{"id":145952,"date":"2024-11-20T15:51:54","date_gmt":"2024-11-20T22:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=145952"},"modified":"2024-11-20T15:51:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-20T22:51:54","slug":"requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-u-s-global-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/11\/20\/requiem-for-an-empire-how-americas-strongman-will-hasten-the-decline-of-u-s-global-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Requiem for an Empire -How America\u2019s Strongman Will Hasten the Decline of U.S. Global Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alfred McCoy<\/a> <\/span>Courtesy TomDispatch<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch<\/em> made a prediction that may yet prove prescient. Rejecting the consensus of that moment that U.S. global hegemony would persist to 2040 or 2050, he argued that<\/a> the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come\u2026 in 2025, just 15 years from now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends.\u201d Starting with the global context, he argued that, faced with a fading superpower,\u201d China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace.\u201d At home in the United States, domestic divisions would widen into violent clashes and divisive debates\u2026 Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair, a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.\u201d But, that historian concluded, the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that a far-right patriot,\u201d one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency with thundering rhetoric,\u201d let\u2019s explore the likelihood that a second Trump term in office, starting in the fateful year 2025, might actually bring a hasty end, silent or otherwise, to an American Century\u201d of global dominion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making the Original Prediction<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s begin by examining the reasoning underlying my original prediction. (Yes, of course, that historian was me.) Back in 2010, when I picked a specific date for a rising tide of American decline, this country looked unassailably strong both at home and abroad. The presidency of Barack Obama was producing a post-racial\u201d society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth \u2014 the auto industry saved, oil and gas production booming, the tech sector thriving, the stock market soaring, and employment solid. Internationally, Washington was the world\u2019s preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world\u2019s sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times <\/em>in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued<\/a> that America\u2019s array of force is staggering,\u201d with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe\u2019s single superpower\u201d without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia\u2019s defense budget had collapsed\u201d and its economy was less than that of the Netherlands.\u201d Should China\u2019s high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance\u201d \u2014 but that wouldn\u2019t be true until 2032, if then. While America\u2019s unipolar moment\u201d would surely not continue for centuries,\u201d its end, he predicted, seems a long way off for now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times <\/em>in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain\u2019s imperial decline, dismissed<\/a> the doom mongers\u201d who conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony.\u201d While Rome was riven by internecine strife\u201d and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was constitutionally stable\u201d with an enormous industrial base.\u201d Taking a few relatively simple steps,\u201d he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buy the Book<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians<\/a> from universities on three continents who were studying the decline of earlier empires, particularly those of Britain, France, and Spain. Beneath the surface of this country\u2019s seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 2010, economic globalization was cutting good-paying factory jobs here, income inequality was widening, and corporate bailouts were booming \u2014 all essential ingredients for rising working-class resentment and deepening domestic divisions. Foolhardy military misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed by Washington elites trying to deny any sense of decline, stoked simmering anger among ordinary Americans, slowly discrediting the very idea of international commitments. And the erosion of America\u2019s relative economic strength from half the world\u2019s output in 1950 to a quarter in 2010 meant the wherewithal for its unipolar power was fading fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only a near-peer\u201d competitor was needed to turn that attenuating U.S. global hegemony into accelerating imperial decline. With rapid economic growth, a vast population, and the world\u2019s longest imperial tradition, China seemed primed to become just such a country. But back then, Washington\u2019s foreign policy elites thought not and even admitted China to the World Trade Organization (WTO), fully confident<\/a>, according to two Beltway insiders, that U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States\u2019 liking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our group of historians, mindful of the frequent imperial wars fought when near-peer competitors finally confronted the reigning hegemon of their moment \u2014 think Germany versus Great Britain in World War I \u2014 fully expected China\u2019s challenge would not be long in coming. Indeed, in 2012, just two years after my prediction, the U.S. National Intelligence Council warned<\/a> that China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030\u201d and this country would no longer be a hegemonic power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just a year after that, China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, drawing on a massive $4 trillion<\/a> in foreign-exchange reserves accumulated in the decade after joining the WTO, announced his bid for global power through what he called the Belt and Road Initiative<\/a>,\u201d history\u2019s largest development program. It was designed to make Beijing the center of the global economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the following decade, the U.S.