I don’t think of America as an empire in the conventional (Roman, British, etc) sense of the word. While we certainly qualify from a military standpoint, our real influence has always been economic (at least since the end of WWII).
I also don’t think China is going to buy us. I remember the dominant thinking in the 1980s when Japan, Inc. reigned supreme and Japanese businesses were buying everything from Rockefeller Center to Pebble Beach. As it turns out, easy money financed that buying junket and the Japanese are still paying for it to this day.
The Chinese have a whole set of their own problems, the least of which is a heavily overheated economy. Their current political infrastructure stands at complete odds with a dynamic market economy, and at some point the free market entrepreneurs are going to run smack into the more doctrinaire hard line communists with some fairly unpleasant results.
I think we (America) are in for a rude and long overdue wake up call as regards fiscal responsibility and restraint. There have been quite a few clarion calls as far as the bottom falling out, but it never has. I think a fairly tough recession would really clean out the pipes and I don’t say that lightly or flippantly. It would come with a lot of pain and loss, but at this point it is necessary.
