American decline

American decline is the idea that the United States is diminishing in power on a relative basis geopolitically, militarily, financially, economically, and technologically. It can also refer to absolute declines demographically, socially, morally, spiritually, culturally, in matters of healthcare, and/or on environmental issues. There has been debate over the extent of the decline and whether it is relative or absolute.
Shrinking military advantages, deficit spending, geopolitical overreach, and a shift in moral, social, and behavioral conditions have been associated with American decline. The ascent of China as a potential superpower emerged as a central concern in discussions about the decline of American influence since the late 2010s, with some scholars suggesting that China has the potential to challenge the United States' current position as the world's leading superpower, though other scholars have criticized this view.
Scholars say that the perception of decline, or declinism, has long been part of American culture. Rhetoric of American decline was prevalent in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, as well as in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis.
According to Jeet Heer, U.S. hegemony has always been supported by three pillars: "economic strength, military might, and the soft power of cultural dominance." According to American diplomat Eric S. Edelman, the declinists, or those who believe America is in decline, have been "consistently wrong" in the past. However, American political scientist Aaron Friedberg cautioned that just because the declinists were wrong in the past does not mean they will be incorrect in their future predictions, and that some of the arguments by the declinists deserve to be taken seriously.
Political scientist Matthew Kroenig argues Washington has "followed the same basic, three-step geopolitical plan since 1945. First, the United States built the current, rules-based international system ... Second, it welcomed into the club any country that played by the rules, even former adversaries ... and third, the U.S. worked with its allies to defend the system from those countries or groups that would challenge it."
Paul Kennedy posits that continued deficit spending, especially on military build-up, is the single most important reason for decline of any great power. The costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were as of 2017 estimated to run as high as $4.4 trillion, which Kennedy deems a major victory for Osama bin Laden, whose announced goal was to humiliate America by showcasing its casualty averseness and lack of will to persist in a long-term conflict. By 2011, the U.S. military budget — almost matching that of the rest of the world combined — was higher in real terms than at any time since WWII.
Kennedy made similar assessments about American decline in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, in which he projected "a need to 'manage' affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States' position takes place slowly and smoothly." The book was published in 1989, three years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and several years before the bursting of the Japanese asset price bubble, leaving the United States as the sole remaining superpower and the dominant political and economic power internationally.
According to historian Emmanuel Todd, an expansion in military activity and aggression can appear to reflect an increase in capacity while masking a decline in actual power. He observes that this occurred with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, with Russia currently, and with the Roman Empire, and that the United States may be going through a similar period in time.
There were 38 large and medium-sized American facilities spread around the globe in 2005 — mostly air and naval bases — approximately the same number as Britain's 36 naval bases and army garrisons at its imperial zenith in 1898. Kennedy compares the U.S. situation to Great Britain's prior to World War I, saying that the map of U.S. bases is similar.
Commentators such as Allan Bloom, E. D. Hirsch, and Russel Jacoby have suggested American culture is in decline. Samuel P. Huntington commented critically on a trend in American culture and politics of predicting constant decline since the late 1950s. As he saw it, declinism came in several distinct waves, namely in reaction to the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik; to the Vietnam War; to the oil shock of 1973; to Soviet tensions in the late 1970s; and to the general unease that accompanied the end of the Cold War. According to American historian Russell Jacoby, the rise of academic Marxism, radical political economies, and critical literary and cultural studies since World War II has contributed to the decline of American culture.
William J. Bennett argued that America's cultural decline is signaling "a shift in the public's attitudes and beliefs". According to the Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, published in 1993, statistically portraying the moral, social and behavioral conditions of modern American society, often described as 'values', America's cultural condition was in decline with respect to the situations of 30 years ago, 1963. The index showed that there has been an increase in violent crime by more than 6 times, illegitimate births by more than 5 times, the divorce rate by 5 times, the percentage of children living in single-parent homes by four times, and the teenage suicide rate by three times during the 30-year period. However, by 2011, Bennett and others had acknowledged that there had been a marked reduction in the violent crime rate, a reduction of suicide and divorce, as well as improvements in many other social metrics, since 1993. Bennett wrote that contemporary authors see these improving metrics as evidence that the social decline from the 1960s to the early 1990s was temporary, while others (including Bennett) remain sceptical.
