America Is Accelerating Its Own Decline
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America Is Accelerating Its Own Decline
By Johan
Professor of Behavioral Economics & Applied Cognitive Theory
Former Foreign Service Officer
There’s a concept in international relations theory called balancing. It’s about as close to a law of physics as you get in geopolitics. When one power becomes too dominant, others band together to check it.
For 80 years, the United States broke that rule.
After World War II, American power was absurdly unbalanced. Economically, militarily, technologically—-the gap was enormous. By every measure that matters in international relations, other nations should have formed coalitions to contain American dominance. That’s what always happens. Balance of power isn’t a theory, it’s a pattern stretching back centuries.
Except it didn’t happen.
Nobody balanced against the United States. Instead, they bandwagoned. Lined up to join the American-led order. Treated the hegemon not as a threat to be contained but as a partner to be enlisted. This was historically unprecedented.
Americans were far from perfect stewards. Standing for values, democracy & human rights, but often selfish, self-righteous, paranoid, aggressive, frequently blundering. The list of American foreign policy mistakes is long and often catastrophic. The 2008 financial crisis that nearly collapsed the global economy. Repeated demonstrations that American power could be dangerous, unpredictable, and expensive.
Yet allies stayed. Through unpopular wars, economic disasters, relative decline in both military and economic terms. They stayed because American hegemony, for all its flaws, was preferable to the alternatives. Because the order worked for them. Because bandwagoning made sense.
Why? Because America’s great power was more than tolerated…it was encouraged, abetted, and legitimized through multilateral institutions. This, more than raw might, was what made the United States the most influential power in history.
Those days are over.
Nations that once bandwagoned with the United States now remain aloof or align against it. Not because they want to, but because the United States leaves them no choice. Welcome to the new era of erratic American superpower. It will be lonely, dangerous, and remarkably stupid.
What Made American Power Real
Here’s what most people miss about American hegemony. The post-1945 U.S.-led liberal democratic order didn’t run on aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. It ran on something more powerful: the dollar system.
The numbers are staggering. Roughly two-thirds of global trade settles in U.S. dollars. Nearly 80% of oil transactions price in dollars. When you need to move money across borders, you use the dollar-based banking system. When central banks hold reserves, they hold dollars.
This isn’t just convenient. It’s power.
When the United States doesn’t like what you’re doing, it can sanction you. Freeze your bank accounts. Cut you off from the international financial system. Force compliance through economic pressure that doesn’t require firing a shot.
Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022? The European Union and even Switzerland froze Russian reserves held in Brussels and Switzerland. That’s not because the EU and Switzerland are particularly aggressive. It’s because the dollar system gives the United States the power to compel allies to enforce its will. Russia can fine Google trillions of dollars for whatever imagined slight, and Google laughs. Why? Because Russia has no power to freeze accounts, sanction companies, or force compliance with anything. Nobody uses the ruble. Nobody uses Russian banks. The Russian currency is junk, always has been.
This is the asymmetry that made American power durable. Not military superiority, though that helped. Not ideological appeal, though that mattered. The United States built financial architecture that made it expensive to oppose and cheap to cooperate. Countries bandwagoned because it was in their interest.
China watched this for decades. Took notes. Built BRICS as an alternative. And waited.
They didn’t have to wait long.
America Lost. China Benefited.
Go back to my piece on cost asymmetry from a few days ago. The top section was about Iran. The framework is simple: victory doesn’t go to the party with more raw power. It goes to the party whose cost column is more favorable relative to what they can impose on the other side.
The United States has overwhelming military power relative to Iran. By conventional metrics, the conflict should be no contest. Yet Iran maintained strategic resistance for decades, survived sanctions, and continued pursuing its regional agenda despite being outmatched on every measurable dimension.
The asymmetry was cost tolerance.
The U.S. operates under severe domestic pain constraints. A dollar more per gallon of gasoline generates political pressure. Iran’s authoritarian structure absorbs far more pain. Decades of sanctions, economic isolation, military strikes—-none of it produced regime change. Instead, external pressure reinforced theocratic rule by validating the existential framing.
