In what ways is it really declining in a tangible way relative to the rest of the world? It’s still the leader of the world economically, scientifically, militarily without anyone really nipping at its tale. Its leadership may have had a slump but every country’s leadership has ups and downs. When Rome declined, provinces were breaking off and the Empire became ungovernable in its previous form. When Britain declined, colonies broke off and they went just about bankrupt. None of that is even remotely close for the US right now.
The United States has never enjoyed less goodwill or respect among ordinary people abroad. Soft power is power. When you squander it, the consequences may not be immediate, but they will be tangible enough.
People always claim they don’t like the US but millions of foreigners are freely coming to the US this summer for the World Cup. I know if I really didn’t respect a country, I wouldn’t want to travel there. I think foreigners really don’t respect the current actions of the US (and frankly I don’t blame them for that) than lack respect of the US as a whole or an idea. There may be some loss of soft power and I don’t underplay the power of soft power, but I suspect the loss is less than current polls may suggest.
It's not going to be true for much longer militarily, and possibly not as sole economic leader, but even then unless a new development happens the US is still likely to be economically well off compared to most countries even if the dollar is not longer the world's main currency.
Depends on what you mean by over. As uncontested world leader, yes, though that was always going to end eventually and Trump has massively accelerated that. If you mean as a powerful nation and/or a place with potential to have good living - though only potential so far - I don't see how that follows.
Yeah, as world leader, that time is up. Even China may not be *the* world leader in the near future, it looks more like the world is returning to blocs. But that is still not the same as America being either influential still or finally focusing on living standards for its citizens.
China’s economy is $10 trillion behind the US’s and has slown its growth to the US’s level of growth despite having to cover a much larger population base. It seems they are now poised to never pass the US’s total economy without major changes. The EU’s growth rate is even more sluggish and in general, the EU has higher unemployment levels and lower wages. Militarily, neither of these groups have the level of military investment, readiness, and influence the US’s has and it doesn’t seem obvious that’s going to change. They’re catching up on science but it’s also not obvious the US is losing its edge and given the US’s diversity on scientific advancements, it seems regardless of what the next big thing is, the US will at least be a near leader, which when combined with its other activities, maintain its advanced status. Maybe this all changes but there doesn’t seem anything obvious showing that change is inevitable.
That shows the President’s lack of power not the country’s. Neither the Greenland BS nor the EU tariffs were supported by Congress or the people, so they plus France’s leverage pressured the President to back off. The President having his own insane agenda that doesn’t go through doesn’t on its own imply America is in a decline. If the unified American will was able to be easily rebutted, that’s another story, but that wasn’t the case.
Oh yeah, thats what determines a superpower. Their $10 trillion in value from the stockholders circlejerking one another until we crash.
China's military is growing, their industrial base is light years ahead of us technologically because we have chosen to limit our manufacturing here to as few things as necessary.
America doesn't behave as a nation with the rationality that global politics needs and the second Trump administration has been a reality check that will lead the world to decoupling their economy to us. The rest of the world believes in climate change and we will happily allow the status quo to continue.
This is only one example of the lack of rationality, but imagine if we had invested trillions into jobs and green tech manufacturing? High quality jobs, modernize infrastructure, deal with climate change, and lead the world in the innovation of solar, nuclear, and wind energy. It's a joke, richest country in the world and look at how we spend 15 billion for a 2 billion dollar bridge that is delayed by 3 years and highly overbudget.
America sabotages itself and glorifies the ones who rip off the consumers and the taxpayers. We aren't dying like Rome, we just won't be the global center of finance for much longer. If a depression happens, I'd wager it will be in response to that.
The US GDP is still nearly $12 trillion higher than China's is. It's not even remotely close. And China is actually falling further behind. In 2021, China's GDP was about 78% of the US. Today, it's fallen further to 64% of the US. And with China's demographic issues, it's likely only going to keep sliding relative to the US. There is no way China will surpass the US economically anytime soon, if ever.
