By Jean Baptiste Ndabananiye
“Every empire dies the same way. America is at stage four. Every great empire in history — Roman, Ottoman, British, Mongol — followed the exact same five stages before collapse. Historian Sir John Glubb studied them all and found one pattern: the average lifespan of a great empire is 250 years. America is 249 years old. Prof. Xueqin breaks down exactly which stage America is in right now — and why the evidence from the 2026 Iran war, the $36 trillion national debt, the collapse of the petrodollar system, and America’s fracturing social fabric all point to the same conclusion. This is not opinion. This is a 3,000-year pattern — and America is following it almost perfectly,” says the Professor, Jiang Xueqin in his YouTube Channel Prof. Jiang Academy.
In this article you are going to understand “Why America spends $900 billion per year on its military and still cannot win wars. Why empires in Stage Four cannot reform themselves even when they can see the problem. How America weaponized the dollar — and accidentally accelerated its own replacement. Why $1 trillion in annual interest payments is more dangerous than any military enemy. The prisoner’s dilemma at civilizational scale — why every actor inside the empire is rational, but the system is destroying itself. What Stage Five looks like — and the three things that always trigger it simultaneously.”
He explains that this analysis uses the same structural history and game theory framework that he employed to accurately predict Trump’s return to power and the US war with Iran in 2024 — before either materialized. “If you want to understand why the Iran war, the dollar crisis, and America’s internal political fracture are not separate events — but three symptoms of the same Stage Four collapse,” read this article on. Xueqin has been renowned for the two predictions that have come true. For more on him, you can read this article where he’d predicted that the ceasefire is a lie, that no agreement would be reached or this one in which he explains that official narratives around why the US has attacked Iran are wrong.
Empires go through the same pattern
Xueqin revisits five stages which empires experienced before they eventually collapsed. These stages or periods serve as markers enabling to know where an empire arrives on the path to its collapse. Xueqin says “I want to discuss something that I think is very important. I want you to understand this. Everything that is happening right now, the war in Iran, the dollar weakening, the political chaos in America— all of it make completely make sense to you, because it is not random. It is a pattern that has repeated itself across 3 000 years of human history. And right now America is following that pattern almost perfectly. Let me introduce you to a historian named Sir John Glubb. Most people have never heard of Sir Glubb, he is not very famous, but I think he is one of the most important historians of the 20th century.
He was a British general and scholar who spent his entire career studying empires— not one empire, not two— all of the great empires in history: the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Spanish, the British. And after studying all these empires, he published the short book called ‘The Fate of Empires’. And in that book, he made one of the most remarkable observations in all of historical scholarship. He said all empires, without exception, go through the same stages— the same sequence— every single time. And the average lifespan of a great empire is 250 years.”
Stage I
“Now, I want you to hold that number in your head. 250 years. America is 249 years old. So, let’s go through the stages, because once you understand these stages, you will understand exactly where America is right now and why what is was always going to happen. Stage one is what Glubb calls the age of conquest. Every empire begins the same way. It is lean, hungry, disciplined, has raw energy and expands through military and economic superiority.
At this stage, there is no corruption because there is no wealth yet to be corrupt. There is no complacency, because there is no comfort yet to be complacent about. The soldiers are motivated. The leadership is focused. The purpose is clear. For America, this is the period from roughly the 1776 through World War II. America fights a revolution against the greatest empire in the world and wins. It expands across the continent. It develops the largest industrial economy ever seen.”
The US, in the second World War, accomplished an unparalleled thing as a result of its extreme progress, according to Xueqin. “And then in World War II, it does something unprecedented in all of History: it fights on two fronts simultaneously across both in land and the Pacific against two major powers [against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan] and defeats both of them. Think about what that required. Eighteen-year-old boys landing on Normandy beach knowing most of them would be killed.
Soldiers fighting in jungles in the Pacific with diseases they had never encountered. Factories running 24 hours a day, seven days. Women leaving their homes, to build ships and aircraft. That is what stage looks like: sacrifice, focus, hunger, discipline, and when it was over, America did not just win the war; it rebuilt its enemies. The Marshal Plan, Bretton Woods. The dollar becomes the world’s reserve currency. Eight hundred military bases built around the world. America at the peak of stage one was genuinely the most powerful civilization in the history of humanity.”
Stage II
“Stage II is what Glubb calls the age of commerce. Once military dominance is established, it converts into economic dominance. The empire controls trade routes. Wealth flows toward the center. The standard of living rises. The middle class expands. And for a brief period —a golden period — the empire is simultaneously the most powerful and the most prosperous society in the world,” explains Xueqin.
“For America, this is the 1950s and the 1960s. The American middle class during this period was the strongest middle class in the history of human civilization. Workers in factories could afford houses, cars, vacations, college for their children on a single salary. The dollar was backed by gold. The American manufacturing produced more than any country in history. American universities were the best in the world. American science put a man on the moon. This is stage II. It feels like it last forever. But it never does.”