As I documented in The Cascade, this dynamic played out exactly as predicted. The slow burn. The slow ratchet.
And now Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz.
The United States did everything it could. Sent carrier groups. Launched strikes. Applied maximum pressure. Iran absorbed it, held the chokepoint, and now passage is based on what Iran wants. Countries are paying transit fees. In Chinese yuan.
Let that sink in. The erosion of the dollar system is happening faster than China could have imagined. And China didn’t have to do anything except watch the United States make catastrophically stupid decisions.
China Wins Without Trying
Here’s the part that should keep American strategists awake at night, if any still exist.
China is becoming a source of stability in the Middle East. Not through military intervention. Not through regime change operations. By offering an alternative to American chaos. By providing financial infrastructure that doesn’t come with lectures about human rights or threats to freeze your accounts if you displease Washington.
Russia and China both paid Iran and supplied intelligence, weapons, satellite imagery. They supported Iran’s cost tolerance strategy while the United States burned through resources, political capital, and alliance credibility. Now China gains power in the region without firing a shot.
Go back to my piece on China’s industrial capacity. While America bombs, China builds. China installs more industrial robots each year than the entire rest of the world combined. Produces 80% of global solar panels. Dominates battery production, EV manufacturing, renewable energy infrastructure.
The United States handed China a geopolitical gift. China didn’t have to do anything remarkable. Just watch America commit suicide through one stupid decision after another, internally and externally, and continue the industrial build-out that will determine who controls the infrastructure of 2050.
This is behavioral economics in action. Incentives shape behavior. When opposing the United States becomes cheaper than cooperating, when the dollar system loses credibility, when allies discover they face American exploitation regardless of loyalty, the rational choice shifts.
Countries are making that choice now. New treaties. New partnerships. New alliances. All sprinting toward the exits.
NATO Is Getting Destroyed
From Russia’s perspective, this couldn’t be going any better. NATO, the alliance that kept Russian ambitions in check for 75 years, is fracturing in real time.
Ukraine, fighting for survival against Russian invasion, watches the United States prioritize Iran over European security. Oil prices skyrocket, filling Putin’s war chest with billions just as Russia’s wartime deficits were starting to cause pain. Persian Gulf states burn through U.S.-provided air defense interceptors—-the same limited supply Ukraine depends on to defend cities from Russian missile strikes.
Zelenskyy went to Saudi Arabia. Smart move. Ukraine can provide Saudi Arabia with defensive military infrastructure. Saudi Arabia can provide equipment to Ukraine. Both bypass the United States entirely because the United States has made itself unreliable.
European allies are desperately reorienting their economies and military strategies to defend themselves without American help. Not because they want to, but because the U.S. Secretary of Defense told them to be ready by 2027.
The message is clear: the trans-Atlantic relationship no longer matters.
Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil over the opposition from Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and the European Union. That’s not foreign policy. That’s middle finger diplomacy. And allies are responding accordingly.
The Hypocrisy Is Stunning
The United States used to justify military interventions with appeals to human rights. The rhetoric was often bullshit, but it served a purpose. It gave allies cover to support American actions. It maintained the fiction that American power served broader purposes than narrow self-interest.
That fiction is gone.
If we’re really doing this for the Iranian people, why are we killing so many of them? Why blow up civilian infrastructure? The regime is horrible, one of the worst still operating today. But who is the United States to decide that killing thousands of innocent civilians is acceptable collateral damage for regime change?
North Korea is worse. People living there suffer conditions arguably worse than anywhere on earth. But North Korea has nuclear weapons, so we ignore them. Iran doesn't have nukes yet, so we bomb them. Though according to last year's mission, we already eliminated their nuclear program. Apparently we need to keep eliminating it. The logic is transparent: we care about nuclear weapons when we can still win. When we can’t, we suddenly discover that human rights don’t matter that much after all.
