The United States has entered a phase that resembles the early stages of state failure. What once seemed impossible in a country with vast resources and robust democratic traditions now appears increasingly plausible.
The signs are evident. A government that has turned inward and become both self-protective and vindictive. An economy that is straining under a combination of political hubris and international estrangement. A population facing widening inequality and the fraying of social bonds. Historical examples of state collapse reveal that such trajectories, once set in motion, become difficult to reverse. For centrist Democrats who have long believed in the resilience of American institutions, it is essential to understand the historical precedents and the structural forces at play.
State failure is not typically marked by a single event. It is a process that begins with the corrosion of political legitimacy and ends in the disintegration of central authority. In the United States, this erosion of legitimacy can be seen in the deliberate politicization of the civil service and the Justice Department, the relentless attacks on the press and civil society, and the hollowing out of regulatory agencies through mass firings and loyalty tests. Historical parallels can be found in the final years of the Roman Republic, where the Senate’s inability to manage domestic discontent and external pressures created a vacuum for strongmen like Julius Caesar to exploit. In a more modern example, Weimar Germany’s democratic institutions were systematically undermined by the combined effects of economic crisis and political extremism, leading to the Nazi seizure of power.
Economically, the United States is facing a self-inflicted crisis. The decision to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and adversaries alike has triggered a trade war that has cut the country off from vital imports and provoked retaliatory measures. The stock market crash of 2025 is a direct consequence of these policies. Historically, protectionism in the face of global integration has often led to economic collapse. Argentina in the 1940s under Juan Perón embraced similar trade isolation and industrial autarky, leading to decades of stagnation. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930, though a different context, was a catalyst for the downward spiral of the global economy in the Great Depression.
The military and security apparatus in the United States has also been turned inward. This is a hallmark of states on the brink of collapse. The administration’s decision to conduct loyalty tests for federal employees, to dismiss or sideline those deemed “insufficiently loyal,” and to demand public fealty to the president’s personal narrative mirrors the tactics employed by autocratic regimes throughout history. In the final years of the Soviet Union, a similar pattern emerged: The KGB was weaponized to target internal dissent as the economy faltered and the central government lost its grip on reality.
Domestically, the climate is one of deepening polarization and mounting distrust. The forced departure of civil servants, the targeting of universities and independent journalists, and the use of the Justice Department as an instrument of political retribution have weakened the structures that once mediated conflict and enabled compromise. In 1970s Chile, President Salvador Allende’s government was destabilized by economic sabotage and political violence. While the American situation is not identical, the deliberate undermining of democratic norms and the conflation of personal power with national interest are consistent with patterns seen in states that have tipped into authoritarian rule.
Internationally, the administration’s decision to pursue annexationist policies—expressed in rhetorical claims to Canada and Greenland and actual negotiations over resource extraction in Ukraine—has isolated the United States from its historical allies and weakened its standing in the world. Such expansionist fantasies do not typically succeed in a world defined by interdependence. They more often result in international sanctions, economic isolation, and domestic overreach. This was the fate of Benito Mussolini’s Italy when it attempted to carve out an empire in North Africa, only to find itself diplomatically and economically encircled.
The cumulative effect of these policies is a government that no longer serves as an impartial arbiter of competing interests but as a factional tool of the leader and his inner circle. The normal functions of governance—delivering basic services, maintaining order, managing foreign policy—are subsumed under the political imperative of loyalty and control. This is the point at which states enter the final stage of failure. In 1990s Yugoslavia, the central government’s failure to mediate ethnic and regional disputes led directly to the violent fragmentation of the state. In the American context, this dynamic is playing out along lines of political affiliation, class, and race. The militarization of border policy, the collective punishment of protest movements, and the repeated targeting of minority communities reveal a state that is no longer willing or able to accommodate the diversity of its population.
The question of when collapse occurs is not easily answered. Historical examples show that once a state has entered the spiral of delegitimization, economic contraction, and political repression, collapse can follow within a few years. The Soviet Union’s dissolution took less than three years from the final economic crisis of 1988 to the official end in 1991. Yugoslavia’s collapse began with constitutional disputes in the late 1980s and culminated in violent disintegration by the early 1990s.
The timeline for collapse in the United States is likely to be similarly short if current trends continue. The economy, already battered by tariffs and retaliatory measures, will see further contraction as foreign investment dries up and domestic confidence evaporates. Political violence, already simmering, will become more organized as the state’s capacity to maintain a monopoly on violence wanes.
For those who have long believed that the American system is immune to these forces, it is time to reconsider that assumption. The United States has survived grave challenges before, but its survival has always depended on a functioning state that could reconcile competing interests and adapt to new circumstances. Today, that state is being systematically dismantled. The institutions that once checked presidential power are being turned into instruments of that power. The economy, once buoyed by global integration, is being sacrificed to nationalist fantasies. The courts and the press, once the guardians of democratic accountability, are being brought to heel or driven into irrelevance.
There is still room to change course. Historically, states have a narrow window to reverse the downward spiral once it begins. In some cases, a determined opposition or a political realignment can restore legitimacy and rebuild the social contract. In others, collapse proceeds until the state is no longer recognizable and must be rebuilt from the rubble. The examples of Spain in the 1930s, where collapse was narrowly averted but civil war followed, and of Greece in the 1940s, where foreign intervention postponed state failure, show that external shocks and internal realignments can interrupt the cycle of collapse, though at a high human cost.
What lies ahead for the United States is not yet written in stone. But the pattern is clear and the examples from history are stark. State failure is not a single moment but a cascade of failures that begins with the corruption of political institutions and ends with the disintegration of social order. The evidence is already present in the hollowing out of the federal government, the weaponization of law enforcement, the trade isolation, and the embrace of expansionist policies that have no place in the modern world. If these trends are not reversed, the United States will become another entry in the long history of states that lost their way and collapsed under the weight of their own contradictions.