America’s massive $28 trillion debt threatens its global power, echoing past empires like Rome, Spain, France, and Britain, which crumbled under similar financial strains.

America is sailing into dangerous waters of debt, with the government racking up trillions in borrowed money while the public and politicians seem strangely unfazed. Both President Biden and former President Trump have overseen massive increases in the national debt, yet there’s little concern from voters or clarity from Washington on how to reverse course. Historian Niall Ferguson warns that past empires crumbled under similar financial strain, with debt spiraling so high that interest payments now exceed what’s spent on defense. Despite this, the U.S. hasn’t hit a crisis point—yet. The question remains whether America can steer back from the brink, as it did briefly in the 1990s, or if its spending spree will lead to a reckoning that diminishes its global stature.

America is sailing into uncharted territory when it comes to federal debt, with the public appearing unconcerned about the startling statistics and the government appearing powerless to reverse them.

There isn’t much of a partisan edge or difference in opinion in this presidential contest. Both President Trump and President Biden have presided over increases in the country’s debt accumulation over their tenure, totaling roughly $7 trillion in each case. Generally speaking, the country has chosen to ignore both of them.

Nonetheless, history provides some sobering insights regarding the perils of being deeply indebted. Nations and empires that carelessly accrued debt have, sooner or later, met unpleasant ends throughout the ages and around the world.

Invoking what he terms his rule of history, historian Niall Ferguson recently stated that “any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long.” As was the case with Habsburg Spain, the French Revolution, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire, this law is set to be tested by the United States starting this year. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the federal government will spend $892 billion on interest payments on the $28 trillion national debt during the current fiscal year, partly due to rising interest rates. This means that interest payments now exceed defense spending and almost match spending on Medicare.

The rate at which Washington has been increasing the national debt is concerning. The federal government’s budget was in fact in surplus not so long ago—starting in the late 1990s, at least temporarily. According to the estimate released this week by the Congressional Budget Office, this year will be about $1.9 trillion in deficit.

The total amount of government debt represented about 70% of the country’s GDP just a decade ago. It will be almost equivalent to the GDP this year (and somewhat greater when extra government accounts are taken into account). It is predicted to surpass the record set during the massive spending to finance World War II by 2028, coming in at 106% of GDP. By 2034, assuming no tax changes and spending policy, it is projected to hit 122% of GDP, the highest level ever recorded.

If buried, this crimson ink may have devastating effects. According to CBO projections, over the next three decades, the burden of debt will stifle income growth by 12% as debt payments displace other investments.

Nothing about this course or its outcomes is predetermined. Without the spending caps and policy adjustments included in the much-maligned Fiscal Responsibility Act that the Biden administration got through last year, the deficit this year would have been greater. More generally, it has shown that previous predictions that crises arising from mounting indebtedness would not be justified. Even the modern monetary theory of economics argues that nations in control of their currencies need not be concerned about the negative effects of debt as they can always print more money and never run out of money or be forced to default.

However, looking back at the past does not bring comfort. The director of the Bush Institute-Southern Methodist University Economic Growth Initiative, J.H. Cullum Clark, states that “that just doesn’t bail countries out,” even if their nation issues the main reserve currency and holds a dominating geopolitical position. “They do lose that status.”

Clark, a writer on historical lessons concerning debt and global dominance, cites the Roman Empire as an early example of prudence. In the third century, once their empire had become the most powerful in the world, Rome’s rulers started to squander money on the army and imperial administration. Emperors devalued the currency to pay for the ensuing debt, which led to severe inflation. As a result, the empire’s defenses and stability were undermined, and it fell in the fifth century.

Once it gained a footing in the New World, Spain used heavy borrowing from overseas and high taxes to fund her military expeditions and global empire. As a result, it lost its position as the most powerful nation in Europe. Spain “managed to default seven times in the 19th century alone, after having defaulted six times in the preceding three centuries,” according to economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in their examination of the history of global financial crises, “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.”

France followed a similar course and regularly fell behind on its debt. In the end, the royals’ extravagant borrowing and spending by the Versailles court caught up with them, resulting in deindustrialization and financial troubles that sparked the 1789 revolution.

The Qing Dynasty in China experienced a comparable cycle and met a comparable end. Although it was a major economic force in the world, its 19th-century borrowing and spending caused detrimental underinvestment in the infrastructure that the country required to continue growing.

Perhaps the most striking similarities can be seen with Great Britain. Before military expenditures, particularly the struggle against the American Revolution, resulted in significant debt, it ruled the most extensive empire in the world during the 18th and 19th centuries. After recovering, it realized in the 20th century that it could no longer afford to retain an army and navy to police the empire and to fund social programs that were expanding at an accelerated rate. Other investments started to get crowded out by debt, and the British pound lost value due to weakening economic conditions. The British Empire quickly began to fall as the pound lost its position as the primary reserve currency in the world.

According to Clark, given the current circumstances, a downgrading of America’s credit rating or the refusal of foreign financiers to extend loans might be the catalyst for a debt crisis. The United States isn’t there yet. In a recent interview with CNBC, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stated that “we’re in a reasonable place” if debt could be “stabilized” at present levels. However, she has also cautioned that extending the tax cuts from the Trump administration, which are scheduled to expire in 2019, will increase the amount of debt in the country relative to its GDP.

The good news is that there are cases where countries have managed to stabilize their financial situation and global standing by emerging from a mountain of debt. Before tumbling backward, Britain pulled off the ruse, and countries like Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland have all recovered financially from more recent debt problems.

In actuality, this was not too long ago in the United States. There were severe worries about quickly increasing debts in the 1980s. Amidst these concerns, Yale historian Paul Kennedy released “The Rise and Fall of Great Powers,” a seminal study that chronicled the fate of dominating nations who overreached themselves. The work explored the historical relationship between economic strength and international dominance. He pointed out that the United States was borrowing money during a period of peace more than any other major nation had since France in the 1780s.

However, the American political system responded by enacting policy measures that led to the 1990s’ brief surplus period and helped to contain deficits through successive bipartisan agreements. However, Kennedy’s prediction that “the compounding of national debt and interest payments…will cause quite unprecedented totals of money to be diverted in that direction” by the twenty-first century is now becoming a reality.

Kennedy foresaw a decrease in American dominance, some of which appears to have been avoided thus far. In an interview, he informed me that he has been “asking my economist friends about this conundrum…of a very, very large and in some ways overextended great power being able to keep issuing more and more it’s of currency-denominated bonds without there being, shall we say, punishment for it.” He continues by saying that the punishment might still occur if Asian countries, especially China, which currently owns substantial amounts of US Treasury bonds, “just decided for some reason of having a political quarrel with the U.S. to dump vast amounts of Treasurys,” causing a financial and economic crisis.

For the time being, increased interest rates and the insufficient revenue generated by the current tax structure to support Social Security and Medicare are what are driving up the debt. These dynamics occur at a time when Republicans want to lower taxes and Democrats promise not to raise taxes on families earning less than $400,000. Neither party wants to touch these entitlement programs. The debt is mostly being used by both political parties as an excuse to carry out policies that they would have otherwise preferred to implement—for example, some Republicans opposing more aid to Ukraine and some Democrats proposing higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Overall, the conversation about deficits and debt is devalued on its terms. Beyond that would need summoning a discipline and bipartisan commitment that, though occasionally present in the past, are glaringly absent from Washington, D.C., these days.

Last year, GreatGameIndia reported that Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, warned that if the US defaults on its debt, no corner of the global economy will be spared.