it's not a matter of whether america wil remain powerful, but whether america will still have the will to assert that power.
under trump right now, it still has that will. but a few years and decades down the line, it probably won't have it anymore.
In what manner? Do you mean hard power? That's hard to tell. Obama certainly loved hitting his whopper button and droning the ME into several civil wars that he then pretended weren't happening. Trump is currently being bipolar about the region and can't decide if he wants to rebuke Iran or just rattle about it. We continue to subsidize military development, though we're relying on conventional arms a little bit too much.
Decades down the line, I would agree with you if America continues to rely on its current hard power approach, but only for its ability to use hard power to get what it wants. It will not be able to project its power in an absolute sense through military bases and infrastructure the way that it currently does, though I believe it can defend its own borders - and serve as a bulwark in Asia - reasonably well even so, given the sheer size of its military assets relative to everywhere else alone.
If it diversifies into soft and sharp power, however, I believe it will be just as capable as China currently is at getting what it wants, particularly if it moves away from the idea of dominion and instead turns towards preservation. There's just too much economic power here for the country to not be a player in the bipolar or multipolar order to come. There' still brain drain going on all around the world regarding the actually decent bits of US higher education, and our approach to capitalism, even as captive as it is to corporate interests, will attract global investment and interest even as those areas create their own regional competitors and spheres.
The US has zero chance of maintaining the current political order; that I agree with. But it's not about to become Tyrone's whipping boy Democratic Republic of Congo 2.0 or fall into global irrelevancy/backwaterdom.
Nowhere in what I wrote could you infer that's what my definition of empire is. What I wrote is the exact opposite of what you defined.
The post that started this highlighted this exact hubris that empires tend to have right up until the moment they start falling apart. Seeing as my "runt country" is the US I loon forward to the ointment. Make sure it's of the sacred variety.
Oh, you're just a doomer then? I invite you to travel to somewhere like Europe and witness the sheer, unadulterated misery that comes with not being the preeminent political force of the world. The US is a declining power; no-one has contended with that. The idea that it's somehow falling to bits and pieces or somehow going to become an addled, irrelevant backwater in a few years or decades expresses you don't understand shit about geopolitics.
You can also infer your definition of what empire is based on what you believe to be its negation. Namely, all the dumb shit you were going on about with the ME, the Orange revolution, how the US being unable to hold Vietnam in a bipolar system has fuckall to do with the current moment, and how Russia not having direct control over its satellites is relevant to the enduring impact of its time and legacy of empire. No empire in history would have managed to accomplish all of what you shellack these various powers for, and thus your idea of empire (or, shall we say, rising powers?) seems to be a collection of dates on multiple choice quiz.
