Debt Has Always Been the Ruin of Great Powers. Is the U.S. Next?

From Habsburg Spain to Trump’s America, there’s no escaping the consequences of spending more on interest payments than on defense.

Is that the heady scent of hubris, wafting through the winter air of Washington, D.C.? So bold has President Trump been in the first month of his second term that nervous Europeans wonder if the American republic is now unabashedly an empire. Trump renames seas. He reclaims canals. He demands Greenland. He trolls Canada. His proposal for peace in Gaza i…