We are living through tumultuous times, the end of an era, the beginning of a new epoch. Since 1947 the United States of America (USA or US) has dominated the planet, becoming the sole hegemon with the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991. Thanks to the stability that this Pax Americana fostered, the USA prospered enormously, poised as it was to take advantage, more than any other participant, of the economic opportunities that that stability bred. This economic prosperity further bolstered its power, both through military funding and economic influence. That era is now over.
As with all empires, there is inevitably a sunset – look to Alexander the Great, Rome, Genghis Khan, and the British Empire. For the USA the sun inexorably began to sink towards the horizon during President Obama’s tenure, presenting a choice – fight to preserve the US’ dominance, or surrender to fate. Initially, recognizing the vast challenge that lay before it, the USA chose to fight the decline and stymie the rise of a contender. More recently, however, the USA chose to bury its head in the sand, arrogantly proclaim that there was no challenge to US supremacy, and in doing so inadvertently hastened its own decline.
The Geopolitical Context
Earlier we said that “For the USA the sun inexorably began to sink towards the horizon during President Obama’s tenure …”. To set the scene and explain why the USA is so very vulnerable at present, we highly recommend you read our article The Indo-Pacific Tilt: What Is It And Why Do You Care? In brief, it explains that in mid-2021 the planet made a tectonic shift into a new geopolitical era where the US’ position as the sole hegemon was now being challenged by the rise of China. The world began to split into three broad camps; the “West” comprising of the USA and friends, the “East” comprising of China and others who would rather see the US’ dominance eroded, and the “Middle” where a number of countries were playing off the East and West, seeking to burnish their own power more independently i.e. KSA and UAE. As the shift to this new geopolitical era finally culminated it ushered in significant volatility as all players sought advantage and felt around for the red lines that could confine their ambitions – causing conflict where these opaque red lines were neared or crossed, such as in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Iran.
This is the ultimate cause of today’s global volatility, not Trump, not Biden, not Jinping, not Putin, nor any one leader. Today’s problem, however, is that one key actor has failed to recognize this and is blundering along as if nothing has changed.
American Nero
If you’re unfamiliar with Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (Nero), last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, here’s a brief outline that will doubtless ring a few bells.
Born in AD37, Nero was a nepo-baby – his stepdad was Emperor Claudius, and upon Claudius’ death in AD54 Nero ascended to the throne at the tender age of 16. Initially, he was counseled by wiser heads, but soon he sought to rule outright, ridding himself of all restraints to his power. Sometime around AD55 Nero’s political behaviour considerably deteriorated according to Miriam Griffin; “Nero lost all sense of right and wrong and listened to flattery with total credulity” – a classic sign of narcissism. Griffin links this deterioration with the (Nero orchestrated) murder of his mother, Agrippina, who had hitherto been a stabilizing influence. By AD62, after the death of his key adviser (and another stabilizing influence) Burrus, Nero began to use state organs to cement his power. He had had two rivals executed, ordered a treason trial for another, and according to Jurgen Malitz, “abandoned the restraint he had previously shown because he believed a course supporting the Senate promised to be less and less profitable.”
Despite this, Nero was exceedingly popular with lower-class citizens through providing them with entertainment, and the construction of lavish monuments, amphitheatres and palaces. Such was Nero’s thirst for lavish construction projects that at least three Roman sources (Cassius Dio, Tacitus, and Suetonius) allege that he exhausted all of Italy’s economy through raising taxes and devaluing the currency. Prior to the Great Fire of Rome Nero built the Villa of Nero at Antium, another palace in Lazio with three artificial lakes and waterfalls, and another Villa of Nero in Olympia, Greece.
In contrast to the commoners’ adulation, Roman historian Tacitus asserted that more educated or wealthy Romans thought Nero was both compulsive and corrupt. Others described his reign as tyrannical, self-indulgent, and debauched. Some suspected that Nero orchestrated the Great Fire of Rome to free up land to construct even more lavish palaces (a “golden house”) and a 30 meter “colossus” statue of himself. Tacitus recounted that, so as to divert blame from himself, Nero claimed that Christians had started the fire and had them burned alive but, Tacitus asserted, Nero’s motivation for their grisly deaths was not that of public justice but personal cruelty.
Ultimately, Nero’s terrible reign ended with civil war when senator Vindex rebelled, with the support of Galba (who eventually succeeded Nero as emperor), and Nero was declared a public enemy and condemned to death. As the edifice of his power crumbled around him Nero fled Rome, only to die by suicide (or possibly at the hands of an acolyte) outside the city in AD68. Nevertheless, Nero’s popularity among commoners was so cult-like that it even endured long after his death; for centuries after he died his followers believed that he would return and rule again.
Sound familiar?
The Erosion of US Power
As we explained in The Power of Nations “every nation has its own unique power blend to employ in the pursuit of its aims. Some nations’ blends are stronger, some are weaker, but all of them are composed of two ingredients – hard and soft power. The precise mix of soft and hard ingredients in each nation’s power smoothie, depends on that country’s resources, politics, culture, and position. Having a more balanced mix furnishes a nation with more options when it is confronted with challenges; it can choose to employ either hard power, or soft, depending on the situation, or can ramp up from soft to hard if their opponent is proving especially troublesome. It goes without saying then, that nations whose power mix is dominated by only one ingredient are more limited in their options than those who have an even blend of the two.”
Russia’s power is almost entirely hard. The UK wields one of the world’s most sophisticated soft power arsenals but has little hard power to bring to bear. Until recently, the USA was the only nation with a truly comprehensive mix of hard and soft power; an unmatched military, an economic engine that set global rules, a vast network of alliances and unparalleled cultural and technological influence. This blend gave it a unique ability to lead through both coercion and consent.
