History’s Most Powerful Empire

After World War II, several factors allowed the United States to become the most powerful empire in history. One was, of course, the country’s dominant military. Its navy was larger than that of every other state combined, it controlled a string of bases around the world, and for several years it was the only country in possession of nuclear weapons.

However, military might on its own does not make for a strong imperialism. The US empire benefited greatly from the country’s technological advantage and its unparalleled economic strength. At one point, half of all manufactured goods on the planet were made in America.

The United States also rested upon strong foundations of domestic popularity. The two main political parties agreed on most fundamental issues, and for years, the majority of Americans trusted their government.

Another vital factor was international support. The United States was able to operate so expansively because it commanded the allegiance of a relatively unified transcontinental imperial bloc.

At the core of this alliance was the United States. Around it was a tight nucleus of Japan, West Germany, and Great Britain. Then came another layer of European capitalist states, to be eventually joined by other allies such as Iran, Israel, South Korea, and the Philippines. Washington vowed to protect capitalism on a global scale, and this imperial alliance gave it the support that it needed to intervene across the world to repress any movement that it saw as a threat to that capitalist global order.

But what held it all together was the US state’s grand “civilizational” vision. The fractions that made up the US ruling bloc did not simply wish to enrich themselves. Many believed that their country had attained the pinnacle of human civilization. American life was “the good life”: a stable job, a nuclear family, a mountain of affordable consumer goods, civil liberties, and elections every four years. Sure, there were still problems, but these would be worked out in time.

What’s more, the United States claimed that its model was universally replicable. People everywhere could also become “American,” as it were, if only they were willing to follow the template that the US state had discovered. It also promised to help them achieve this good life through aid, loans, technology transfers, and training in its top universities. The aim of the US state, in other words, was not simply to maintain its power, but to remake the globe in its own image.

The reality was, of course, always different from what was advertised, and many people across the globe despised US imperialism. Although it promised to bring peace, freedom, and prosperity to the world, the United States became the single greatest opponent of emancipatory movements everywhere. It overthrew democracies, propped up dictatorships, slaughtered millions, and obliterated alternatives whenever they emerged.

Yet millions of people nevertheless voluntarily accepted US leadership in the postwar years because they truly believed that the United States represented the height of human development. They wanted to live the “American dream.” This is precisely why US imperialism was so powerful. It ruled not just through terror but through international consent.

Imperialism in Decline

Today the US empire is not what it once was. One by one, the major factors that once made it so powerful have started to break down. The United States has lost its technological edge in many fields, and Trump’s recent war on universities will only widen the gap, setting US research and development back for decades.

The US economy is also in questionable shape. The government is running an unprecedented deficit, and much of the economy is tied to speculative assets such as real estate, stocks, precious metals, cryptocurrency, and an AI bubble. Rivals such as China are not just catching up with the United States but exceeding it in important ways. China’s largest exports to the United States are electronics, while the top US export to China in recent times has been soybeans.

Meanwhile, the domestic legitimacy of the US state has cratered, and trust in major US institutions — the media, the universities, the state itself — is at an all-time low. Only 17 percent of Americans trust their government to “do what is right.”

The fabric of American life is coming apart at the seams, with skyrocketing costs of living, a dysfunctional health care system, endless mass shootings, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. For many people, this country is not a safe, stable, or pleasant place to live. According to a poll, only 13 percent of young Americans think their country is heading in the right direction.

If millions once dreamed of migrating to the “land of opportunity,” people are now having second thoughts. Many Americans are even trying to secure dual citizenship so they can leave the sinking ship.

These domestic problems are a major reason why many Americans across the political spectrum no longer support US interventions abroad. Having lived through the failure of recent wars, they have concluded that it makes little sense for the US state to pour their tax dollars into futile wars abroad when life at home has become so bad.

Nearly half of Americans want the government to scale back its role in the world. The glory days when most Americans unquestioningly followed their government anywhere, from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, appear to be over.

A Fractured Ruling Bloc

Despite the palpable deterioration of the domestic situation, none of the major fractions of the ruling bloc have been willing to pursue substantial systematic reforms. If in the past the US state tried to earn consent through social programs and economic policies that improved the lives of many Americans, today’s rulers are content to make largely symbolic changes. The Democrats appointed the first woman as head of the CIA and painted pride flags on police vans; the Republicans have given us the Gulf of America and the Department of War.

