to get out of, and secure inputs and imports they need to get. China and Russia have an immense border that nobody else can police. And Russia and Iran have the Caspian Sea, which they can dominate because the Russians already do. So, will it be an irritant? Yes. Is that going to change the situation? No.
This is the first major piece of Wolf's argument. Sanctions can impose serious economic costs, but imposing costs and forcing another government to change its strategy are not necessarily the same thing. And Iran isn't operating in isolation. Wolf's point is that relationships with Russia and China can create alternative channels for trade and economic support. That raises a much larger question. How effective are America's traditional tools when other major powers are increasingly capable of helping countries work around them?
But this is a altogether different. There is a crisis now in the United States on many levels made worse by this war. Farmers in this country, they can't farming is done in this country, particularly if you're a small farm, on a very small margin of profit. Now that the price of oil and gas goes up, they have to pay for that to have their tractor work. The price of fertilizer went up because it's made out of oil. They can't manage the the finances of all of this. It's cost wild amounts of money. It's damaging all kinds of Excuse me, of sectors. We have a a budget crisis in the country. We have growing homelessness in the country. There isn't money available to do a lot of the things that keep the social contract in this country going. Now you can have people like Mr. Besson lying through their teeth telling you what we're going to do is be more efficient. Remember Elon Musk with a chainsaw making the government efficient. He's not making anything efficient. He's saving money on domestic expenditures. Like the Department of Education and so. Why? So he can pay for the war and all of the other domestic results of the war, like handing out billions to the farmers so he can keep their votes for the election, you're squeezing American empire and American capitalism. Yes, the squeezing isn't yet threatening it. And yes, you may be right. They are so damaged if they walk away and the world sees they were defeated again that they may keep it going. But not because they can and it's easy and they not at all because it's the lesser evil for them from admitting that they should never have done this, that they were misled either by their own intelligence or the Israeli intelligence or both of them, that they are they are exposed to the world. Look, every country in the world that hosts an American military base is going to think about that differently from now on. They see what happened to the bases in Kuwait, in Bahrain, and on and on and on. They're not stupid. They understand what that means. Just like there are other countries that now understand the urgency to get missiles and drones in a place where they can be hidden, in a place where they can be used and safe from Everybody is learning here. And the lessons they're learning are exquisitely dangerous for the United States. Anyone with half a brain will tell you the importance of the military power of the United States was the hope that it would seem so enormous that nobody would dare require them to use it. Iran required them to use it now. And it's exposed. And they made a mistake. The exposure of their weakness relative to Iran is an immense historical lesson for the whole world. The big powerful empire, the empire of the United States which inherited the empires of Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Japan. That's why the United States is the country it is. It is the one empire that replaced a dozen empires. And it's accordingly rich. It could rip off all of the world. Not just the British empire part or the French empire or the German. They got them all. But there's a saying in English, the bigger they are, the harder they fall. That's it. You're watching the biggest of all empires experience what all the others did. It takes longer. It may be more devastating and difficult.
And this is where Wolf moves the story from foreign policy to consequences at home. Energy disruptions can spread through transportation, agriculture, manufacturing, and consumer prices. While prolonged military operations create additional pressure on government spending. But his larger argument is about perception. If countries begin questioning whether American economic and military power can still produce the outcomes it once did, the consequences aren't limited to one conflict. They can affect alliances, deterrents, and the way other governments calculate their own risks.
Well, you know, I understand we may see these things differently. I see Russia winning in Ukraine. I see it every day. I don't understand the alternative. The only outlet onto the ocean that Ukraine had was Odessa, and Odessa is now effectively being blockaded and overwhelmed by the Russians, who will in all likelihood, given everything that has happened, take that city within the next few weeks. And then what? Then Ukraine has then become a land like Austria, a little a little country with no ports and very little left. The European economies are in terrible shape. The average economic growth in Europe is like between 0 and 1%. The annual growth in the United States is 2%. 2.1%. The annual growth in China this year, 4.3%, more than twice that of the United States. And that has been true every year since 2010. That's not a successful program to contain China. That's one huge failure. You didn't do it. You didn't contain. You didn't even compress the two-to-one ratio, and by the way, sometimes even three-to-one, between the rate of growth of China. And with that difference in rate of growth comes a different capability for your political activity, a different capability of your military activity, the different degree to which China can help Russia. Russia's economy is okay, too, after immense predictions the ruble would collapse, Russia would come to its knees, the sanction Look, I I look at these, I take these things seriously. I ask, have the predictions come through? How powerful have the sanctions been? And the [clears throat] answer is, they don't achieve the objective stated by those who impose them. And all I see is more of it. Well, it didn't work. It's like Mr. Trump reimposed the blockade, but the blockade didn't work the first time. It's not going to work the same. Tell me, give me reason to believe that the bombing campaign for 40 days didn't work. Now is resumed what? More more killing? It seemed to me when you saw millions and millions of people in the streets of Iran for the funeral of the Ayatollah, you could see that if your goal, which it was stated, was to bomb and then the country would fall apart because of all the dissension, you didn't see any dissension. You saw a level of solidarity, which ought to make an enemy stop and realize, "Wow, have we misjudged the situation?"
And this is why China changes the scale of the story. The strategic issue isn't simply which country grows faster in one particular year. It's what happens when differences in industrial capacity, trade, and economic growth accumulate over a much longer period. Wolf believes that gives countries facing American pressure alternatives they didn't have when US power was at its post-Cold War peak. And that makes the confrontation with Iran part of a much larger test of how the global balance of power is changing.
These are different parts of the story of the decline of the American Empire and the emergence of others. So, then now to end and answer your question. Americans will have to see more of what I've just said than they do now. If they do, if we can succeed in getting that way of thinking stronger in the United States, then we will get the political expression, we will get political candidates and parties who will say, "Containment is the wrong approach. We have to sit down with the Chinese, sit down with the Iranians, and come up with a way to live together on this planet. That's much safer for all of us because the alternative is a war. And it is a nuclear war, especially now that Mr. Trump has decided to allow the Saudis to have a nuclear weapon. The hypocrisy here and the desperation of such behavior. The president of this country has been telling the Americans he's saving them from the proliferation of nuclear weapons in this case to Iran. Americans have no better liking for Mr. for the the king of Saudi Saudi Arabia than they do for the Ayatollah in Iran. To have a war to prevent nuclear proliferation to one of them while you give it to another one is for Americans going to be very difficult. Those are all little moments in this question. If we can get a movement courageous enough to present the alternative, I think there's a good chance that the United States will eventually go in that direction.
That's ultimately Wolf's warning. Iran may be the immediate crisis, but he sees it as one part of a much broader shift involving China, Russia, and the limits of American power. His conclusions are controversial, and many analysts would challenge them. But the strategic question underneath them is much bigger than any single war. If the global balance of power really is changing, does the United States adapt to a world where other powers have greater leverage, or keep escalating in an attempt to preserve the system that came before? The answer could shape the next era of the global economy.