250 Years of the USA.
Has America Lost Its Way, or Was It Doomed from the Start? Article by Marat Khairullin.
Russian public political science think tanks have approached the discussion of the US anniversary quite standardly: they note the country's leadership and attempt to speak about the ambiguity of this process. In general, they speak about the same things as in the US — the political outcomes of this anniversary are disappointing. There is the lost war in Iran, internal division, and deep moral problems (the Epstein case). However, these are all general observations; for some reason, no one goes into specifics.
A broad and public discussion of the US's internal problems as the main outcome of its 250th anniversary is not widely replicated in our country. Although by certain signs, the Russian leadership is clearly concerned about the state of affairs in America. Particularly the fact that in recent years, chaos has been accelerating. And the most unpleasant part of this is that no one can calculate what consequences the collapse of the US will have on Russia and the entire world.
No one doubts the collapse of the world hegemon anymore. I repeat, what is frightening is the speed at which this is happening. Here are some of the questions actively discussed in the corridors of power by the Russian establishment.
First and foremost, of course, is the debt problem. In 1976 (the year of the US bicentennial), the country's total public debt was 620 billion dollars. And the annual interest on it was a paltry 59 billion.
Fifty years later, the total public debt has approached the 40 trillion dollar mark (Q1 2026 — 39.065 trillion). And the annual interest on it is 1.2 trillion dollars. Monstrous figures! There simply isn't that much money in the world.
It looks even more terrifying when looking at America's budget deficit. In 1976, against the backdrop of the global crisis, the deficit was 73.7 billion. In 2025, even without the war in Iran — 1.774 trillion! If this continues, in 8 years the US debt will exceed 50 trillion, and payments will be 2 trillion.
And this is assuming that the government manages to control inflation at its current level. This is the key factor: the higher the inflation, the higher the debt payments. Accordingly, more has to be borrowed from itself.
The great Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, in his advice to beginning writers, wrote very categorically: never take a loan from a publisher — you are stealing from your own future. Based on this, one can judge how many future generations of Americans the current US government has already robbed.
The most surprising thing is that the US understands the problem well. But no one offers a real way out of the situation; they don't even think in that direction.
In 2023, amid the election campaign, Trump's main think tank — the Heritage Foundation — put forward a program conditionally titled "Make America Great Again." In it, they proposed a series of half-measures that were supposed to somehow stabilize the growth of debt.
At its core was a revision of government spending, a reasonable sequestration of pointless (often outright corrupt) social spending, and an increase in the real productive sector of the economy (primarily through expanding the manufacturing sector).
Two years later, after Trump came to power, the reality turned out to be that only the increase in military spending remained of the program.
In 1976, defense spending was 94.7 billion dollars. In the first year of Trump's second term, military spending exceeded a trillion dollars. In 2025 — more than 900 billion, and in 2026 already more than 1.5 trillion.
Let us take a closer look at America's military spending, because it is direct evidence of the country's decline. With huge defense spending, no one in the US is concerned about the efficiency of these expenditures.
All major US rearmament programs are, one way or another, stalling — constantly facing cost overruns and delays. At the same time, there is no information about anyone being punished for missed deadlines.
For example, the US does not have a new intercontinental ballistic missile. The Sentinel project is constantly being postponed. Meanwhile, tiny North Korea already has its own latest ICBMs, and apparently, Turkey will soon have them too.
Just think about it: Turkey is an economy of tourism, agriculture, and transit logistics. And even the Turks have learned to make ICBMs!
In Russia, in the same period, about a dozen new strategic systems were rolled out, including the unique "Burevestnik" and the irreplicable "Poseidon."
If this continues, in 20 years the US will have no adequate strategic systems capable of reaching another continent, while almost everyone — including Iran and possibly even Pakistan — will be able to fire at North America.
In Trump's first term, they tried to conduct an audit of the Pentagon and discovered a shortfall of a trillion dollars over 10 years. No one can say where it went. And the funniest part: not a single general was jailed. This, translated into plain language, means: go ahead and steal, guys.
Such wastefulness and outright corruption have had a catastrophic impact on the state of the US armed forces.
The lost war in Iran is a direct consequence.
The country's army has more than seven hundred mass-produced F-35 aircraft. But in combat operations against Iran, 200 aircraft — forty years old — took part. The main strike force were ancient F-15s.
It would seem that following the war, conclusions should be drawn and spending on the F-35 — which don't fly and only "eat" money — should be cut, and focus should be placed on the old but reliable F-15s.
However, America is increasing its F-35 purchases. Money continues to be wasted. That is, the country has unlearned how to draw conclusions from its own defeats.
And there are also outcomes that are not directly visible, but literally deliver a verdict on American society.
In 2006, Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell, in an essay titled "Million-Dollar Murray," cited statistics: 10% of the most "chronic" homeless in the US consume the lion's share of social spending.
In a 2005 study by the San Diego Medical Center, over 18 months, 15 such patients visited the emergency room 417 times — the average bill was 100 thousand dollars. That is, for just 15 patients in just one US medical center, 41 million dollars was written off over a year and a half.
