It is impossible to see how the United States can at any point in the next quarter century regain anything like the commanding position in the world system that it occupied from 1991 through late 2019. What we are experiencing is not just a decline but acollapseof Americas global hegemony.

Another American first: A self-collapsing empire!

Americans are well-known for their ingenuity and many of them (including Pres. Donald J. Trump) love to crow about being Number One! Now, the whole world is seeing the United States achieving a nearly unprecedented record: The country that was this planets unchallenged hegemon for the past 28 years is_undergoing a collapse of its global empire that is fueled by many of the actions of the government itself._

Soon after I first started watching (and experiencing) the anti-science and dangerously botched responses Pres. Trump made to the eruption of Covid-19, Iconcludedthat his ineptitude would mire the country in a state of economic as well as medical distress from which it would take many months perhaps years to escape. Iforesawthat this situation would lead to a serious weakening of the United States power on the world stage. Now, the countrys twinned medical and health crises still continue; and they have been joined by an equally dire crisis of internal governance and legitimacy.

It is impossible to see how the United States can at any point in the next quarter century regain anything like the commanding position in the world system that it occupied from 1991 through late 2019. What we are experiencing is not just a decline but a_collapse_of Americas global hegemony.

This is the first time any significant world power has undergone a collapse as speedy and dramatic as what the United States has been undergoing since early March. Yes, in the past, empires have come and gone. Most recently, in 1974-75, the significant global empire Portugal had amassed over the preceding 450 years underwentcomplete implosionafter young officers tired of having to police the countrys large colonies in Mozambique and Angola returned home, overthrew the dictatorship in Lisbon, and made decolonization their first order of business. Then, in 1991-93, the sphere of strong influence that the Soviet Union had built for itself in East Europe and Central Asia not wholly an empire collapsed.

The collapse the United States position as world hegemon is starting to experience now is more dramatic and far-reaching than either of those two collapses. It is also to a large extent being_fueled by its own leadership_. With decision after decision after decision, Pres. Trump has been cutting Washington off from having any effective ties with governments, alliances, and global institutions that previous presidents had worked hard to establish and that provided the vital underpinning for the countrys global power. Trump exited speedily and with little preparation from the JCPOA with Iran, NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the previous massive trading relationship with China, UNRWA, and a range of other institutions And now, in these recent weeks of growing despair and immiseration at home, he has continued with a blindly bullying, smash it all approach to international relations that promises to further accelerate the collapse of Washingtons international influence. He vows he will leave the World Health Organization at a time of unprecedented global health emergency? Hepromises to eliminateHong Kongs special status effectively leaving the regions 7.5 million people to the mercies of their central government. Even the step he took May 15th to try to cut the power of Chinas Huawei tech giant may well, as_The Economist_noted, end up pushing high-tech chipmakers to flee the United States, not China.

Any collapse of an empire, or even the slower ending of one, is always a period of uncertainty and risk. In the present case of declining US power and rising Chinese power, Prof. Graham Allison has since 2012 warned of what he calls theThucydides Trap, building on the conclusions that that Greek historiandrewabout the conflict sparked when the city-state of Sparta, fearing the rising power of its neighbor Athens, launched a strike against Athens that mired the two city-states and their neighbors in a war that lasted 30 years More generally, the Thucydides Trap is understood as the heightened possibility that any rapid decline of a formerly great power (especially if it happens in the face of the rise of a new power) will lead to a new period of conflict, risk, and uncertainty.

It is true that the decline of every single large, European-heritage empire in modern history has been followed (and often also accompanied) by outbreaks of very lethal violence. Britains withdrawal from India/Pakistan, Palestine, Cyprus, Malaya, or other areas. Belgiums withdrawal from Congo or Rwanda. Frances withdrawal from Algeria or Portugals from Mozambique and Angola: All left some degree of violence in their wake. We should remember, though, that all those previous empireslikethe United States own globe-girdling hegemonic order_had only ever been built and maintained by violence (_And throughout the lives of those empires, their leaders cynically fostered precisely the kinds of divide and rule that greatly increased the likelihood of internal violence erupting after their departures.) But at least, in the era of decolonization, the attainment of independence gave the formerly occupied/colonized peoples a_chance_of rebuilding their societies on a sound and dignified basis that imperial/colonial rule had never allowed them.

So how about this period of the extremely speedy collapse of the U.S. empire that we are now entering? What are the main risks we need to watch for and strive to avoid?

Primarily, we need to watch out for the real possibility that the Masters of the Universe who have been running this massively sprawling U.S. empire will strike out, Sparta-style, against the currently rising power in an attempt to blunt or end its rise.

