People who does not process any historic knowledge would almost always put America in the likes of Roman Empires, and British Empires. However, if one have any sense what Roman Empires and British Empires is like, you would not compare America with the two. America was never an empire to begin with.
Roman empires exists by taxing their allies and their newly conquered land on agriculture product, also known as Agrarian Economy. The empires existed with majority of their income coming from all their satellite state to a point Rome citizen are exempted from paying taxes, only need to "Buy" their service commitment according to their class (Hence this is how roman legion is raised)
The very use of Roman legion is to conquer new land or suppress any insurrection to their satellite state, also, which make the reason Rome make war is pure financial, I want your land, and I want you to pay tax doing stuff on your land, which is virtually never heard of in modern warfare.
In which case, the satellite state Roman had conquered is the one that is supporting the system, and there are only 1 fault in this system however, is that these satellite state are not Roman or Citizens of Rome, so there are constantly at war and rebellion are often, and the core of the problem is that Roman conquer outpace their managerial capability, and once there are more satellite state than they can actually control, the rebellion is going to win. And hence the if they have reached that point, Roman Empire Collapse.
@AUSTERLITZ may have more to say as I do not have time to do research as of now.
On the other hand, British Empire runs on a very similar scheme during their colonial period and making the strong empire. The British Empire devoted a lot of resource to capture resource in the world, where the island nation itself does not have, food come from arable land in South Asia (India, Pakistan) Heavy Metal and Petroleum in North Africa, Iron and metallic ore in Australia, and other resource throughout the world, instead of taxing money for their business like what Roman does, the brits took resource from them and feed it into the heard of their empire. However, the downfall of British Empire is the globalisation of the world after WW2. where decolonization of the world stripped off most of the empire, where only some dependent states remain. And the British Isle is not particularly resourceful. Britain alone cannot do much in this case. And hence even with some former colony remains (Falklands, Gibraltar Bermuda and so on) Those are small island which basically depending on the mainland to support them, while themselves have self-sufficient or semi-self sufficient economy.
The United States of America, on the other hand, is not an empire, the US do have colony, and they do pay taxes to the US government, however, the net flow of financial support is the other way around, US Mainland (Plus 2 outlining states, Hawaii and Alaska) have the majority of the financial mean and the US colony (such as Guam, Virgin Island, Puerto Rico or so on) depending on the Federal Government to support them. Unlike the British Empire and the Roman empire, they do not take resource away from their colony nor would they engage in pure economic warfare, they don't need to because US Dollars is the dominant currency in the world, which make financial gain in war as a reason illogical, most US War fought with Ideology clashes or any other Political Reason. Which would not easily incite a rebellion within US or within US colony.
There are no Rise and Fall of US Empire, because US Empire does not exist as a thing, the Country of United States of America exist, but that's about it. Can United States fall? Certainly, as with any nation in the world, how? If you can attack the weakest point of a country, the country will fall, and usually, it is one of the three. Military Power, Economic Power, and the Government. And believe it or not, the weakest one in this link is Economic Power. Which mean US WILL FALL if they can be defeated Economically, which the only way one could have done is to attack the US Dollar, and when a single or coalition of currency can out-taken USD as preferred World Currency reserve then, the US WILL FALL, but is it hard to easy to do? Very, Very hard.