According to Kenneth Weisbrode, though some statistics point to American decline (increased death rate, political paralysis, and increased crime), "Americans have had a low culture for a very long time and have long promoted it". He thinks that the obsession with decline is not something new, but something dating back to the Puritans. "Cultural decline, in other words, is as American as apple pie," Weisbrode argues. Weisbrode likens pre-revolutionary France and present-day America for their vulgarity, which he argues is "an almost natural extension or outcome of all that is civilized: a glorification of ego."
David A. Bell argued that the perception of decline is part of the culture. "What the long history of American 'declinism' — as opposed to America's actual possible decline — suggests," says David Bell, "is that these anxieties have an existence of their own that is quite distinct from the actual geopolitical position of our country; that they arise as much from something deeply rooted in the collective psyche of our chattering classes as from sober political and economic analyses."
According to RealClearPolitics, declarations of America's declining power have been common since the beginning of the country. According to British journalist Nick Bryant, "warnings of American decline are by no means new". In the 20th century, declinism came in several distinct waves. In a 2011 book, Thomas L. Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum argued that the United States was in the midst of "its fifth wave of Declinism." The first had come "with the 'Sputnik Shock' of 1957," the second with the Vietnam War, the third with President Jimmy Carter's "malaise" and the rise of Japan, and the fourth with the increased power of China. According to Robert Lieber in 2021, “declinists’ proclamations about America have appeared ever since America's founding" and "it can be instructive to compare current arguments and prescriptions of the new declinism with the ideas of earlier eras."
David Leonhardt writes that "incomes, wealth, and life expectancy in the United States have stagnated for much of the population, contributing to an angry national mood and exacerbating political divisions. The result is a semidysfunctional government that is eroding many of the country’s largest advantages over China." Jonathan Hopkin writes that decades of neoliberal policies, which made the United States "the most extreme case of the subjection of society to the brute force of the market," resulted in unprecedented levels of inequality, and combined with an unstable financial system and limited political choices, paved the way for political instability and revolt, as evidenced by the resurgence of the Left as represented by the Bernie Sanders 2016 presidential campaign and the rise of an "unlikely figure" like Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States.
In 2021, Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, stated his belief that the U.S. has faced a democratic decline, stemming from elite polarization and damage done by former president Donald Trump to trust in elections and bonds with democratic allies. McFaul states that the decline in democracy weakens national security and heavily restrains foreign policy.
According to Michael Beckley, the domestic dysfunction in the United States has not meaningfully altered its power in the world. He writes, "This is the paradox of American power: the United States is a divided country, perpetually perceived as in decline, yet it consistently remains the wealthiest and most powerful state in the world — leaving competitors behind."
Economist Jeffrey Sachs observed the US share of world income was 24.6% in 1980, falling to 19.1% in 2011. The ratio of average CEO earnings to average workers’ pay in the U.S. went from 24:1 in 1965 to 262:1 in 2005. The Census Bureau's record of income inequality reached its highest point in 2018.
Some centrists believe that the American fiscal crisis stems from the rising expenditures on social programs or, alternatively, from the increases in military spending for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, both of which would lead to decline. However, Richard Lachmann argues that if military or overall spending is not pressuring the U.S. economy, they would not contribute to U.S. decline. Lachmann describes the real problem as "the misallocation of government revenue and expenditure, resulting in resources being diverted from the tasks vital to maintain economic or geopolitical dominance." Kennedy argues that as military expenses grow, this reduces investments in economic growth, which eventually "leads to the downward spiral of slower growth, heavier taxes, deepening domestic splits over spending priorities, and weakening capacity to bear the burdens of defense."
The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton attribute rising mortality, which is mostly impacting the working class, to the flaws in contemporary capitalism.
China challenging the United States for global dominance constitutes a core issue in the debate over the American decline.