Stage III
“Stage III is what Glubb calls the age of affluence. And this is where it begins to go wrong, because wealth creates comfort, and comfort creates complacency. And complacency creates a very specific kind of thinking — the thinking that says ‘We have always been dominant; therefore, we will always be dominant. We do not need to sacrifice anymore. We do not need to be disciplined anymore. We already won. And here is where the military-industrial complex enters the picture.
After World War II, America kept its war machine running. Eisenhower — a General himself- warned about this when he left office in 1961. He said I want you to remember these words he said ‘Beware the military-industrial complex.’ He was warning that a permanent military establishment combined with a large arms industry would acquire undue influence in the American government. And the influence would destroy priorities. Instead of the military serving America’s strategic interests, America’s strategic interests would begin to serve the military,” states Xueqin.
He adds “That is exactly what happened. Vietnam was the first clear sign. America spent over $800 billion in today’s dollars, fighting Vietnam. It lost 58 000 soldiers, and it accomplished nothing and left. And Vietnam became communist anyway. And there was no accountability. Noone asked ‘Why did we spend this money and achieved nothing?’ Because in stage III, the purpose of military spending is no longer to win wars. The purpose of military spending is to keep the system going — to keep the contractors profitable, to keep the generals employed, to keep the politicians funded by the defense industry.
Winning or losing is almost secondary. And during this period, America began to export its manufacturing to China and South East Asia because the financial sector —Wall Street — discovered it was more profitable to make money from financial instruments than from making physical things. So, the factories closed. The middle class began to shrink. Wages stopped rising. The year was 1973. American wages peaked in real terms in 1973. And they have barely moved since. Think about that. 50 years, and the average American worker has not gotten a real rise in 50 years. That is stage III. Wealth at the top. Stagnation at the bottom. And an establishment that is too comfortable to admit there is a problem.”
Stage IV
Two first issues which happen in this stage
“This is the critical stage. This is the stage Glubb calls the age of decadence and I want to be very clear about what decadence means here. It does not mean moral failure. It does not mean the people are bad. What it means is that the system itself has become self-destructive. It is eating itself. And four things happen simultaneously — and they reinforce each other — which is why no empire has ever escaped this stage.
The first is that military spending becomes completely divorced from military results. America spends approximately $900 billion per year on its military. Let me put that in perspective. That is more than the next 10 countries combined — China which is America’s main strategic competitor spends about $250 billion, China which America calls its main military enemy spends about $80 billion. America spends 11 times more than Russia on its military,” expounds Xueqin before adding “And yet, America could not defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan — a group of fighters in sandals with Kalashnikovs.
America could not establish stability in Iraq after 20 years. And right now in Iran, America is spending $3-million interceptor missiles, to try to stop $50 000 Iranian drones —and failing. Now here is the game theory point that I want you to really understand. When the cost of an action consistently exceeds the benefit, a rational actor stops doing it. That is the basic game theory. If every time you play a game, you spend more money than you win, a rational player stops playing. But an empire in stage IV cannot stop. Because the military-industrial complex has captured the political system.”
He further says that then defense contractors provide money for politicians. “Politicians give contracts to defense contractors. Generals retire and join defense contractor boards. The entire system is a closed loop that benefits from continued military spending regardless of results. The F-35 fighter jet — a $ 100 million each, 26 years to develop it — exist not because it is the best strategic choice for America, but because it employs people in 45 of the 50 American States. Every senator who might vote against it has constituents who work on it. This is not stupidity. This is a system doing exactly what it is designed to do.
But what it is designed to do is destroy the empire. The second that happens in stage IV is that debt becomes existential. America currently has approximately $36 trillion in national debt, and every year America is adding roughly $2trillion. Here is the thing most people do not understand. America is now spending approximately $ 1 trillion per year just on interest payment on that debt. $ 1 trillion just to pay the interest, not to reduce the debt, just to service the interest.”
Clarifying the scale of this issue, Xueqin explains “$ 1 trillion in interest payment is more than the entire annual defense budget of any other country in the world. America is spending more money paying interest on old debt than China spends on its entire military. Here is the game theory of this. And this is what I call a debt trap, once your debt reaches a certain size, you must borrow money to pay the interest on old money, and the interest on new money adds to the total debt— which requires more borrowing, which adds more interest.
This is a mathematical spiral. The only exits from a debt spiral are default— which destroys your currency— or inflation which also destroys your currency. In either case, the currency collapses. And here is the connection to the current war. Every bomb dropped on Iran costs money. Every interceptor missile costs $3 million to $1o million. Every deployment of troops costs money. America is adding the cost of this war on top of a debt that is already in a spiral. This is not a small problem. This is an existential problem.”
