International Man: For decades, the US has been the world's dominant military, financial, and political power. Where is the American empire today? Are we witnessing a temporary period of weakness—or something more fundamental, like the beginning of the end of US global hegemony?

Doug Casey: The U.S. today is a very different country than it was in 1946. At the end of World War 2, it was by far the most financially, economically, industrially, and militarily powerful country in the world. It was a culturally, religiously, and ethnically aligned, and a genuine middle-class society. Now none of those things are true.

The U.S. has devolved into a bankrupt multicultural domestic empire. The Government's $40 trillion—and rapidly growing—debt can never be paid off. The dollar is an irredeemable fiat unit. US welfare benefits are drawing immigrants who are at odds in every way to the existing population. It's no longer the country which promotes individualism, free minds and free markets. Rather, it's been captured by a gigantic regulatory bureaucracy which requires permission for most everything, while taking roughly 40% of the GDP directly and indirectly. The military is well-equipped, at gigantic expense, to fight 20th C wars, but totally ill-equipped to fight the kind of wars the US is provoking everywhere.