“ Of the tyrant; Spies and informers are the principal instruments. War is his favorite occupation, for the sake of engrossing the attention of the people, and making himself necessary to them as their leader.” –Aristotle (384-322BC)
Since the end of the 2nd World War, the United States of America has made war-business her permanent go-to economy.
It may surprise the reader that according to Statista, the United States in 2023 spent over $915 billion on the military alone. This is 3 times more than China spent on her military in the same year. It should also be shocking to know that the consequences of over 80 years of consistent policy of warmongering means that of all the so- called developed countries, US does not have modern high speed trains. They do not have infrastructure fund to repair or replace over 70 years old and decaying roads and bridges just because billion of dollars are spent on the military infrastructure without thoughts for jobs and income producing economic activities.
Apart from the national economy, their successive policies which focussed on the implanted war economy has utterly destroyed the private economy as well. America is at the moment, literally bankrupt.
Her debt burden as at 2023 is $30 Trillion.
If the U.S. GDP is actually $24 Trillion, that means that the national debt is $6 Trillion more than her GDP.
This is a bad omen and a sign that the US economy is already on life support machine.
Apart from the fact that the two ruling parties watched the country decline morally, politically and even physically, unassailable statistics shows glaringly. It highlights a precarious fiscal situation where the debt to GDP ratio surpasses 125%. This is a clear signal of an unbalanced budget and heightened bankruptcy concerns. Indeed, this imbalance is already leading to higher borrowing costs, reduced public spending flexibility, and potential long term economic stagnation. Do not be fooled by oligarchical owned media, the United States is in a bad shape.
And, having the worst manager ever in the person of President Donald Trump.
For sure, if China and other major economics successfully decouple from the SWIFT system, it would undermine the US dollar’s dominance as the world’s reserve currency.
Such a shift would accelerate the adoption of alternative financial system and currencies thereby reducing global reliance on the dollar.
If that happens, dollar will drastically depreciate, and increase its volatility in the international market.
In the end, this scenario would play out come what may.
Then the strain on the US economy will make its debt more expensive to service, reduce her ability to leverage the dollar global reserve status for economic and geopolitical influence. This is real and no doubt the major reason why US doesn’t want BRICKS to see the light of the day .
A great civilization, in the words of Peter Heater is not conquered from without, until it has destroyed itself from within. Earlier empire declined and then collapsed or defeated because the ruling elites took more for themselves while impoverishing the majority of the populace. America is no exceptions. For example, the US has disbursed $83.4 billion to fund and equip Ukraine. Meanwhile, it is unable to feed over 20 million children who go to bed without food, and couldn’t fix about 45,000 structurally deficient bridges or find solution to drug abuse and overdose which claims over 250,000 lives every year.
In 2022, an average of one death every 11 minutes was by gun or 48,000 were officially recorded. Suicide accounted for about 20,000 while people fatally shot dead by law enforcement agents accounts for an estimated 6435 lives. America is slowly imploding from within.
While there are no official no-go-zones, some areas are considered extremely dangerous.
For example, in areas where there is higher risk, a multiple units response are standard procedure anytime there are 911 emergency call.
In fact, according to witness reports such response are like real battle. Owning registered guns and illegal guns is also clear signs that American citizens don’t trust their government to protect them.
The swan song of political elites is “defense of democracy” by both Republican and Democratic parties.
Of course that couldn’t be the reason for establishing about 800 bases across the world at a staggering cost of between $600 billion and $1.5 billion a piece.
This cost has nothing to do with “overhead costs for each of them and also safe houses. Those expenses has led to poor services to the needy and consequently bad habits and offensive behavior among youths has gone overboard.
Government has ceased to be benevolent and choose to be brutally repressive to protect massive corruption which is the causal factor.
The nearly $8.4 billion disbursed to Ukraine and over $8 trillion spent in the middle east regime- change and proxy wars mostly ended up in the hands of weapon manufactures in the name of Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Ratheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and Boeing.
Millions of dollars from these huge allocations goes also to lobbyists walking the corridor of the Senate and the House of Representatives and donating un-disclosable dollars to their re-election and luxurious holidays abroad.
How can Americans at home and institutions that are supposed to work for their interest get tangible budgetry allocations?
The truth is, America is unable to fund critical infrastructure that could be instrumental to providing jobs and grow the economy substantially because of her deep entanglement with war only economy.
China is growing at about 8.1 percent annually while the US is growing at about 2% . China economy is projected to overtake that of America by 2028 as according to the UK’s Center for Economic and Business Research ( CEBR).
This why the US is panicking. Biden did everything possible to prepare a confrontation with China and Trump has began same but in different ways.
Again, unfortunately for United States, President Donald Trump is elementally mercurial. He is capricious to the extent that he can change direction anytime or double down on things that are externally and existentially wrong.
Such is the trade war he has declared on both allies and adversaries. He has increased the military budget despite criticising the last government and he is threatening to take over or annex other countries by any means necessary. That is; by force of arms.
Howbeit, Trump is adjudge by many pundits and analysis to lack the intellectual and mind power necessary to take America away from the ‘war economy’ to a more productive one.
For example China manufacturing is 70% higher than that of the US. Can an Trump address this?
He doesn’t read and is said to have the capacity to lie equal only to his breath. Therefore, the trust needed by the industry and the stock market is not there. Consequently, the continual fall of the stock market will definitely accelerate America ‘s decline. Of a fact, China and America are on the same level today, but the problem for US is that she is falling and China is rising.
The question is: what are the takeaway lessons for African leaders nay, Nigerian leaders?
For example, In 2025, Nigeria allocated 4.91 Trillion Naira approximately 10% of her total budget to the defense sector while education got 3.52 Trillion Naira approximately 7.3% of the budget.
Meanwhile, Agriculture got 826 billion Naira or 1.7% of the total. Unfortunately agriculture contributed 21% to Nigerias GDP in 2023.
This is also unfortunate because this allocation is way below the Maputo Declaration Target (of which Nigeria is a signatory) which advocates for a minimum 10% of national budget to be dedicated to agriculture.
I believe we shouldn’t pretend we are in a war situation because of bandits and Boko Haram menace. Recently, according to Punch Newspapers, “US Congressman, Scott Perry, has said that US aid agency, United States Agency for International Development, funded terrorist organisations, including Boko Haram. It has not been disputed by anyone. And we are all aware that during the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Boko Haram was almost defeated by military contractors and the Nigerian Army when the forces were stopped by the American government.
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So the question is: Now that Trump is defunding them, how can we move fast and finally crush them and what are the advantages we can pluck from the transactional nature of Trump within the next 3 years?
Can we also borrow a leaf from China to reduce defense spending drastically to aid agriculture, agriculture allied industries, manufacturing and general production in Nigeria?
And, now that America is working hard to kill education, can the Tinubu government invest heavily in few of our excellent Universities and stem education migration?
Can Africans invest more in research centers and put tax incentives in the path of engineering companies involved in “Reverse Engineering”?
Me thinks we should get smart and be flexible to take full advantage of the present imbroglio amongst the G7 countries by all means.
In the third and last past of this trilogy, I will take a close look at President Trump’s relationship with Putin and his desperation to start wars, and more important, his scheme to wreck BRICKS and proffer suggestions on how Nigeria can benefit from the unfolding saga.