Yet under Trump, America has dismantled its soft power components – alienating allies, rejecting multilateralism, and turning inward. Trump’s blind and incorrect belief in the natural and inevitable superiority of American power is actually the key factor that is undermining that same power so decidedly. By limiting America’s strategic toolkit to only hard power, he ensures that every future confrontation can only be met with military force or economic coercion—both of which furnish monumental risks for America.
This, not least, at the very moment that China has been studiously and steadily building out its own hard and soft power toolkits – just as China grows stronger the USA, inexplicably, votes to weaken itself irreparably. Just as the USA needed to muster every alliance that it had the USA, inexplicably, chooses the one leader that can callously and carelessly destroy those alliances.
But it is worse than that. A vast proportion of the USA’s hard power relies upon the maintenance of key elements of its soft power – all of which have now been discarded. All of the USA’s hard power is built from the foundation of its economy. Through the vast strength of this economy the USA is able to exert considerable economic leverage over other nations in the form of sanctions, exclusion from international payment systems, and economic isolation. More, with tax revenues raised from this vast economy the USA can afford to spend more on defence than the next nine countries combined (most of whom are allies).
As we explain in Shifting Trade Winds “the strength of the US economy, however, has never stood on US domestic production and consumption alone. After WW2 the frameworks for a collection of systems that ensured the US’ global pre-eminence and hegemony were set in stone – for these systems set the conditions for the USA to build its now vast economy.”
These frameworks include the likes of the Bretton Woods system (1944), the Marshall Plan (1948-1951), and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (1947) – “these measures combined ushered in a new era of economic growth, primarily across the Western world, throwing out the old zero-sum game ethos of the prior era, and fostering greater cooperation to mutual benefit. Above all nations the USA prospered most from this new framework, enjoying unprecedented prosperity and cementing its position as the prime economic power on the planet.” Unfortunately, Trump fails to understand this – again, he believes that the US’ economic might is solely the product of US DNA, and nothing else, indeed he even believes that the USA has been “ripped off” by the very same nations and markets that US economic might rests upon. And so, he has set about tearing up the very foundations that the US’ economic castle is built upon through tariffs, bullying countries over flight safety approvals, or threatening allies over territory.
In short, Trump’s and the USA’s blind arrogance about the indispensability of the USA, the attractiveness of its market, the imperviousness of US power, is leading to a gradual convergence of numerous factors that is fundamentally undermining its own economy, which in turn undermines its hard power options by reducing its economic leverage and depleting its ability to continue exorbitant defence spending. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
Conclusion: Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory
Unfortunately for the USA, at the very moment that its global dominance was finally being threatened by the rise of China, and at the very moment that the USA most needed its alliances to help it counter that rise and protect its dominance, the nation elected Donald J Trump as its President. In a moment of profound vulnerability, a crucial point in time when the USA needed every form of power at its disposal to be at its strongest, they elected the one man that was incapable of seeing the both the USA’s existential vulnerability and the consequent need for every ounce of soft and hard power the USA could muster. In short, the USA bit its nose off to spite its face.
What was once the collective, united “West” that we explained above – a group of allied nations, the USA and friends, that perhaps had the combined power to contain China – has now devolved, thanks to Trump, into the USA alone. His derisory and inflammatory, frequently unrooted in fact, comments about NATO, the reliability of Article 5’s collective defence commitment, NATO allies’ presence on the frontlines in Afghanistan, US funding of European defence, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, the Russia-Ukraine war, the US’ role in the allied victory of World War II, Canada, Denmark, Greenland, Switzerland, and the social fabric and future of European nations have led to a wholesale ideological divorce between the USA and the host of nations that had long been key components of its power.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos in January 2026 was a seminal moment, a clarion call. Carney and Canada are several steps ahead of Europe in their determined resistance to the US’ renewed Realism, because in literal terms they’re several steps ahead in having to deal with Trump’s ideas and aggression. Europe’s just getting its first taste, whereas Canada has endured 51st State threats, tariff threats, and general insults for 12 months at least. Naturally too, Europe will take time to come to collective decisions versus Canada because of the multi-state nature of EU (plus Brexit having separated the UK from EU decision-making apparatus). But they’re certainly taking note of Carney’s words that “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu” and “we shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together …”.
What was once the West, the East, and the Middle, has now become the USA alone, the East, and a Middle that not only comprises the likes of UAE and KSA as before, but now a host of nations that used to stand shoulder to shoulder with the USA in the “West”. The USA has lost its friends, so tired are they of Trump’s abuse. And the damage is done; even should President Trump be impeached and ousted at the coming midterm elections, trust in the USA has been destroyed. Noting that not once, but twice, the USA elected Donald Trump, that even today 36% (per Gallup) of US citizens support and justify his actions, words and decisions, the world has realised that Trump is not just a mistake, a blip, an anomaly, but instead a clear symptom of a wider, entrenched ill within US culture, society, and politics – one that is not at all compatible with the values of those nations that the US once called to its defence post-9/11. There is no going back.
Rome Is Burning, and Nero Did Fan the Flames
No wonder that in China Trump is referred to as “the nation builder” for he is doing more to aid China’s growth into a global hegemon, and the USA’s isolation and decline, than anyone in history.
The USA’s election of Donald J Trump was like turkeys voting for Christmas. At the very moment the USA needed to muster all of the strength, alliances, and support that it could to counter the rise of a challenger superpower, the US elected precisely the wrong person for the job. This appalling choice not only ended Pax Americana, but also ended the global supremacy of the American Empire.