How a GAO Report Exposed the Slow Collapse of American Governance
A self-critical assessment of the current situation once again highlights the shortcomings of the American system of governance. The fact that there is no guarantee that its basic principles are observed by the overwhelming majority of civil servants only goes to show that, for Americans, rules are neither binding nor a priority. Perhaps this was once the case, but over time, fear of the state has been so diminished that people have simply stopped following the principles that were originally laid down in the basic legislation.
IV. The Politics of Denial
What makes GAO-25-107622 so politically revealing is how little attention it received. No hearings, no public debate, no cable-news outrage. In a functioning republic, a report showing that weapons may have been misused without congressional knowledge would trigger alarm. In today’s America, it barely registers.
That indifference is itself a symptom of decay. The United States has built a political culture that valorizes the military while neglecting the civilian institutions meant to oversee it. Congress, consumed by performative partisanship, rarely exercises its constitutional powers of investigation except when politically convenient. The Executive Branch, divided between rival bureaucracies, resists transparency even as it preaches it abroad.
Meanwhile, the GAO – one of the last vestiges of nonpartisan competence – continues to issue reports like messages from a ghost government, documenting failures no one intends to correct. As one section of the report notes, “State has not established a process for deciding which incidents to report to Congress”. That single sentence captures the paradox of American governance: a democracy with infinite paperwork but vanishing responsibility.
The problem is not merely bureaucratic but moral. The administrative state, once a tool of national purpose, has become self-referential. It exists to perpetuate itself. This is why, as political theorist Francis Fukuyama once warned, “the United States suffers not from too much government, but from too little capacity.”
GAO-25-107622, in this sense, is not about arms at all. It is about capacity – and its loss.
V. The Long Decline of State Capacity
Historically, the American state has expanded in response to crises – the New Deal, World War II, the Cold War. But since the 1970s, reform has meant deregulation, outsourcing, and fragmentation. The Reagan revolution taught Americans to distrust government; subsequent administrations hollowed it out in practice.
The result is paradoxical: a superpower with a trillion-dollar defense budget but brittle institutions, unable to coordinate even basic oversight. Each crisis – Iraq, Afghanistan, COVID, the border – generates new bureaucratic layers, each less accountable than the last.
GAO-25-107622 captures this in microcosm. Instead of reforming broken processes, agencies multiply them. The report notes that “State uses multiple, non-integrated systems” for tracking violations. This is how the empire of paperwork grows: every failure begets another form, another office, another acronym. Over time, the system becomes so dense that even well-intentioned officials cannot see through it.
And yet, for all its failures, the administrative state persists – because it protects itself through complexity. When everything is everyone’s responsibility, no one is ever to blame.
VI. The Quiet End of Accountability
Accountability in the American system once rested on three pillars: Congressional oversight, executive responsibility, and public trust. All three are eroding. GAO-25-107622 is a case study in how oversight has become performative. Congress commissions audits but rarely enforces their recommendations. Agencies acknowledge findings but seldom change behavior.
The report concludes with six formal recommendations – to clarify roles, improve data, and strengthen coordination. The State Department “partially concurred.” That phrase – partially concurred – might as well be the epitaph of American governance. It means: *we agree in principle, but will do nothing in practice.*
Such responses have become ritualized. The GAO issues hundreds of recommendations each year; many remain “open” for a decade or more. In bureaucratic terms, that is eternity. In political terms, it is surrender.
VII. Conclusion: The Empire of Paperwork
If history remembers this era, it may not be for its wars or elections, but for its memoranda. The United States today produces an extraordinary volume of information – reports, audits, strategies, white papers – yet this flood of documentation conceals a drought of decision.
GAO-25-107622 is a small document, but it captures this paradox perfectly. It shows a government that still measures, audits, and evaluates – yet cannot act. A state that once built the Marshall Plan and the Apollo Program now struggles to track its own weapons.
Perhaps that is the final stage of empire: when power endures, but capacity fades; when the state’s outer shell remains impressive, but the inner machinery rusts in silence.
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