The Plain Truth newsmagazine, predecessor of the Philadelphia Trumpet, was founded in 1934. That same year it began publishing its forecast that America would be conquered by a revived Roman Empire. The question is: How could the world’s greatest superpower fall? The U.S. military outspends the next 10 biggest militaries combined. The Prophet Ezekiel explains that the Great Tribulation will not begin with a military invasion but with a siege.
Ezekiel 4:5 explains that this trade siege will last 390 days, and Ezekiel 5:12 declares that one third of the people will die because of the siege. That equates to 130 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone. Such unparalleled devastation will weaken America to the point where an actual military invasion can succeed.
Such tragedies sound unthinkable, but foreign powers are taking steps toward this end.
STEP 1 | Build an anti-American trade coalition
Together the U.S. and Canada form the greatest integrated economic bloc in history. These nations’ combined GDP is roughly $33 trillion, well above the European Union’s combined GDP of $21 trillion. This is one of the many reasons why Herbert W. Armstrong expected the economic alliance between Europe and Latin America to grow very strong, and Gerald Flurry expects a temporary alliance between Europe and the giants of Asia. If the EU built an anti-American trade coalition with MERCOSUR and the four greatest powers in Asia, it would have a combined GDP of nearly $55 trillion. That is 165 percent of North America’s economic power.
STEP 2 | Assemble the world’s largest merchant fleet
Since Asia, Europe, and Latin America are not interconnected with infrastructure as the U.S. and Canada, an anti-American trade coalition would need the world’s greatest merchant fleet. Together, the U.S. and Canada own 2,083 oceangoing merchant ships with the capacity to carry 56 million tons of cargo. These numbers are minuscule compared to the combined merchant fleets of the anti-American trade alliance, which has more than 30,000 merchant ships with the capacity to carry a total of 1.3 billion tons.
STEP 3 | Seize control of maritime choke points
Any trade alliance with a combined GDP of $55 trillion and a merchant fleet of 30,000 ships could challenge the United States. Its next move would be to seize the maritime choke points around the globe and stand against the U.S. Navy. No single nation has naval strength equal to the U.S., but together the EU, MERCOSUR and the major Asian powers field 10 aircraft carriers to America’s 11, and about 4,092 warships to the U.S. Navy’s 532—quantity could offset quality in a coordinated strike.
STEP 4 | Dump U.S. treasury bonds
Sowing financial chaos in the Unites States before attacking the U.S. Navy would improve an anti-American alliance’s chance of success, so financial weapons may be just as deadly as physical ones. One of the U.S.’s greatest weaknesses is its $38.5 trillion debt. Almost 25 percent of this debt ($9.4 trillion) is held by foreign governments, and roughly 43 percent of this foreign debt ($4 trillion) is held by nations in the anti-American alliance. Dumping these bonds would cause interest rates to spike, inflation to skyrocket, and the stock market to crash—the perfect conditions for a military attack on maritime choke points.
STEP 5 | Halt exports to the United States and Canada
In a future war between America and an anti-American trade alliance, control over the world’s maritime choke points would give the anti-American alliance the ability to cut off vital materials to North America. Both the U.S. and Canada are energy and food self-sufficient, but are very reliant on foreign nations for rare earth minerals, semiconductors, battery-related materials and pharmaceutical supplies. The U.S. could fight a war without imports of rare earth minerals in the short term but would face severe limitations in a long-term conflict as rare earth minerals are core components in U.S. military hardware.
STEP 6 | Let civil war destroy America from within
Ultimately, the main way a trade siege would destroy America is by exacerbating the divisions within the country. Nearly 40 percent of the world’s guns are owned by U.S. citizens, so an economic collapse that pushes the nation into a second civil war would be particularly devastating. Ironically, the only nation with enough firepower to destroy America is America itself. Economic besiegement is a potent strategy that an anti-American trade alliance could use to intensify the violence within America to consume its cities.
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