Next two things in Stage IV
Xueqin continues with the third issue which occurs in stage IX. “The empire weaponizes its currency, until it cannot. Now I need to explain this carefully because it is very important and most people do not understand it. After World War II, America created something called the Bretton Woods System, and later the Petrodollar System. The basic deal was this: all global trade—especially oil — would be conduced in US dollars. This meant every country in the world needed to hold US dollars in reserve.
Which meant permanent global demand for the dollar. Which meant America could print money and run deficits in a way no other country could. Because everyone needed your currency. This was the greatest economic privilege in the history of the world. And for decades, America used it carefully. But in stage IX—the age decadence— the empire starts to weaponize its tools. America began using the dollar as a weapon. Sanctions against Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, freezing Russian Central Bank assets—$300 billion of them belonging to Russia’s government—overnight.”
The moment a superpower turns its currency into a weapon, it rewrites the rules of trust that hold the global system together. What looked like a show of strength became something else entirely—a signal to the world that safety in the dollar was never guaranteed.
Xueqin explains “Think about this from a game theory perspective. If I am a country holding US dollar reserves and I watch America freeze $300 billion of Russian reserves overnight. What do I now know? I know that my dollar reserves are not safe—that they can be taken away from me, if America decides it, doesn’t like my government. So, I start moving my reserves out dollars. I start building alternatives. This is exactly what happened.” BRICS— Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and now many more— represents today approximately 40% of global GDP [gross domestic product].
These countries are actively building payment systems that do not require the dollar. They are settling trade in local currencies. They are buying gold instead of dollars. Saudi Arabi— the foundation of the petrodollar system is now selling oil to China in Yuan. America thought it was punishing its enemies by weaponizing the dollar. What it actually did was give every country in the world the maximum possible incentive to build an alternative. It accelerated de-dollarization by using the dollar as a weapon.”
Xueqin stresses “This is stage IV thinking. Short-term power move that produces long-term self-destruction. And the fourth thing that happens in Stage IV is that the social fabric breaks from within. And this is perhaps the most painful one to discuss because it involves real people, real suffering. America has the highest rate of homelessness of any developed country in the world. American infrastructure — bridges, roads, water systems — is crumbling. American life expectancy has been declining. Drug addiction has become a national crisis.
And wages — as I sad — have been stagnant since 1973 in real terms. At the same time, wealth at the very top has exploded. The richest 1% of Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 90% combined. This is not a natural outcome. This is the result of deliberate policy choices made over 50 years that systematically transferred wealth from the middle class to the financial elite. And what does this produce politically?”
To respond to the question, he says “A population that has lost faith in its institutions, a population that can no longer agree on basic facts. A political system that produces two candidates in every election who neither side fully trusts or believes in. A country that is simultaneously the wealthiest and the most internally fractured of any major power in the world. And here is the game theory point. An empire that is under external pressure —a war it cannot win, a currency under challenge, a debt it cannot repay —and is simultaneously fracturing internally, faces what I can call a two-front problem.
The resources needed to address external threats are consumed by internal problems. And the resources needed to address internal problems are consumed by external threats. And the two problems feed each other, making them both worse simultaneously. Rome faced exactly this.”
To elucidate how Rome exactly encountered the same issue, Xueqin says “The Roman empire in its final century was simultaneously fighting Barbarians on every border, spending money it did not have on legions that were increasingly unreliable while internally suffering from currency debasement, political chaos, a collapsed middle class and a population that had lost faith in Roman institutions. I want to explain something that I think is the most important inside of this entire analysis. And it comes from game theory.
The question people always ask is ‘Why don’t the people in charge fix this? They can see the problem, why don’t they change course? And the answer is something called the prisoner’s dilemma at civilizational scale. Let me explain: in game theory, the prisoner’s dilemma describes a situation where every individual actor makes the rational choice for themselves. But the sum of all those rational individual choices produces an outcome that is catastrophic for everyone. ”
He goes on, saying that inside the American empire right now every powerful group is making a rational individual choice. “Defense contractors need wars, to sell weapons. If they stop lobbying for wars, they lose their business. Banks need dollar dominance, to profit from global finance. They lobby against any alternative to the dollar. Politicians need defense contractor money and bank money, to win elections. They support policies that benefit defense contractors and banks. Media companies need advertising revenue.
Defense contractors and banks are major advertisers. The media covers the wars in ways that do not threaten those advertisers. And the generals who run the military know that their careers and their post-retirement jobs at defense contractors depend on maintaining the current system. So, they do not challenge it. Every single one of these individual decisions is rational.”
But he reiterates, underscoring “But the sum total of all of them is — a military that cannot win wars, a debt that cannot be repaid, a currency being abandoned, and society fracturing from within — collective destruction produced by individual rationality. And here is the critical insight: no empire has ever escaped stage IV from within because the prisoner’s dilemma at civilizational scale has no internal solution. Every person who could change the system benefits from the current system. Every person who might challenge the system is either purchased by it or destroyed by it.
