The cracks are showing. The US empire is in decay. What will the world look like once it’s no longer able to bully everyone? What do we have to look forward to both inside and outside the imperial core?
In the short (next couple lifetimes) term, the US will continue receding from different geopolitical arenas, followed by some political jostling to change that region’s power balance.
As the empire shrinks, the politics of scarcity will become more pervasive, entrenching clientelism and mistrust in an already fairly low-trust society.
It’s not a hot take to say that mask-off fascism is on the menu given how fascism-shaped the US is, but given how autocanibalistic this particular right wing wave is, I have no idea what to expect.
Don’t know whether the new boss will be the same as the old boss; while India and China don’t seem particularly empire-inclined, few countries do until they’re the one with the biggest stick. Both have been drumming up nationalism internally for the last decade, so if they can’t defuse it safely they’ll point it at each other, to everybody’s detriment.
The US Empire has a small chance of Balkanizing, which the map drawers would love. The global south would develop far more rapidly, though this process has already started thanks to countries like the PRC. Europe will be forced into working with Russia and/or China. Countries like Cuba, Venezuela, and the DPRK that are heavily sanctioned will do a lot better with the US Empire out of the way, and Korea may even reunify down the road. Countries with strong socialist sentiment in the populace will better be able to become socialist and rapidly develop.
Post-Soviet Union Russia
China will be the dominant world superpower for a while and their standard of living will drastically increase. Middle East will be unlikely to stabilize any time soon. Africa might be put into play as serious economic competitors to fill the gap in skilled labor and services that the United States will leave behind in its wake. South America might finally have a chance to heal from the destructive regime meddling of the USA.
the global south will have another chance and the east will eventually shine. and a period of peace after the storm passes. quite a lot of nuance and drama and death all along the way.
climate change fucking everything up for the worse somewhere in the middle of this.
The coasts will be wealthy and independent. The middle will be poor and warlike. Two coastal countries and a lot of warlording in the middle.
Unless there’s some critic event like a civil war, I’m guessing it will be a slow decline of the U.S. I don’t think any country stands to replace it, at least not in the same amount of dominace that the United States had. I think two or three countries, including the U.S., will dominate economic and military power for quite a number of years with a great deal of shuffling between them.
A multi polar world will surely emerge. The empire will crumble slowly and gradually cede power to other forces.
I think the reality is the US will still be one of the most powerful countries but in a world where they seriously have to operate in diplomacy and not just imperial shows of force will be a net positive for the world overall.
The hope there is other nations that are polar powers and are nominally engaging in anti capitalist behavior will spread that ideology and help lift the the tides of revolutionary fervor to wholesale replace capitalism as the global economic system.
Unless the US does the thing where they decide to violently lash out (as empires do in the past collapses) and nukes the world a few times over. I don’t think this is likely but also it is assuredly not non zero which is insane.
Unless the US does the thing where they decide to violently lash out
yeah they are already gearing up for it
It’s a very optimistic outlook. I hope you’re right.
What’s uncomfortable for countries in the Western hemisphere is that upon shifting to a multipolar or “spheres of influence” model of the world (which was the norm preglobalization), America will continue its imperialistic tendencies to claim some form of dominion over Canada Mexico and South America. The latest foreign policy strategy document from the Trump administration seems to harken to the Monroe Doctrine (which was a warning that colonization of any further territory in the Western hemisphere by European powers would be viewed as a threat to U.S. security). It seems like Trump sees the Western hemisphere as “belonging” to America on some level.
I also don’t see the US competely discarding neoliberalism when it comes to tech / services, where it still dominates. That requires some type of openness to the world otherwise they won’t be able to continue to enforce their IP rights. When someone makes a Doordash order in Kathmandu, they want some portion of that transaction flowing through both Silicon Valley and their payment processors (Visa, Mastercard etc). How will the US respond when socialism spreads and those countries make their own versions of these services? Hard to imagine they would respond reasonably, especially since their approach to any resistance up until now has been to stage a coup. Old habits die hard.
Change in the US will happen out of necessity when the US does try to do this but can actually receive pushback but much of it will have to happen because average people take up the call to build something better. The movement is growing every day.
I am optimistic that over enough time and with enough deliberate action anything is possible. Maybe not in my lifetime but that’s the fight I’ve committed myself to and it’s a righteous one.
You said it so much better than I did.
Naw I just expanded on your already great points
With international banking freely printing money in much of the world (debt and taxation via inflation), I’m guessing we will have more and more frequent boom/bust cycles followed by a massive rug pull that will finally break the system’s back, death by banking.
Then China will run the show for our lifetimes, which means we’ll finally get fast rail.
Safer, regardless of whatever atrocity-defending propaganda y’all have been eating. And once the dollar goes from reserve currency to yet another coin to exchange with, America’s privileges will be gone. That’s gonna be interesting to see.
We just gonna have other bully. That’s how power vacuums works
A global hegemon on the scale of the British and then US empire is kind of a blip historically though — it’s not obvious that another state will continue in the same role
There were many empires throughout the history. Of course there were very few at the scale of your examples. We didn’t had internet or ability to fly and sail bunch of tanks across thousands of kilometers within days. But history shows that intend was always there
‘intent’ is a bit of a devious notion in this context though, isn’t it? Whose intent?
We didn’t had internet or ability to fly and sail bunch of tanks across thousands of kilometers within days.
We didn’t have these when the current global power structure was established. We didn’t have AK-47S either, and much of the world had yet to industrialize. It was a very specific context.
You can’t separate imperialism from its economic basis. The ability for a country to take on the mantle of empire post-US is extremely mitigated. Imperialism isn’t a magical force but a material process.
The people who down voted you don’t really understand how world history has played out. You are absolutely correct if the US fails you’ll just have somebody else.
A single dominant hegemon is extremely uncommon in world history