The rulers of the rising power, China, almost certainly share this concern. Inthisrecent article in_South China Morning Post_, Shi Jiangtao wrote:

While observers generally agree that an all-out war between the nuclear-armed nations is improbable, there arepotential risks for a limited military conflict.

President Xi Jinping has shown personal interest in the Thucydides trap concept Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2017, Xi said the Thucydides trap can be avoided as long as we maintain communication and treat each other with sincerity.

But since then, the devastating Covid-19 pandemic has driven the deeply fraught US-China relations to the brink of an all-out confrontation as a result of strategic distrust and misperception, said Wang Jisi, president of Peking Universitys Institute of International and Strategic Studies.

China and the US are shifting from an all-around competition to a full-scale confrontation, with little room for compromise and manoeuvring, Wang said in a speech in late March. We cannot rule out the possibility that the two powers may fall into the Thucydides trap.

A second risk we should keep in mind is less clear-cut but equally serious. It is the risk that, as the power that the United States has exercised worldwide since 1991 collapses relatively suddenly_,_many regions around the world might fall into chaos as local actors, spooked by the sudden change in security architecture and with many of them anyway suffering the same toxic stew of medical and economic collapse as the USA compete to try to secure their own advantage, or even their own survival.

This is not unprecedented. Look at the fallout from the sudden collapse of the Soviet sphere of control in the early 1990s, or from the collapse of the Portuguese Empire in 1974-75. (Eighteen months before either of those earlier collapses started, how many students of world affairs affairs saw them as likely?) The implosion of the United States hegemonic power in the world would have consequences far more widespread and potentially many times more violent and destabilizing than either of those collapses

With Trump, we should also, always, keep in mind the possibility of a third kind of scenario: that he might take some deeply irrational decision in the international arena, possibly in a wag the dog attempt to divert attention from domestic disorder and that this action itself would have consequences of a quickly cascading and destabilizing nature.

The U.S. empire is unprecedented in all of human history, in at least two ways. It is the first empire in history that that has exercised its hegemonic sway_over nearly the whole of the planet._Previously, some imperial leaders might have thought that they controlled the whole known world, but in fact, there were still large parts of the planet of which they knew (or cared) nothing. The geographic extent of the fallout from the collapse of the U.S. empire could well be without precedent.

Secondly, this is an empire that remains in many ways (and most especially, to its own citizens)_virtually invisible._This empires leaders have intentionally never described it as an empire, talking instead only about the role of American leadership within a slippery, anodyne body known as the international community. As a result, many U.S. citizens find it hard to recognize or acknowledge the hegemonic/imperial role that our government has played in international affairs. Large numbers of Americans remain persuaded that, despite some lapses such as occurred in Vietnam or Iraq, in the main our countrys engagement with the rest of the world has had effects there that have been extremely positive progressive, liberalizing, a light unto the nations, the indispensable nation, and so on. Or, when the effects of an American action are recognized as undeniably negative, as in Libya, many Americans argue that the fact that the governments_intentions_were pure should somehow absolve Washington of any accusation of malfeasance.

This invisibility of the United States hegemonic/imperial role in the world makes it a lot harder for most Americans than it was, say, for Brits in the era of the proudly proclaimed British Empire, to have any kind of serious discussion about_how to describe, let alone change or correct, our countrys relations with the rest of the world._(There is a parallel here with one of the well-known aspects of White privilege, namely, that a lot of White people dont even_see_their privilege and thus find it hard to start to think about what might be needed to end it )

Today, Americans in cities and towns across our country are hurting, badly. We need all the help we can get, from any bodies domestically or internationally that are able to help. We need a speedy and effective national response to the coronavirus that is boosted by, and a cooperative part of, the best scientific and public-health capabilities available anywhere on the planet. We need a national health system that provides decent care to everyone, not one designed to line the pockets of investors. We need a federal government that leads a massive FDR-style effort to put money into Americans pockets (not into the financial sector), while rebuilding our badly battered national infrastructure. We need a revival of popular democracy and community-controlled policing

What we do not need is another war, hot or cold, or any other kinds of bullying attempt to use our remaining financial or military muscle to bend other nations like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, or Cuba to our will.

I grew up in a Britain that was rapidly decolonizing but we got the National Health Service instead, in a deal that is still highly valued by Britons until today. Portugal, after the collapse of its empire 45 years ago, turned out to be a very pleasant place to live

America can be, too, if we are smart and humble enough to realize that we need to build a sounder relationship with that 95% of the worlds people who happen not to be Americans. And if we recognize that our imperial-style hegemony over the world has existed for too long, that it has inflicted real harm on too many of the worlds peoples, and that ending it will be good for the other 95% and for us.

Helena Cobban is a British-American writer and researcher on international relations, with special interests in the Middle East, the international system, and transitional justice. She is a non-resident Senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Center for International Policy.