In the early months of 2025, the United States of America, once the unchallenged steward of the liberal international order, has taken an abrupt and distinctly operatic turn inward.

Having donned the mantle of economic nationalism, President Donald Trump—now restored to power by the vagaries of electoral chance and institutional torpor—presides over a republic that behaves less like Rome in its splendour and more like Vienna in its decline.

The latest iteration of “America First” — a term that has always been less a policy than a psychological condition — has seen the deployment of sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico, and China, among others. This manoeuvre, justified by the administration as an attempt to right historic trade imbalances, functions rather more as a ritual exorcism of the demons of globalisation. One need not be a Harvard economist to see that these tariffs have provoked an immediate escalation from targeted states, more sand into the gears of global commerce and the post-war economic architecture.

Europe, the concubine of American strategic imagination, is finally showing signs of independent thought. With Washington’s diplomatic caprice now a feature, not a bug, the European Union has moved cautiously toward strategic autonomy – seeking its own military capacity, trade blocs, and digital architecture.

Australia finds itself caught between the twin giants of Pacific power, increasingly sceptical of Washington’s reliability and aware of Beijing’s reach.

The illusion of control

Internally, the American republic finds itself in a state of advanced decomposition masked by the pageantry of federal continuity. The legislative branch performs its traditional role of inertia, while the executive oscillates between authoritarian fantasy and bureaucratic chaos. The American political system has long been gamed by a ruling elite that has successfully divorced performance from consequence.

The current administration’s suspension of foreign aid, withdrawal from United Nations agencies, and open contempt for international law have not merely reduced America’s global legitimacy – it has clarified to all that the United States is governed less by strategic calculation then by the whim of one man and his court.

This is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the speed at which reactions reverberate through the global system. The United States might once have survived its blunders through structural inertia and the global dependence on its currency, military, and culture. What we observe now is a marked decline in global coupling– a de-dollarising Eurasia, military hedging by allies, and a cultural retreat where America’s soft power is measured in TikTok algorithms and Marvel fatigue.

The shape of decline

In systems terms, the American state is exhibiting all the signs of a coherence breakdown: its internal nodes — governance, economy, culture, defence, and labour — no longer speak to one another in a shared language.

The executive rules by decree and spectacle. The legislative feigns opposition while quietly cashing cheques. The cultural class flails in post-liberal confusion. The working class — long since stripped of stability — oscillates between apathy and fury.

What remains is a theatre of democracy without the binding grammar of a republic.

Deploying the framework of complex adaptive systems, the United States appears to be veering toward one of several possible failure pathways, none of which conclude in renaissance. The most probable, based on current dynamics, is the “Populist Thermidor”: a cycle of mass discontent leading to the temporary rise of reformist populism, which is then suppressed and reversed by a reactionary elite consolidation.

This pattern — already visible in the radicalisation of state legislatures, the juridical capture of the Supreme Court, and the cultural purges of academic institutions — reflects the well-trodden route of republics that mistake motion for change.

The second pathway — perhaps more tragic — is the “Fragmented Republic”. This would be when the forces of American federalism are finally unbound by a coherent national identity and states chart semi-sovereign paths. Immigration law, health policy, digital rights, and education become divergent. Unity is confined to ritual and sport after the machinery of states has ceased to function, not so much secession as functional disintegration.

A multipolar world without America

Globally, the consequences of these trends are seismic. The world is not falling into chaos; it is adapting to a different United States.

China continues to build parallel institutions, from the Digital Silk Road to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The European Union, while slow and bureaucratic, is laying the foundations of a digital sovereignty regime.

The BRICS consortium, once little more than a photo-op, now functions as a genuine alternative centre of gravity for the Global South.

None of these emerging powers individually replicate American dominance. Rather, they together comprise a self-organising global system—a dynamic network that has learned, through American neglect, to survive without centralised direction.

And this, perhaps, is the final irony of the moment: that the American republic, built on revolutionary ideals of decentralisation and resistance finds itself undone not by invasion, but by irrelevance. In its quest to dominate, it has made itself unnecessary.

The requiem of Empire

To describe the current American posture as imperial is to give it too much credit. This is no Rome. There are no great roads being built, no languages being spread, no philosophy being offered. What remains is the hollow roar of an empire without a project – expensive, angry, and vain.

From Canberra to Brussels, from Nairobi to New Delhi, the message is received: the United States no longer leads – it disrupts. And while disruption was once an American export, sold as innovation, it now feels like a tantrum from a spoilt hegemon unwilling to share the sandbox of history.

To those within the United States still hoping for a restoration of grace, the hour is late but not final. All systems adapt – or collapse. The republic may yet rediscover its abstraction, its coherence, and its capacity for reinvention. But it will not do so by bluster, tariffs, or retreat.

It will do so, if at all, by reweaving the bonds it has so carelessly shredded—within, and without.