It is quite ironic: only a decade or so after the idea of the United States as an imperial power came to be accepted by both right and left, and people were able to talk openly about an American empire, it is showing multiple signs of its inability to continue. Indeed, it is now possible to contemplate its collapse. The neocons in power in Washington these days, who were delighted to talk about America as the sole empire in the world following the Soviet disintegration, will of course refuse to believe in any such collapse. But I think it behooves us to examine seriously the ways in which the U.S. system is so drastically imperiling itself that it will cause not only the collapse of its worldwide empire but vast changes on the domestic front as well.