And then there’s Hungary. The United States is sending Marco Rubio to support Viktor Orbán in his election, where he’s now behind in the polls by double digits. This regime says we shouldn’t go around the world supporting democracy. But apparently it’s fine to go around the world supporting authoritarian regimes when they’re friendly to us.
Think about how hilariously stupid that is. The hypocrisy isn’t subtle. It’s not even competent hypocrisy. It’s the kind of blundering self-contradiction that announces to the world: we have no principles, no strategy, no coherent framework. We’re just thrashing.
Three Years Left. Minimum.
Here’s what should terrify anyone paying attention.
We have three years left of this. Minimum.
Think about what’s happened over the past year. The collapse of American credibility in Europe. The erosion of the dollar system through Iran. The strengthening of China’s position without China lifting a finger. The fracturing of NATO. Allies forming new partnerships that exclude the United States.
Now imagine three more years of this.
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, China was in an accommodating phase. Russia posed no threat to Europe. The greatest perceived menace was international terrorism. The world was not multipolar, and American mistakes had room to be absorbed.
Twenty-three years later, the situation is completely different. The greatest threats to world peace come from two powerful and expansionist great powers, one of which has already invaded neighbors and the other threatens to. Today’s world looks more like 1934 than the post-Cold War paradise some imagined.
And American leaders are making it worse. Not through malice necessarily, though there’s plenty of that. Through sheer strategic incompetence. Through the assumption that American power is so overwhelming that consequences don’t matter. Through the belief that allies have nowhere else to go.
That assumption is breaking in real time.
When Politico asked people whether China or the United States was more dependable, 57% of Canadians chose China. So did 40% of Germans and 42% of Brits. A sharp decline in America’s perceived trustworthiness. These aren’t rival nations. These are allies, some of our closest allies. Or were.
Trump doesn’t want allies. He wants vassals.
As a result, friends and allies are less willing to cooperate with the United States. Spain refused American use of air and naval bases during the Iran conflict. Next time, that could be Germany, Italy, or Japan. Nations around the world will rely not on American commitments but on ad hoc coalitions to address crises. No one will cooperate by choice, only by coercion.
This is the collapse playing out in slow motion.
The Pattern Is Clear
I’ve written about cost asymmetry, about how the weaker party wins when they can tolerate more pain than the stronger party can impose. Iran demonstrated this. Montgomery’s bus boycott demonstrated this. The mechanics are identical across contexts.
The United States is now on the wrong side of that equation.
Not because American power has disappeared. The United States remains the world’s strongest military. The dollar system, though eroding, still dominates global finance. American technology, though no longer unmatched, remains formidable.
But power is relational. It depends on others’ choices. And those choices are shifting because the United States has made cooperation more expensive than opposition. Has made reliability a joke. Has made the phrase “American leadership” something allies laugh about in private.
China builds industrial capacity, renewable energy infrastructure, financial alternatives to the dollar system. Russia grinds through Ukraine while the United States prioritizes Iran. Europe reorients toward self-defense because American commitments are worthless. Countries negotiate transit through the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, often settling in yuan. The dollar's dominance continues eroding.
None of this was inevitable. The United States chose this path through decisions that prioritized short-term domestic politics over long-term strategic coherence. Chose to treat allies as vassals rather than partners. Chose to demonstrate that American power serves only narrow American interests, and even those incompetently.
The 80-year exception is over. The world is balancing against American power now, not because they want to, but because the United States has made itself something that must be balanced against. Dangerous, unreliable, and accelerating its own decline through decisions so stupid that rivals don’t even need to compete. They just need to watch and wait.
And they are.
Do not obey in advance. Stay strong. Refuse to be a bystander.
Why the Snail
It carries its home.
It moves with intention.
It leaves a trail.
So do I.
Johan is a behavioral scientist and former Foreign Service Officer. He writes about power, belief systems, and how humans make sense of collapse.
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