PARIS, January 11. /TASS/. The United States is trapped in Ukraine as a result of self-deception about the strength of its own industrial potential, historian and anthropologist Emmanuel Todd said in an interview with the BFMTV broadcaster.

"The US has fallen into a trap in Ukraine, finding itself at the very center of a confrontation with Russia. This trap emerged due to Ukrainian nationalism, Washington's illusions about the possibility of causing Russia to disappear and its inability to see the ruinous condition of its own industrial potential," he said.

"The West has condemned Ukraine to terrible suffering by instilling in it the illusion that it has enough means to support Kiev in the war," he stated.

"The Americans are now saying that they are going to make Patriot missiles in Germany. This, of course, is due to the fact that they are unable to make them themselves, as they no longer have the necessary industrial resources," he emphasized.

He believes that "one of Washington's goals is to prevent a rapprochement between Russia and Germany." According to the scholar, "the US is pursuing a policy of geopolitical terror."

"This policy is doomed to failure," he forecasts. "The West will lose."

Todd is certain that "on the way out of this war everyone will have to realize that the world powers are weakening and their populations are shrinking."

"The US will have to abandon imperial ambitions, withdraw from Asia and all other regions where it has fueled conflicts," the historian believes.

Degradation of government in US

Todd pointed to the degradation of the ruling elite in the United States.

"I have analyzed in detail the mood of the ruling class in the United States. The representatives of this class have no morality. They prefer only war and money. They would like to trigger chaos in Eurasia," he believes. "The best thing that could happen for Europe is the US pullout."

The researcher finds Washington's constant desire to foment conflicts around the world extremely dangerous. "In my paper I warn against obsession with nihilism in the US, which constantly seeks war and violence. The ruling class has lost its Protestant matrix. It does not know where it is going, and it keeps provoking conflicts everywhere," Todd concluded.

Emmanuel Todd’s profile

Todd is a French historian, sociologist and anthropologist. Central to his works are the current problems of demography, the economic stagnation of developed societies, and the collapse of political systems in the postmodernity era. One of the historian's best-known works was his first book, entitled The Final Fall, published in 1976, in which he predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union.

To date, 72-year-old Todd has published several dozen books, many of which have been translated into Russian. One of them, After the Empire, was published in 2002. In it, Todd predicted the failure of the US to establish itself as the world's sole global power. He also warned that a financial collapse would lead to the loss of its economic and political leadership.