-China rivalry would become so intense that, last September, Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall warned<\/a>: I\u2019ve been closely watching the evolution of [China\u2019s] military for 15 years. China is not a future threat; China is a threat today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Global Rise of the Strongman<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major setback for Washington\u2019s world order, long legitimated by its promotion of democracy (whatever its own dominating tendencies), came from the rise of populist strongmen worldwide. Consider them part of a nationalist reaction to the West\u2019s aggressive economic globalization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the close of the Cold War in 1991, Washington became the planet\u2019s sole superpower, using its hegemony to forcefully promote a wide-open global economy \u2014 forming the World Trade Organization<\/a> in 1995, pressing open-market reforms<\/a>\u201d on developing economies, and knocking down tariff barriers worldwide. It also built a global communications grid by laying<\/a> 700,000 miles of fiber-optic submarine cables and then launching<\/a> 1,300 satellites (now 4,700).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By exploiting that very globalized economy, however, China\u2019s industrial output<\/a> soared to $3.2 trillion by 2016, surpassing both the U.S. and Japan, while simultaneously eliminating<\/a> 2.4 million American jobs between 1999 and 2011, ensuring the closure of factories in countless towns across the South and Midwest. By fraying social safety nets while eroding protection for labor unions and local businesses in both the U.S. and Europe, globalization reduced the quality of life for many, while creating inequality on a staggering scale and stoking a working-class reaction that would crest in a global wave of angry populism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding that wave, right-wing populists have been winning a steady succession of elections \u2014 in Russia (2000), Israel (2009), Hungary (2010), China (2012), Turkey (2014), the Philippines (2016), the U.S. (2016), Brazil (2018), Italy (2022), the Netherlands (2023), Indonesia (2024), and the U.S. again (2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Set aside their incendiary us-versus-them rhetoric, however, and look at their actual achievements and those right-wing demagogues turn out to have a record that can only be described as dismal. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro ravaged<\/a> the vast Amazon rainforest and left office amid an abortive coup<\/a>. In Russia, Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, sacrificing<\/a> his country\u2019s economy to capture some more land (which it hardly lacked). In Turkey, Recep Erdogan caused a crippling debt crisis<\/a>, while jailing 50,000<\/a> suspected opponents. In the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte murdered 30,000<\/a> suspected drug users and courted China<\/a> by giving up his country\u2019s claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has wreaked havoc on Gaza and neighboring lands, in part to stay in office<\/a> and stay out of prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prospects for Donald Trump\u2019s Second Term<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the steady erosion of its global power for several decades, America is no longer the \u2014 or perhaps even an \u2014 exceptional\u201d nation floating above the deep global currents that shape the politics of most countries. And as it has become more of an ordinary country, it has also felt the full force of the worldwide move toward strongman rule. Not only does that global trend help explain Trump\u2019s election and his recent reelection, but it provides some clues as to what he\u2019s likely to do with that office the second time around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the globalized world America made, there is now an intimate interaction between domestic and international policy. That will soon be apparent in a second Trump administration whose policies are likely to simultaneously damage the country\u2019s economy and further degrade Washington\u2019s world leadership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s start with the clearest of his commitments: environmental policy. During the recent election campaign, Trump called<\/a> climate change a scam\u201d and his transition team has already drawn up executive orders<\/a> to exit from the Paris climate accords. By quitting that agreement, the U.S. will abdicate any leadership role when it comes to the most consequential issue facing the international community while reducing pressure on China to curb its greenhouse gas emissions. Since these two countries now account for nearly half<\/a> (45%) of global carbon emissions, such a move will ensure that the world blows past the target of keeping this planet\u2019s temperature rise to 1.5 degrees<\/a> Centigrade until the end of the century. Instead, on a planet that\u2019s already had 12 recent months<\/a> of just such a temperature rise, that mark is expected to be permanently reached by perhaps 2029, the year Trump finishes his second term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the domestic side of climate policy, Trump promised<\/a> last September that he would terminate the Green New Deal, which I call the Green New Scam, and rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.\u201d On the day after his election, he committed himself to increasing the country\u2019s oil and gas production, telling<\/a> a celebratory crowd, We have more liquid gold than any country in the world.\u201d He will undoubtedly also block<\/a> wind farm leases on Federal lands and cancel<\/a> the $7,500 tax credit for purchasing an electrical vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the world shifts to renewable energy and all-electric vehicles, Trump\u2019s policies will undoubtedly do lasting damage to the American economy. In 2023, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported<\/a> that, amid continuing price decreases, wind and solar power now generate electricity for less than half the cost of fossil fuels. Any attempt to slow the conversion of this country\u2019s utilities to the most cost-effective form of energy runs a serious risk of ensuring that American-made products will be ever less competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it bluntly, he seems to be proposing that electricity users here should pay twice as much for their power as those in other advanced nations. Similarly, as relentless engineering innovation makes electric vehicles cheaper and more reliable than petrol-powered ones, attempting to slow such an energy transition is likely to make the U.S. auto industry uncompetitive, at home and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calling tariffs the greatest thing ever invented,\u201d Trump has proposed<\/a> slapping a 20% duty on all foreign goods and 60% on those from China. In another instance of domestic-foreign synergy, such duties will undoubtedly end up crippling American farm exports, thanks to retaliatory overseas tariffs, while dramatically raising the cost of consumer goods for Americans, stoking inflation, and slowing consumer spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflecting his aversion<\/a> to alliances and military commitments, Trump\u2019s first foreign policy initiative will likely be an attempt to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine. During a CNN town hall in May 2023, he claimed<\/a> he could stop the fighting in 24 hours.