They want their fourth industrial global government at this point where they will do anything to get it, and I mean anything destroying anybody in their way to achieving just that. The global economy is collapsing faster than they can bridge an entirely new one to replace it with for safeguarding their own global spectrum of power over it, so what happens next is when they violently lash out to keep that power or control destroying anybody and anything that stands in their way. The problem with this of course is very problematic, we're talking about the entire world here playing the game for acquiring all the marbles, if they screw up very badly not only will they lose all control or power but they will send the entire planet into hundreds of years of chaos afterward, something that I foresee as being more likely above all else. The reason I believe that is quite simple, they have let things degrade, sink, and decay for so long that any straightforward strong-arming the entire planet right now will be like grasping sand in a wet stream at this point, the wet muck of their broken dreams, ambitions, and desires of global power, in the end, will merely slip right through their fingers at this time. Nonetheless, they will keep trying anyway, because if they stop or do nothing now they will lose everything, humorously enough it doesn't really matter what they do in the end they will lose everything anyway.
Ya their power has been fading away as their economic system fails because they don't understand economics and there is so many corrupt special interests that they won't allow reforms to fix it. As that would lower their power and wealth anyway.
To have power forever I would have good high paying union jobs for the men, and make it so they all could afford houses if they want, and all have full benefits. And most all of them able to get a wife and children.. who I would design the laws so effectively the wives couldn't leave them. Most simple was in the 1800's if a woman leaves a marriage, the husband keeps the children. In Iran they have it that when the husband finds a new wife, the wife who left has to bring the children and leave them with the husband and his new wife.
Since few women are willing to leave their children, it forces them to stay in the marriage.
So then men who make $150-200k a year in my industrial corporations and government enterprises, and they have their own house with white picket fence, and full benefits and a wife and kids. I own them then. And they dare not to rock the boat because they have a lot to lose. Then as technology advanced and the society got wealthier I would be gradually raising their incomes and benefits.
Our leaders were too incompetent or greedy to do that or like their ideology for families destroying families. Like offshoring entire factories, and not providing new good stable jobs when technology replaced workers in areas. So by beating down people.. you make it so they have nothing to lose. You create a real opposition.
By fucking people over, like when they grew up and were hoping to live like their parents and they were following the rules and doing what they were told, but then they find themselves living in an apartment in a country their ancestors built. People lost faith in their rulers. Like people in the 1950's went along with government because from 1939-1954 government actually did deliver. So people had faith in it and went along willingly.
So with a loss of faith people won't just follow you on faith. So their power was falling. The last thing left is force like you said. To keep their power they have to go to force to make people do things. Because they can't promise people things to get them to do stuff because people no longer believe in them.
The problem in the US is we are armed to the teeth and glorify violence as a people so using force is most likely to be a bloodbath that the elites will lose. They are the ones with the most to lose. They have all the power and money so destabilizing the system is dangerous for them. But of course they have to go for it anyway rather than give up their power and wealth.