Issued by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies within (Turjuman Series) An Empire in Decline: The United States of America Between Past, Present and Future, by Victor Bulmer Thomas, translated into Arabic by Tawfiq Shannah. It is a large survey and a sober study, in which the author asserts that the United States has been an empire since its first forays, as it has sought to secure its vital space by seizing the lands of the indigenous people and committing genocide against them before heading east, west and south to extend its influence and support its presence. He believes that what distinguishes this empire is the establishment of international organizations and multinational institutions that penetrated the fabric of societies and made the American model the dominant model in the world.

The book anticipates the end of this empire based on objective indicators that include politics, economy and culture, where it attributes the factors of this decline to internal causes, mainly the contraction of the American economy, the general frustration that prevails in American society as a result of an unfair social policy, and the collapse of myths or beliefs on which it was based. American Empire.

regional empire
The book (672 pages, centered, documented and indexed) consists of three sections. In the first section, the author deals with the beginning of the idea of ​​America and its gradation from the thirteen colonies to an expansionist entity that included all the lands after their owners were uprooted, to end up in the end either in protectorates or colonies or in entities under American tutelage. He places the tale in its historical context, thus revealing the ugly face of the empire, and through contrasts between rhetoric and practice, to dismantle a group of myths that formed the official American narrative. Indigenous genocides and massacres. In another example, the author reveals how Abraham Lincoln wanted to establish a colony for African Americans in Central America in order to ensure the purity of the Anglo-Saxon race. Hence the issue of race that still haunts America today.

So, the stage was set for the first act of American Empire Formation: Continental Expansion. During the seventy years of independence, the federal government held firm on all the lands east of the Mississippi, and the white subjects of the lands cut out of the newly expropriated lands were little by little learning how to become citizens of the Union. West of the river, the federal government acquired the right to own large tracts of land formerly claimed by the empires of France, Great Britain, Russia, and Spain, and converted them into provinces. In most cases, however, its inhabitants had to pass decades as colonial subjects under the influence of the new American empire before becoming citizens.

The advance of the American Empire to the south represented a major shift in the imperial project. While force diplomacy based on oppression was used to extract territories in North America from European empires, military force was also used in dealing with Mexico, Colombia, and Nicaragua. It was a blatant imperial assault that could not be covered up with slogans such as "the inevitable", and the American empire could no longer be claimed to be based solely on Western expansion and settler colonialism. In addition, it was then an empire that aspired to geopolitical leadership with free access to two oceans, and the potential to dominate Latin America and the Pacific.

Perhaps one of the most common myths about the United States is that it did not go “overseas” until after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The American Empire maintained its desire in the Caribbean on issues of national interest even after the adoption of the policy of good-neighbourliness (at least until the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution), and relatively abandonment of minor issues.