Hurray for Capitalism, and of course the beauty of a free country!

I could see something like what happened to the Korx happening to Earth though....

The second option seems more probable. Although the U.S. could avoid other nations ganging up on us be continuing to allow freedom for all of its citizens and by not forcing its will on others all the time.

We all know who to thank for that.

The spend happy congress.

Learn to read and do so. Military spending, Iraq war included, is a pittance compared to the overall budget, entitlements vastly outweigh it. We have a lower level of spending on the military now than we did when Reagan was in office. It's insignificant compared to the level of spending we had during actual wars, a minuscule fraction of the WW2 spending.

If the US falls then the whole world falls with it.

"If the US falls then the whole world falls with it."

Ah wrong, if the US falls, other will be happy to take its place, but then, will do a worse job or a better job as the next super power. But if it does not fall, it has certainly wane in its influence after it told everyone the UN wss useless and just went its own way in the invasion of iraq. After the invasion was over and iraq is not going to be a easy to tame place because it royally botched up the occupation, it invites the UN to come and help to clean the mess.

Anne Coulter?  

If the US falls in WAR, than the rest of the world MAY go with it, but there is no way in hell that we take everybody out if we just fall apart

now we all know that neither of those will ever happen, one because no matter how much debt we accumulate other countries and our citizens are going to keep leding the government money because evey one knows that the american government isnt going anywere and its just going to keep spending to its limit and then spending some more and borrowing the rest. and two... wtf... there is no fucking way in universe that America could become a vast riegning empire, espesially a global empire because its a damn democracy and i can assure you that the vast majority of the people and the house of reps and senate would vote against it no matter the amount of propoganda

so you can forget all about your dreams of an all ruling american empire

obviously you have no clue how the american legal system

Well, America is imperialistic. (than again, we haven't spread our flag to any major countries for a long, long time)

What does it matter if either happens?
Life will go on, no matter what state that may be.
The greatest threat I see to America is it's internal religious issues. As far as I can tell, Americas biggest threat is itself. Like any " empire " or nation, it must have the desire to hold itself together. The UK is a good example in some respects. 49% of English want to break the Union, about 48% of Scots at the last poll i saw want the same, 29% of the Welsh want a break, while in another poll 80% approx want the same powers as what Scotland has now. Following those basic numbers, the United Kingdom has maybe 20 or 30 years left before a total break up, simply because the numbers of people in each of the constituant nations no longer want to remain together as one.
Looking at that, who is to say there will not be a fundamental split between the Red and Blue states of the US, due to relgious differences? As an outsider, it seems the US is already in a serious debate on the rights of Homosexuals and the nature of faith. I don't think a split will happen, but it seems to be a scenario that is more likely.

I noticed that one or two people ask why this is being debated on a game froum.... I thought "Off Topic" as a title was self explanitory?

I think we need to clarify what we mean when we say "Empire”.
Do we mean that The United States has:

“Supreme power; sovereignty; sway; dominion.”

Or are we referring to:

“The territory or countries under the jurisdiction and dominion of an emperor (rarely of a king), usually of greater extent than a kingdom, always comprising a variety in the nationality of, or the forms of administration in, constituent and subordinate portions”

Cause by the first definition The United States is an empire already but by the second definition we hopefully will never be.

I think it is more accurate to say The United States has powers “similar to that of an empire” in regards to our economy and our military.

Our culture and morals are not comparable to that of Rome, They were a totally different type of culture then we have ever had. When people first began to compare us to ancient Rome it was the fact that they controlled the entire “known” world and we, at the time of the coining of the comparison, were considered to be pretty much in control of the known world. (In perception but we never really did).

We do have a Hugh amount of influence around the world but we are not an empire in the governmental sense. Our global level of influence can only go down from where it was unless there is a major worldwide catastrophe that lays low all the developed nations of the world again.

Real Empires do not surrender control of what they possess. We have, We gave away The Philippines, Cuba, Japan, Germany and try as we do we just can’t get Puerto Rico to take its mouth off our tit and either Join us in equal standing or go its own way. We also did not keep France or Italy when we could have just taken them.
We have almost no colonies, We do not maintain control over the leadership of other nations.. STOP LAUGHING, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN! And I know that you could say that what we did in Iran, Panama and so on prove otherwise, I say those examples are the exceptions that prove the general rule.

Our overall standing in the world will decline over the next 50 or so years but not like the doom Sayers would like you to think. Our standing was artificially high due to WWII and our rivalry with the Soviet Union. With the memories of those events fading into history the world no longer turns to us with pleading hands and eyes to come in and save the day in the same fashion that it used to. This is a good thing and speaks well of the United States overall policies toward the world in general. Most everyone we had to hold up can now hold themselves up without us and they do so! What we do still have going for us is the remnants of that massive well of good will we built up during and right after WWII.

We sometimes act like complete asses but then again we are not perfect, we are not any better than anyone else, we just created advantages that no one else could make for themselves, like not being close enough for Hitler to bomb day in and day out.
We managed to stay out of the fight until most everyone else had beaten each other into exhaustion.

I am speaking metaphorically and I know that what I am saying is not 100% accrete in the description but for all intents and purposes it gets the message across.