In 2020, China surpassed the US for a second time as the world's leading nation for foreign direct investment (FDI) due to Covid-19 lockdowns. Daniel H. Rosen, a long-time analyst of U.S.-China economic relationship, said that it is natural that foreign investment would decline sharply in the U.S. under extraordinary circumstances due to its open market economy, a feature that China lacks. Rosen said, "There is no reason to be concerned about the outlook for the FDI in the United States, provided that the U.S. is sticking with its basic open-market competitive system." Previously, in 2003, China surpassed the US once as the biggest recipient of FDI. Chinese FDI increased from 2020 to 2021 then dramatically decreased from a high of $344 bln down to $33 bln in 2023. By comparison, US FDI has maintained $148.8 billion, down $57.4 billion, or 28 percent, from $206.2 billion in 2022.
According to former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, "China has multiple domestic vulnerabilities that are rarely noted in the media. The United States, on the other hand, always has its weaknesses on full public display but has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity for reinvention and restoration." Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution said that much of the narrative of China "inexorably rising and on the verge of overtaking a faltering United States" was promoted by China's state-affiliated media outlets. Hass went on to say, "Authoritarian systems excel at showcasing their strengths and concealing their weaknesses. But policymakers in Washington must be able to distinguish between the image Beijing presents and the realities it confronts."
According to American economist Scott Rozelle and researcher Natalie Hell, "China looks a lot more like 1980s Mexico or Turkey than 1980s Taiwan or South Korea. No country has ever made it to high-income status with high school attainment rates below 50 percent. With China's high school attainment rate of 30 percent, the country could be in grave trouble." By comparison, the US high school attainment rate is 91.1 percent, according to the latest census. Rozelle and Hell warn that China risks falling into the middle income trap due to the rural-urban divide in education and structural unemployment.
Nicholas Eberstadt, an economist and demographic expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said that current demographic trends will overwhelm China's economy and geopolitics, making its rise much more uncertain. He said, "The age of heroic economic growth is over."
Samuel P. Huntington noticed that predictions of American decline have been part of American politics since the late 1950s. According to Daniel Bell, "many of America's leading commentators have had a powerful impulse consistently to see the United States as a weak, 'bred out' basket case that will fall to stronger rivals as inevitably as Rome fell to the barbarians or France to Henry V at Agincourt." Huntington critiqued declinism as misguided but praised it on some counts: "Declinism has predicted the imminent shrinkage of American power. In all its phases, that prediction has become central to preventing that shrinkage."
Political scientist Paul K. Macdonald writes that great powers can be in relative or absolute decline and discussed the ways they often respond. The most common is retrenchment (reducing some but not all commitments of the state).
Certain commentators, historians and politicians believe U.S. is heir to the Roman Empire. According to Kristofer Allerfeldt, there are divergent views regarding Rome vs U.S. comparison. He believes that the "use of the Roman metaphor provides a scholarly patina to the expression of visceral hopes and fears."
Kennedy argues that "British financial strength was the single most decisive factor in its victories over France during the 18th century. This chapter ends on the Napoleonic Wars and the fusion of British financial strength with a newfound industrial strength." He predicts that, as the U.S. dollar loses its role as world currency, it will not be able to continue financing its military expenditures via deficit spending.
According to Richard Lachmann, the U.S. would last much longer if, like Britain, it could restrict particular families and elites from exclusively controlling offices and governmental powers.
Historian Harold James published an article in 2020 titled "Late Soviet America", comparing the present-day United States to the former Soviet Union. James wrote that many aspects of the US now resemble the late Soviet Union: intensification of social conflict, ethnic/racial rivalries, and economic decline. He predicted that the dollar may lose its value and start looking like the Soviet rouble. James ended the article by saying that the economic decline will continue even if there is a change in leadership, pointing to Mikhail Gorbachev's inability to prevent collapse despite coming to power just a few years after Leonid Brezhnev's death.
Also in 2020, political commentator Julius Krein argued that the decline of the United States parallels the late Soviet Union vis-à-vis the "unmistakable" slide into gerontocracy.
A 2019 survey carried out by Pew Research Center shows that a majority of Americans predicted the U.S. economy to be weaker in 2050. Also, the survey says, a majority of the people thought the U.S. would be "a country with a burgeoning national debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor and a workforce threatened by automation."
In a poll conducted January 11–13, 2021, of 1,019 Americans, shortly after the January 6 Capitol attack, 79% of those surveyed said that America is "falling apart".