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Here's how Harry Litman, a former Justice Department official, put it recently: "He's erratic and has the attention span of a 7-year-old. But his thirst for revenge against those he views as his current antagonists is very real, and there's no reason to think he would be deterred by legal niceties." Of course, without a second's pause, you know exactly who he's talking about, right?
As it happens, thanks in part to the lack of a full-scale turnout by Democrats in the 2024 election (undoubtedly partially due to the Biden administration's backing of the Gaza War and partially perhaps to the urge of some Democrats not to vote for a Black woman, or perhaps even a woman), that 7-year-old is just two months away from returning to the Oval Office. He will then preside (an all-too-polite word) over -- TomDispatch regular and historian Alfred McCoy, author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, explains it vividly today -- the deep decline of formerly imperial and now disturbingly delirial (yes, that's a made-up but appropriate word) America and the global rise of what McCoy calls "strongman culture."
And good news! The second that Donald Trump -- and, of course, that's exactly who I'm talking about -- enters the Oval Office again, he's expected to issue a series of executive orders, including "leaving the Paris climate agreement, withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), and banning entry to citizens from a list of predominantly Muslim countries" (all previous acts of his that Joe Biden reversed). And that, of course, is just to begin a potentially endless list of horrors that's likely to include pardons for the rioters of January 6, 2021, as well as another Biden-cancelled initiative that would "remove job security from about 50,000 civil servants and enable them to be fired and replaced with right-wing loyalists." And don't even get me started on those "illegal immigrants" or his urge to revoke the "birthright citizenship" guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.
So, yes indeed, we're heading for a genuine hell on earth, as the country that, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 came to be thought of in Washington as the planet's "sole superpower," goes into a full-scale imperial decline. And this is happening at a moment when, perhaps all too appropriately, this planet is in its own version of decline. With all of that in mind, let McCoy, distinctly a historian of imperial collapse, take you onto a planet heading for" well, probably something like hell in a handbasket. Tom
Requiem for an Empire
How America's Strongman Will Hasten the Decline of U.S. Global Power
By Alfred McCoy
Some 15 years ago, on December 5, 2010, a historian writing for TomDispatch 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 "the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come" in 2025, just 15 years from now."
To make that forecast, the historian conducted what he called "a more realistic assessment of domestic and global trends." Starting with the global context, he argued that, "faced with a fading superpower," China, India, Iran, and Russia would all start to "provocatively challenge U.S. dominion over the oceans, space, and cyberspace." At home in the United States, domestic divisions would "widen into violent clashes and divisive debates" 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." But, that historian concluded, "the world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence."
Now that a "far-right patriot," one Donald J. Trump, has indeed captured (or rather recaptured) the presidency "with thundering rhetoric," let's 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" of global dominion.
Making the Original Prediction
Let's 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" society. After recovering from the 2008 financial crisis, the U.S. was on track for a decade of dynamic growth -- 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's preeminent leader, with an unchallenged military, formidable diplomatic clout, unchecked economic globalization, and its democratic governance still the global norm.
Looking forward, leading historians of empire agreed that America would remain the world's sole superpower for the foreseeable future. Writing in the Financial Times in 2002, for instance, Yale professor Paul Kennedy, author of a widely read book on imperial decline, argued that "America's array of force is staggering," with a mix of economic, diplomatic, and technological dominance that made it the globe's "single superpower" without peer in the entire history of the world. Russia's defense budget had "collapsed" and its economy was "less than that of the Netherlands." Should China's high growth rates continue for another 30 years, it "might be a serious challenger to U.S. predominance" -- but that wouldn't be true until 2032, if then. While America's "unipolar moment" would surely not "continue for centuries," its end, he predicted, "seems a long way off for now."
Writing in a similar vein in the New York Times in February 2010, Piers Brendon, a historian of Britain's imperial decline, dismissed the "doom mongers" who "conjure with Roman and British analogies in order to trace the decay of American hegemony." While Rome was riven by "internecine strife" and Britain ran its empire on a shoestring budget, the U.S. was "constitutionally stable" with "an enormous industrial base." Taking a few "relatively simple steps," he concluded, Washington should be able to overcome current budgetary problems and perpetuate its global power indefinitely.
When I made my very different prediction nine months later, I was coordinating a network of 140 historians 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's seeming strength, we could already see the telltale signs of decline that had led to the collapse of those earlier empires.
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