Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the United States invaded Afghanistan, arguing that the threat behind the destruction of the World Trade Center towers had emerged from the East, where jihadist groups operated that had, only years earlier, been aligned with Washington against Soviet influence.
The consequences of that invasion extended far beyond Afghanistan. In 2003, Washington moved to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, opening another phase in the international order and, in the author’s analysis, giving new form to colonial policies that became increasingly destructive.
After years of occupation in Afghanistan, and as the claims used to justify the invasion of Iraq unravelled, the United States eventually withdrew while leaving behind societies devastated by war. At the same time, Washington continued to present itself through the civilisational language of democracy, freedom and the American Dream.
The Arab Spring uprisings, Western responses to them and more recent US military interventions have, however, intensified questions about what that dream actually represents.
The author points to Washington’s interventionist policies, confrontation with Iran, support for Israel during the destruction of Gaza and what he describes as increasingly coercive policies abroad, while at home political tensions over immigration, minorities and identity continue to deepen.
The question, then, is whether the world is witnessing the beginning of the end of one power’s claim to define civilisation itself, or whether the latest expansion of American power represents the final stage of a colonial age that has reduced human beings to instruments of economic exploitation.
The piece was published as an opinion essay by Algerian writer Noureddine Kaddour Rafea on 21 September 2026.
A Colonial Project Repackaged
The attacks of 11 September remain, in this analysis, a decisive turning point in the history of both the American empire and the wider world.
The United States, the author argues, reproduced a colonial project that differed less from classical imperialism than its rhetoric suggested. The language had changed: freedom, justice and democracy now became the vocabulary through which influence and intervention could be justified.
Instead of allowing societies on the margins of the international system to free themselves from authoritarian structures, Western powers frequently prioritised the protection of strategic interests and relationships with longstanding authoritarian governments.
The author describes this model through a term he has used in previous writings: “theoliberalism”.
By this he means the elevation of the market into something resembling a theological absolute, emerging at a time when political discourse increasingly revolves around civilisational conflict, hostility towards irregular migration and Islamophobia. He sees this as the latest stage in an imperial attempt to monopolise the meaning of civilisation itself.
The argument is not simply that empires inevitably collapse once they become too large. Rather, it is that an imperial system begins to undermine itself when it strips universal human values of their meaning and turns them into instruments of domination.
From liberalism, through neoliberalism, and ultimately towards what the author calls “theoliberalism”, the American model is portrayed as increasingly driven by exclusion, racial hierarchy and violent intervention.
Within this framework, unwavering US support for the Israeli occupation is presented as one of the clearest contradictions between Washington’s proclaimed commitment to freedom and its conduct in the Middle East.
The logic of “either you are with us or against us”, the article argues, has survived into the Trump era, reflecting what the author sees as a deeper imperial history shaped by displacement, exclusion and racial division.
Yet despite America’s military power, the greatest danger to the American Dream may now come from within.
Growing hostility, racial tension, social rejection and political polarisation inside the United States are presented as signs that the idea once marketed to the world as a model of freedom and opportunity is itself becoming increasingly unstable.
The Fading American Dream
For generations of migrants, the American Dream has occupied a unique place in the imagination.
The United States has been seen as a place where freedom, innovation and individual advancement allow newcomers to build a new life and establish themselves within a powerful civilisation.
Yet that image becomes more complicated when placed beside the experience of racial discrimination, hostility towards undocumented migrants and prejudice against Muslim minorities.
So what does the American Dream actually mean?
The author argues that discussing the American Dream often requires forgetting history, particularly a history marked by colonisation, displacement and the destruction of indigenous communities.
History, however, cannot simply be removed from the construction of the future.
Every attempt to build a new civilisational project carries the unresolved memories and conflicts of what came before it. Historical grievances can re-emerge, identities can harden and old contradictions can return at moments of crisis.
For a long time, the United States appeared to have escaped that historical trap.
The American Dream was transformed into an idea with global reach, presenting American values as though they were universal civilisation itself. The fulfilment of that dream became linked to the extent to which other societies accepted capitalist values and a globalised economic order.
Freedom, justice and democracy, the author argues, were consequently transformed from universal principles into political instruments.
In parts of the Arab world, rhetoric about democracy was accompanied by occupation, regime change, political upheaval and prolonged instability. Even European states, in this reading, remain heavily constrained by American strategic priorities.
The result is what the author describes as a manufactured American dream imposed on a world in which other civilisational identities are granted increasingly little room to exist independently.
When Empire Claims a Monopoly Over Civilisation
Predicting the precise date on which an empire will decline or disappear is intellectually simplistic.
Empires can survive for centuries. Their power can endure through wars, internal crises and political transformation.
But the author argues that no empire can escape what he calls a universal condition governing the survival of civilisations.
The decline of an empire, in this framework, begins not simply with military weakness but with the internal decay of the society sustaining it and its abandonment of shared human values.
Pluralism, recognition of others and acceptance of difference are not secondary political luxuries. They are conditions through which social contracts are formed, states retain legitimacy, economies function and civilisations develop.
The danger begins when an empire convinces itself that it alone represents civilisation.
Once that assumption takes hold, the empire increasingly seeks to preserve its dominance through coercion, expansion and violence.
The attempt to eliminate, occupy or forcibly displace those outside its political order produces values that contradict the natural human processes of interaction, exchange and coexistence.
No civilisation, regardless of its material power, can remain untouched when violence and exploitation begin to dominate its institutions and social relations.
The Fall of an Empire Is Not the Fall of Civilisation
The author therefore distinguishes between the collapse of an empire and the collapse of civilisation itself.
The more important question is not when the United States might decline, but whether other societies are capable of constructing viable alternatives.
A vacuum does not remain empty.
If one centre of power weakens, another state, civilisation or political order will eventually expand into the space it leaves behind.
This is why the rise of China and Russia matters in discussions about a changing global order. Their economic and military power could contribute to reshaping the international map, but their emergence does not automatically answer the deeper question of what kind of civilisation might replace American dominance.
The author argues that the real test concerns whether alternative powers can meet the same civilisational conditions of justice, pluralism, recognition and human dignity.
Waking from the American Dream is therefore not impossible.
Many societies have reached moments in their histories when they demanded freedom, economic justice and recognition of diversity.
The danger, however, is that societies emerging from one imperial system may return to historical grievances instead of constructing a different future.
For those waiting for the American empire simply to collapse from within, the more difficult question remains unanswered.
History does not leave political space permanently empty. When one power declines, another emerges, whether outside it or from within its own structures, carrying a different civilisational model.
The decisive question is therefore not merely whether the American empire is losing its dominance, but whether the societies waiting beyond it are prepared to build something fundamentally different.
