Chinese leaders see America as "decadent, hollow, and in rapid decline", and speeches such as Rubio's "the temper tantrums of the dying throes of a once great power".
Do you think the people in that room had even a moment of uncomfortable selfawareness, or did they just double down on copium?
I wonder how true this really is. The US has plenty of issues and certainly has increasing competition like it hasn't had in years, but it still seems a long way off 'dying throes' to me.
Internal politics in America are increasingly batshit but they've been increasingly batshit for decades. Externally American remains much in the same position as the economic and military global imperial power by a significant way.
Just how batshit/decadent/hollow does it have to get before actually receding? Open succession? An actual coup? Paramilitary conflict?
It won't be as dramatic as that the infrastructure will fail more regularly and be privatised, and people will get used to having less and less money and worse living conditions
See: :ukkk:
The foreign policy / soft power / diplomacy actions of the Biden and Trump administrations are hard to characterize as anything other than angry flailing being increasingly ignored or decried by nations who used to be wholly under the imperial thumb. I think dying throes might be a little premature but the decline and lashing out are already apparent.
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I think a better way to look at historical change isn't through an either/or situation between rapid change and slow gradual erosion, but through the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium. And I think there are a lot of things lining up right now to suggest that the US is nearing a punctuation.
Once again... “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” - Lenin
Looking at the historical decline of empires like Rome or the Qing or the Ottomans you see that there's a prolonged period of political dysfunction that goes on foe decades, sometimes even a century or two. An empire gets big and powerful on the back of its government and bureaucracy, which often can survive on inertia for a good while before something breaks irreparably.
We don't have centuries though. Most empires that gradually decayed into death did so under a pretty stable natural environment, but climate change and the inevitable chaos that brings is going to completely upend the current geopolitical situation. There's no way around that and we're already beginning the plunge into it. There has been plenty of research into how even relatively small but rapid changes in climate have caused the fall of past empires.
I would also say that the US has been decaying for decades already and is now well into the phase of coasting on the inertia of the glory days of its imperialism. There's a lot of talk about multipolarity and some have suggested that dedollarization is what could be the irreparable breaking point. I'm skeptical of that last bit personally, but there is imo no way that the US lasts in any recognizable form for another century, or even 3 decades. As an empire, I think it's very safe to say its on its last leg.
Lenin and something about "weeks" and "decades."