Book - After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order

After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (French: Après L'Empire: essai sur la décomposition du système américain) is a 2001 book by Emmanuel Todd. Todd predicts the fall of the United States as the sole superpower.

Todd examines the fundamental weaknesses of the US to conclude that, contrary to American conventional wisdom, America is fast losing its grip on the world stage in economic, military and ideological terms.

1976 prediction of Soviet collapse
Todd attracted attention in 1976 when he predicted, at 25 years old, the fall of the Soviet Union, based on indicators such as increasing infant mortality rates. In the late 1970s Todd was widely pronounced "anti-communist", just as, following the publication of "After the Empire", he has been attacked as "anti-American". He challenges these labels and describes himself as a historian and anthropologist first, and it was his concern as a historian rather than political passion that motivated him to write After the Empire. In late 2002 he believed that the world was about to repeat the same mistake that it had made in regards to the Soviet Union during the 1970s—misinterpreting an expansion in US military activity as a sign of its increasing power, when in fact this aggression masks a decline.

Post Cold War geopolitical climate
Todd writes that the United States became an empire not by strategy but by accident, following the sudden collapse of its main adversary, the Soviet Union. With the globalization of investment, it then indulged in the luxury of conspicuous consumption using incoming capital while going deeper and deeper into debt. In reality America is like a crumbling Roman empire - overextended with excessive arms spending, inequality and disgruntlement at home. To keep the rest of the world inline, and prevent its creditors calling in their debts, all America needs to do then was to wield a big stick.