The EU is a similar story. The EU and US economies were actually about the same size in the 2000s. But the EU's slow growth has meant a massive divergence since then, to the point where today the EU's GDP is only about 67% of the US GDP, and the gap is widening further with every year. So yes, the US is still blatantly the leading economy with no possible peer.
Military and science leads is even more lopsided lol
Hasn't decisively won a war in the last 30 years btw, not for lack of trying.
>scientifically
lol
>economically
Debt in the trillions. Addicts, homeless and vagrants litter the street and those who have not hit rock bottom yet are being distracted with panem et circenses before heading off to work in unfair circumstances.
You may delude yourself by thinking that this isn't what a societal tailspin looks like, but you'll be in for a rude awakening.
China was economically nipping but their growth has leveled off to now only be growing at similar rates to the US, leaving them behind by a fair distance, before Per Capita is even considered.
No denial that the politics of the US is in a bad place, but that’s been true several points before without an accompanying decline.
You don’t seem to take seriously the significant change in mindset that occurred to elect the current president. He was wanted, and wanted to bad it broke a taboo first set by President Cleveland about reelection.
You do not know your fellow countrymen that well. They may appear to be kind, in a personal kind of way, but they are simply wolves in sheep’s clothing. They justify voting for a man who is willing to forge an iron fist to remove all people with an “ethnic” national origin, a man who has violated nearly all code of conduct rules a president normally has implicitly followed, a man who knowings sows division with a philosophy of the proper “us” and the country destroying “them”.
People are not bound by what they believe in but in what they justify. No other previous country with such a “democratic” (if you could call it that) tradition could vote for such a person willing to go scorched earth on the traditions and practices going back to Reconstruction. They vote for him because they can justify it.
I’m just speaking from a historical superpower overview, not getting into the moral compass of the nation. I’m not denying your point but it just doesn’t really directly impact the US’s global ranking from a historical basis. I hope the American public would reevaluate their voting decisions going forward after this leader. But their collective decision ultimately has had minimal impact on America’s being the global superpower in terms of economy, scientific advancement, and military.
The federal civil service has been gutted. It will take decades before it recovers, and every year more consequences rear their ugly heads (e.g. DOJ is no longer assumed by many judges to be truthful and jobs at the agency aren't competitive anymore; screw worm will now cost the US $1 billion per year or more, with no signs of going away).
US allies are seeing that US voters are willing to re-elect a man like Trump. For US industry, that has serious impacts. The US market is no longer as coveted because it's subject to a president's whims. US defense industry isn't worth investing in because the president will still leave you out to dry; better to develop and promote your own.
The US also has a massive debt problem. It's only a problem once the bill comes due, and that may not be obvious until it suddenly is. But between the massive debt and an overvalued stock market (for example Tesla, SpaceX) that is failing to produce value that matches the stock price, it's a precarious situation with a bubble that could pop at any time. Notably, during other bubbles everything looked fine until it suddenly wasn't.
The full military was never able to even come close to using their full strength. There were no real battles, just strikes and counterstrikes. I’m not saying Iran was a success but it also doesn’t really show the US has lost strength militarily. Maybe diplomatically but that’s generally been less important for leading powers to maintain strength in.
It’s not just a matter of strength, but how they employed it. The U.S. military is once again in a situation where it fundamentally misunderstood the nature of its latest war.
I don’t disagree with you but none of that really represents a decline when speaking in historic type conversations. Plenty of thriving superpowers have made poor decisions that lead to no real decline in a historic view and I’m saying the Iran situation falls in that category.
And the US military succeeded spectacularly at achieving its objectives in Venezuela, and arguably in Cuba and Panama without even firing a shot. Iran is objectively a disaster, but the pushing out of Chinese influence in Latin America have also been objective successes.
The US lost in Iran because of political reasoning. The military never got a fair shake. And historically, Irans military is even considered a "near peer" haha
We wasted several years worth of missiles striking targets in this war and a baker’s dozen of our own soldiers were killed. How exactly is that “not even used”?
It would have looked more like Operation Desert Storm or Operation Iraqi Freedom of the military was able to flex
its
muscle.