At the same time, the US ruling bloc has become profoundly fractured. The rulers of one camp are prosecuting those from the other, and the camps themselves have become dangerously incoherent. The coalition around Trump includes neocons who want Israel to colonize the Middle East and isolationists who want to withdraw from the region altogether; billionaires who want to slash welfare and populists who want to expand it; white supremacists who want to purify the land and immigrants who see the Republican Party as a vehicle for upward mobility; religious fundamentalists who want Armageddon and atheist techno-overlords who want to become cyborgs.

The United States has also gravely jeopardized its imperial alliance. It has alienated its European allies, which are in any event far weaker than they were in the 1950s and ’60s. It has strained relationships with other allied states such as India and inflicted permanent damage on the international order that it constructed after World War II. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said recently at Davos. “We know the old order is not coming back.”

The greatest index of US imperial decline is the disintegration of its “civilizational” vision. The postwar project that sustained the international liberal order is gone, and nothing has filled the vacuum. Some in the ruling bloc have proposed replacements, but instead of rallying around a single vision, they are competing over incompatible projects — a white supremacist ethnostate or identitarian multiculturalism; a renewed welfare capitalism or even more neoliberalism; the revival of the United States as the world’s manufacturing center or its dissolution into a new post-national world run by tech companies.

The main problem is that most elements in the ruling bloc, whether Democrat or Republican, don’t even appear to have a coherent global vision to begin with. It sometimes seems as if some of the most important players in this bloc, from the insider trader Nancy Pelosi to the slumlord Trump, just want to make money. They want to juice the stock market, line their pockets with as much social wealth as they can, and extract tributes from their client states. It’s as though the country is run by a pack of selfish vandals.

Since arguably the most important pillar of US imperialism was a relatively coherent “civilizational” vision for the future that was shared by most fractions of its own ruling bloc, supported by its allies abroad, and accepted by millions of people across the world, the absence of any such vision today cannot help but spell trouble for imperialism. Convinced that the United States no longer has anything to offer them, millions of people are looking elsewhere.

Down But Not Out

The United States still has a few things going for it. It has the military, which is the most advanced in the world and more than powerful enough to lay waste to whole countries and butcher millions.

Washington also has the dollar, which remains the most powerful currency. It has become a deadly weapon against opponents such as Iran. Even heavyweight rivals such as China are so entangled in the dollar regime that they have to think twice about directly challenging US financial supremacy — at least for now.

The US state is also relatively free of internal revolutionary challengers. Domestic unrest has historically contributed to bringing empires down. While there may be widespread discontent, with plenty of important struggles now unfolding across the United States, none of this poses a serious enough threat to the US empire as yet.

Nor does the United States face any significant international competitors. Venezuela is in crisis and mounted little resistance to the illegal capture of its president. Russia is bogged down in a costly war, and its own imperial ventures have degraded its credibility. The Islamic Republic of Iran has a battered economy and a home front rife with dissent. Although China has the greatest potential to outmaneuver the United States, it has thus far deliberately avoided any real confrontation in the hope that Washington will simply exhaust itself in fruitless engagements, clearing the way for China to inherit the Earth.

The greatest boon to US imperialism is the fact that none of its rivals has anything resembling a meaningful vision of the new world capable of galvanizing millions across the globe. None has articulated anything like a worldmaking hegemonic project. Although there are real differences between them, they all effectively represent different variations on the same theme of authoritarian capitalism. There does not yet seem to be an organized alternative.

How Empires End

The ruling bloc knows that the US empire is in decline and that it has few cards left to play. Many of its leaders have determined that they have to make some sort of bold play before it’s too late. That is why US imperialism has grown so reckless in recent years.

Lacking any grand organizing vision, or the means to realize a vision even if they had one, US imperialists are throwing out whatever they have available to see if they can reverse their imperial denouement — supporting genocide, levying tariffs, kidnapping a foreign leader, squeezing European vassals, waging yet another war on drugs, attacking immigrants, accelerating regime change abroad, promoting white supremacy, and tearing apart the international order. None of these spectacular gambits has succeeded in solving the empire’s crisis, so they keep upping the ante.

US imperialism is in decline, but it is by no means out for the count, and its frenzied efforts to save itself will likely make it even more menacing in the years to come. Like cornered beasts, declining empires are often brazen and vindictive, lashing out in all directions, taking wild risks, acting without a coherent plan, and wreaking havoc everywhere.

The United States is the most powerful empire that has ever existed. Its continued decline will not only be uneven and protracted, but it is also likely to be destructive. For those who care about emancipation, this process of feverish decline brings both unprecedented opportunities and dangers. The challenge is to develop a strategy that simultaneously recognizes the weaknesses of US imperialism while taking its residual power very seriously.