Former Congressman Ron Paul weighed in on the actions of the United States as it struggles to preserve its empire, and how Russia gets scapegoated in this process [some textual corrections made]:

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The US effort to preserve its global dominance is a costly endeavor based on threats and keeping the American people in the dark about what is going on, former US congressman and libertarian politician Ron Paul told RT.

Paul, who heads an institute named after himself, says he and his colleagues are trying to alert Americans about the dangers of Washington’s foreign policy, which, he believes, will ultimately be detrimental to American interest.

In the Ron Paul Institute, many believe that “what we are trying to do is maintain a modern day empire,” he said, “and that requires a lot of force and a lot of lying too to misinform people in order for the American people to go along with it.”

Washington’s casual use of sanctions, or threats thereof, is one example of this strong-arm approach. Just this week, US envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley, bragged on Fox News that the US sanctions against Iran were “suffocating them”.

“If people don’t do what we want and obey us, then we put sanctions on them. To me that is the same as war effort when you do this. I think the threats are terrible, sanctions are terrible on principle,” Ron Paul said.

“In the long term it will be detrimental to the United States, because it’s very costly and it’s undermining our alliances with anybody that we want to work with,” he warned. “People are getting tired of us throwing our weight around and putting on sanctions and believing that everybody has to act exactly as we say.”

Paul also said he believed the US policy in Syria, which is based on a necessity to oppose Iranian influence there even if it means allying with groups like Al Qaeda, was very dangerous. The Trump administration is “making sure that we are on the side, who will remain very anti-Iran, and that puts us into a situation, where we have to be anti-Russia too,” he said.

This is not the first time Congressman Paul has spoken about this problem. In January of this year he also gave an interview with RT in which he maintained that “America’s reckless debt and military spending will eventually cause the system to crash and burn like the final days of the Soviet Union.”

“We’re gonna have a sudden, cataclysmic end which is sort of what happened to the Soviet system. It’s not going to be identical, there was a succession movement and some of those countries left the Soviet system. Our states probably aren’t going to break up, but I do sincerely believe that we will no longer be able to afford our empire around the world.

Our empire, although we don’t claim ownership to it, it’s a lot of money and a lot of influence, and we threaten with weapons and we use sanctions to hold our empire together, [but] I think that’s coming to an end.”