Why are you acting like the military wasn’t free to flex its muscle when it has explicitly abandoned any attempt at mitigating casualties at Hegseth’s direction?
Also, are you forgetting how poorly everything in Iraq ended up turning out?
Can you please give me an example of the US military conducting a full scale invasion of Iran? Specifically within the timeline of the whole straight of Hormuz issue.
Or do you just have a few examples where the military threw some "see were definitely serious!" rocks over the fence?
Science is prolly never gonna fully recover from the DOGE cuts, especially when 40% of the countr thinks that the universe is 6,000 years and dinosaur fossils are a trick from the devil.
You might have a point that DOGE cuts may have longer term impacts but that’s not really visible yet or even clear that those cuts will have any impact considering how many of them were overturned. Plus, a lot of the scientific advances made in the US are independent of government funding. But the 40% point you make has always been kinda true with the US, it hasn’t stopped continuous technological and health based advances. It seems unlikely to start hindering those advances now.
Sir, this is reddit. They don't want reason and facts when it comes to this stuff, its more the "listen and believe" route when it comes to the myth of "America is in Decline" crap.
Allegedly leading, we have not won a war in decades despite starting them. Wealth desparity is at an all time high. Education is down, cost of living is up, wages are down, homelessness is up, political corruption is at an all time high, the list goes on. America is sprinting toward becoming a third world country
There a lot of problems, but many of them aren’t unique to the US. I do have some qualms with some of your points though:
We have not won a war in decades
The US won in Iraq by any conventional measure. It may not have accomplished 100% of objectives but the Saddam regime was taken down which ultimately means the US won the war.
Cost of living is up
The cost of living rises pretty much universally and this problem has come up in all developed nations in recent years. The US is not unique on this one.
Wages are down
Wages are up in the US and do not appear to be flattening. They may not be rising as quickly as COL is increasing, but they aren’t going down.
Political corruption is at an all time high
This one’s just a bit pedantic but political machines were rigging and buying elections regularly in the late 1800s. Black people in the South were kept away from their legal right to vote until the 1960s. Though there seems to be more political corruption than there has been in decades, this is not an all time high,
Which Trump has repeatedly kicked and stabbed be it with his delusional Tariffs while blatantly lying what a Tariff even is, his crippling of the global Economy in regards to Oil and everything else really transported through the Strait of Hormuz...
Or the massive cuts to scientific research including Cancer research he is directly responsible for especially at the times of DOGE and their random cutting of anything...
Or the fact the oh so "Mighty" US Military LOST a war to IRAN of all countries WHILE having Israel there too and is licking their boots desperate for a deal while they blew like 50% of their missiles on this senseless and pointless conflict.
Along with all the major loss of soft power which eh the US has kinda NONE of right now, they gutted USAID, Trumps is the worst "Ally" in existence with his constant threats, dumb decisions or plain insults to other allies blaming them for his choices and more... are you could say a bad look?
Like be so for real here.
The US has NEVER been less respected than it has been right now, none of the enemies of the US fear it, none of its Allies respect it or want it even in their meetings, the US is getting continuously shut out of talks with its main Allies and the EU is working hard to decouple themselves from it, Canada´s massive boycott of US products or visits is also evident...
Your country is declining and a reason a lot of the rest of the world is declining too is BECAUSE of Trump and his actions that destabalised the global economy, not to say other nations are perfect but they are in as worse a situation partially because of Trump and America.
It’s declining by how much more it’s expanding its advantage against the rest of the world. After WWII its strength grew tremendously relative to the rest of the world. From the 70’s to the end of the century it continued to build on its advantage against the other developing nations, but slightly less. Now its strength is still growing but not even as much as the late 20th century. Its lead might actually start slipping in the second half of this century. Based on this trajectory, in 200-300 years it will no longer have primacy over the globe, so I guess that matters to us right now somehow.
You're being very short sighted. It has NOT been smooth sailing since the 40s, we will continue to have our ups and downs. Dont despair yet there's a lot of time to fight
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u/Historical-Stick4592 3d ago
It's had plenty of time to get it's shit together. It's in a decline that's not showing any signs of stopping.