\u201d Last July, he added<\/a>: I would tell [Ukraine\u2019s president] Zelenskyy, no more. You got to make a deal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just two days after the November election, according to<\/a> the Washington Post,<\/em> Trump reputedly told<\/a> Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call, not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington\u2019s sizable military presence in Europe.\u201d Drawing on sources inside the Trump transition team, the Wall Street Journal<\/em> reported<\/a> that the new administration is considering cementing Russia\u2019s seizure of 20% of Ukraine\u201d and forcing Kyiv to forego its bid to join NATO, perhaps for as long as 20 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Russia drained of manpower and its economy pummeled by three years of bloody warfare, a competent negotiator (should Trump actually appoint one) might indeed be able to bring a tenuous peace to a ravaged Ukraine. Since it has been Europe\u2019s frontline of defense against a revanchist Russia, the continent\u2019s major powers would be expected to play a significant role<\/a>. But Germany\u2019s coalition government has just collapsed; French president Emmanuel Macron is crippled by recent electoral reverses; and the NATO alliance, after three years of a shared commitment to Ukraine, faces real uncertainty with the advent of a Trump presidency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

America\u2019s Allies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those impending negotiations over Ukraine highlight the paramount importance of alliances for U.S. global power. For 80 years, from World War II through the Cold War and beyond, Washington relied on bilateral and multilateral alliances as a critical force multiplier. With China and Russia both rearmed and increasingly closely aligned, reliable allies have become even more important to maintaining Washington\u2019s global presence. With 32 member nations representing a billion people and a commitment to mutual defense that has lasted 75 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO<\/a>) is arguably the most powerful military alliance in all of modern history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet Trump has long been sharply critical of it. As a candidate in 2016, he called<\/a> the alliance obsolete.\u201d As president, he mocked the treaty\u2019s mutual-defense clause, claiming<\/a> even tiny\u201d Montenegro could drag the U.S. into war. While campaigning last February, he announced<\/a> that he would tell Russia to do whatever the hell they want\u201d to a NATO ally that didn\u2019t pay what he considered its fair share.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right after Trump\u2019s election, caught between what one analyst called<\/a> an aggressively advancing Russia and an aggressively withdrawing America,\u201d French President Macron insisted that the continent needed to be a more united, stronger, more sovereign Europe in this new context.\u201d Even if the new administration doesn\u2019t formally withdraw from NATO, Trump\u2019s repeated hostility, particularly toward its crucial mutual-defense clause, may yet serve to eviscerate the alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Asia-Pacific region, the American presence rests on three sets of overlapping alliances: the AUKUS<\/a> entente with Australia and Britain, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue<\/a> (with Australia, India, and Japan), and a chain of bilateral defense pacts stretching along the Pacific littoral from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Via careful diplomacy, the Biden administration strengthened<\/a> those alliances, bringing two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines that had drifted Beijing-wards,<\/strong> back into the Western fold. Trump\u2019s penchant for abusing allies and, as in his first term, withdrawing<\/a> from multilateral pacts is likely to weaken such ties and so American power in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although his first administration famously waged a trade war with Beijing, Trump\u2019s attitude toward the island of Taiwan is bluntly transactional. I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense,\u201d he said<\/a> last June, adding: You know, we\u2019re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn\u2019t give us anything.\u201d In October, he told<\/a> the Wall Street Journal <\/em>that he would not have to use military force to defend Taiwan because China\u2019s President Xi respects me and he knows I\u2019m f\u2014\u2014 crazy.\u201d Bluster aside, Trump, unlike his predecessor Joe Biden, has never committed himself to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should Beijing indeed attack Taiwan outright or, as appears more likely, impose a crippling economic blockade<\/a> on the island, Trump seems unlikely to risk a war with China. The loss of Taiwan would break the U.S. position along the Pacific littoral, for 80 years the fulcrum of its global imperial posture, pushing its naval forces back to a second island chain\u201d running from Japan to Guam. Such a retreat would represent a major blow to America\u2019s imperial role in the Pacific, potentially making it no longer a significant player in the security of its Asia-Pacific allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Silent U.S. Recessional<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding up the likely impact of Donald Trump\u2019s policies in this country, Asia, Europe, and the international community generally, his second term will almost certainly be one of imperial decline, increasing internal chaos, and a further loss of global leadership. As respect for American authority\u201d fades, Trump may yet resort to threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal.\u201d But as I predicted back in 2010, it seems quite likely that the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright 2024 Alfred W. McCoy<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow TomDispatch on <\/em>Twitter<\/em><\/a> and join us on <\/em>Facebook<\/em><\/a>. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer\u2019s new dystopian novel, <\/em>Songlands<\/a> (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky\u2019s novel <\/em>Every Body Has a Story<\/a>, and Tom Engelhardt\u2019s <\/em>A Nation Unmade by War<\/a>, as well as Alfred McCoy\u2019s <\/em>In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/a>, John Dower\u2019s <\/em>The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II<\/a>, and Ann Jones\u2019s<\/em> They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America\u2019s Wars: The Untold Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alfred McCoy<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alfred W. McCoy<\/strong>, a TomDispatch<\/em> regular<\/a>,<\/a> is the Harrington professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power<\/em><\/a>. His newest book is To Govern the Globe: World Orders and Catastrophic Change<\/em><\/a> (Dispatch Books).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Requiem for an Empire<\/a><\/blockquote>