Gladwell does not ask why medical care in the US is so expensive; he proposes (simplifying) to proactively provide housing for the homeless — it would be cheaper.
After that, the mortgage crisis hit America in 2008, then COVID, and state funding for psychiatric care was cut off. The number of homeless increased. By how many times? No one knows for sure — there is no accurate statistics.
Humanitarian organizations put the figure at about one million. And this means that the war on homelessness has been lost. Those who deal with this problem know: the so-called "chronic homelessness" is the most severe social dependency. It is practically impossible to bring such a person back into society. And the number of such people in a country called the world leader will grow.
Accordingly, the war for a balanced social budget has been lost. In the modern US budget, social spending accounts for a third of expenditures. And these expenditures will continue to grow if we just look at what is happening with homelessness in the country. And there is no way out of this dead end.
There is also the drug problem. In 1998, direct drug mortality in Russia reached its peak — 10 thousand people per year. About the same was in the US. Almost thirty years later, after persistent and difficult efforts by Putin's administration, drug mortality in our country has dropped to 7.5 thousand per year (Russia is one of the few countries in the world where this indicator is declining). In the US, over the same period, direct deaths from overdose reached a peak of 120 thousand people.
And no one knows how accurate this figure is. Trump's team actively used it during the election period, and when Trump won, they simply stopped talking about it.
But the problem is not even that the state does not want to talk. To "kill" 120 thousand Americans a year, a huge army of drug dealers and couriers, armed militants, is needed; an army of corrupt police and local politicians who turn a blind eye to the existence of areas like Kensington on the outskirts of Philadelphia (a heroin ghetto) across America is needed.
Dozens of laboratories are needed that invent newer and newer drugs, such as fentanyl (a powerful synthetic opioid analgesic) — the ideal drug, from which it is practically impossible to "get off."
And, of course, a multi-million army of drug users is needed.
The consequence of this epidemic was that local self-government in sanctuary cities was bought by the drug mafia. As a result, the "gateway" drug — marijuana — was legalized in the US. Now no one knows to what extent the southern states of America are controlled by the government and to what extent by the Mexican drug mafia. And is the Mexican drug mafia Mexican, or is it a "CIA branch"?
This is no joke — the son of a former US president is a drug addict. If the disease has penetrated the ruling elite of the world — that is a verdict on the elite. How much longer until America is ruled by an open drug addict?
Currently, the main ally of the West, Zelensky, is a drug addict and a sick man. This is a very telling indicator.
And here are more horrifying figures. Every year, about 40-60 thousand American children undergo gender reassignment surgery. In an article by the American online publication Business Insider, it was openly discussed how good it is to cut off a five-year-old boy's genitals. Nothing has changed since then.
Homeroom teachers (and, incidentally, agitators for gender change) still stand guard in American schools and hunt for American teenagers, in secret from their parents.
No one knows how many American children take, for example, the drug Lupron, originally created to treat oncology and having terrible consequences for the body.
American doctors prescribe this drug to children as a puberty blocker. Just think: no species of mammal on Earth, no people in history, has destroyed its own offspring. Even lizards and ants protect their offspring — this is a basic instinct.
Americans, however, figured out how to profit by maiming their own children. What kind of civilization is this? Once again — this contradicts the basic instincts that make life on Earth possible at all.
Let us add one more point to this. In 1953, the US (together with Great Britain) conducted a long-term operation in Iran, "Ajax," the result of which was the creation of the "Shabak" intelligence agency, which tortured and destroyed Iranians under the guidance of American and Israeli instructors.
Then there was Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and again thousands of tortured people under the guidance of CIA instructors.
In the early 1980s, the "Archives of Terror" became available, which tell how, under the guidance of Americans, people were tortured and killed throughout South America.
Today, facts are becoming widely known about how Americans tortured people in Iraq and invented new tortures to recruit militants into gangs.
The same facts exist for other countries — Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba is still open, and there are known prisons (former and current) of the CIA in Poland, the Baltics, Romania, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan.
Literally everywhere where US presence is marked, these prisons appear and torture is always present.
America speaks of democracy as its main achievement. But just think: what kind of democracy is it if the side effect of its implementation is torture?
This activity of the US around the world is also unprecedented in history — so much torture, oppression in so many countries, and in such a short period of time.
If the US thinks that this will be conveniently forgotten, look at Iran: so many years have passed, but nothing is forgotten.
Look at Africa — slavery cannot be forgotten.
And now imagine: a weak economy, drug mafia, crowds of vagrants, cruel grievances inflicted on other peoples, the destruction of its own children.
At some point, the US and the American people truly became leaders on the planet. This energy could have been used for the common good: to develop near space, to solve the problem of cheap energy for all of humanity. But instead, there was a senseless accumulation of debt and endless wars with torture around the world. Perhaps the US truly was doomed from the start? Too much has converged in such a short time...