Julian Asange tried to expose this system. Where is Asange? Edward Snowden tried to expose this system? Where is Snowden? The system does not reform itself. That is not how the prisoner’s dilemmas work. In a prisoner’s dilemma, the only thing that changes the game theory is an external shock large enough to break the equilibrium.”
Stage V
“Let us now talk about stage V, because this is where everything is pointing. Stage V is what Glubb calls collapse. But I want to be careful here because collapse does not mean the country disappears overnight. Rome did not fall in a day. The British empire did not fall in a day. What happens is more gradual — and more specifically, it is usually three things happening simultaneously. First, a currency crisis. The reserve currency loses its privileged status. Countries stop accepting it. The cost of imports rises. Inflation explodes. The domestic population’s purchasing power collapses,” says Xueqin.
“Second, a loss of allies. The countries that depended on the empire for protection start making other arrangements. They develop relationships with the rising power. They stop showing up, when the empire calls for coalition partners. Third, an internal political rupture — the domestic political system, already fragile from decades of inequality and institutional erosion, breaks under the additional stress. The population loses faith not just in this leader or that leader, but in the system itself.”
He underlines “Now, here is what I want you to understand. These three things do not have to be coordinated. They do not require any conspiracy. They just require the conditions of stage IV, to continue long enough. And then, they converge. Let me give you the British example, because it is the most recent and the clearest. The British empire in 1939 was still the largest empire in history of the world. By 1949, 10 years later, it was over. What happened?
World War II destroyed British finances and created $ 30 billion in debt to America. India demanded independence and got it in 1947. Palestine, the jewel of the British Middle East strategy, collapsed in 1948. And the dollar replaced the pound as the world’s reserve currency by the end of the 1940s. All three —financial collapse, loss of empire, currency replacement — in one decade. The British empire did not see it coming or rather —they the individual problems but did not understand how they would converge. They fought they could manage each problem separately. They could not.”
He concludes, linking all the problems to the current atmosphere. “Let me connect all this to the present moment, because this is why I think this analysis matters. Right now, today America is at stage IV. Three things are happening simultaneously right now that are accelerating the timeline towards stage V. First, a war it cannot win. Iran has been preparing for this war for 25 years. America went in with no plan beyond the initial bombing.
It is spending $3 million interceptors to stop $50 000 drones and failing. Its aircraft carriers had to leave the Persian Gulf. Its AWACS [Airborne Warning and Control System] surveillance aircraft have been destroyed. Every day this war continues, it drains American resources, American credibility, and American political will. And because of the military-industrial complex, because of the prisoner’s dilemma, America cannot simply stop. It can only double down. As I have said before, you go to the casino, you’re losing $100 000, you can’t go home; you keep gambling. That is the logic of empire in stage IV.”
He continues “Second, a debt it cannot repay. $36 trillion. $1 trillion in annual interest, and adding the cost of war in Iran on top. At some point —and economists disagree only about when not whether this debt spiral produces a dollar crisis. When that happens, the most foundational tool of American power —the ability to print money and have the world accept it —is gone. Third —a currency the world is actively replacing: Saudi Arabia selling oil in yuan, BRICS building alternative payment systems, gold purchases by central banks at the highest level in 50 years.
The de-dollarization that Iran sanctions accelerated is happening and it is irreversible. Here is what game theory tells us about this. When you have multiple independent actors — China, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, India, Brazil —all independently making moves that point toward the same outcome: the end of dollar dominance, the end of unipolar power; that is what we call in game theory a dominant strategy convergence.”
To bring all this together, Xueqin says “Sir Glubb studied every major empire in history. He found all follow the same five stages. And right now, America is simultaneously experiencing all four defining characteristics of stage IV: military spending divorced from results, existential debt, a weaponized currency being abandoned and a fracturing social fabric —while facing external shock of a war it cannot win, a debt it cannot repay, and a currency the world is replacing.
No empire that has ever reached stage IV has escaped stage V without radical systemic change. And the prisoner’s dilemma tells us that radical systemic change from within an empire is stage IV is almost impossible, because every actor who could produce change benefits from the current system.”
He exactly closes his analysis with these words. “So, the question is not whether America reaches stage V. The historical record across 3 000 years gives a zero percent survival rate for empires at this stage without transformation. The question is only how fast, and what comes next. This is my analysis. This is not meant to be anti-American. This is meant to be clear thinking.
The purpose of Predictive History is not to make predictions for the sake of predictions. It is to use the patterns of history, to understand the present, so that we can think more clearly about the future. If the framework is wrong, we go back, we look at the evidence, we revise our thinking. That is what good analysis looks like.”