Daily Times

The whole political world is engulfed into a discourse worth discussing. Books have been published. Debates have been on the furry. And international academic conferences have not left a single theoretical approach to demonstrate the downfall of the American empire. Is it really so? Is America facing a drastic downfall? Is the end of history reviewing its ideological penchant? A Lot more is to cogitate. Let’s dive into the ocean of theoretical perspectives to learn about whether it is a collapse of America or a clandestine rise.

On November 9, 2016, the world saw a sharp turn in global politics. It was the election of business-focused political hawk Donald J Trump. Numerous authors came forward with their thesis of imminent American decline. CNN’s host Fareed Zakaria charted the fall of American dominance. It was the aftermath of fallacious prophecies in which he argued that Trump was never going to be the President of the United States. Since Trump has become victorious, Fareed has time and again argued about the fall of the United States.

In addition to the prevalent thesis and widespread theories regarding the fall of America, Gear Lundestad must be on the top of the literature. His book “The rise and decline of the American empire” strengthens the thesis regarding the decline of the United States. Lundestad was surely on the right platform when he argues about the sudden rise of the United States after World War One. He added, very consciously, the recent trends and challenges to the supremacy of the American Empire. China is on the rise militarily. India precedes China economically. And an ‘unholy alliance of Russia and China’ will bring the United States on the knees. Such a prominent gesture of rising and fall of the countries is notwithstanding hardly found among the political scientists in this era.

Moreover, Chris Hedges came with a novel idea regarding the collapse of the American Empire. His “America: The farewell tour” analyses the pathologies that have surrounded the American. These pathologies include economic disruption, rising suicide cases, and faltering democracy. Furthermore, Chris added that there have been no orchestrated solutions to systematic problems that have hurt the supremacy of the United States. Trump, quite rightly summed Chris is doing nothing but compounding to these pathologies. Hence, these are leading America towards a silent death.

Between and among these critical theoretical assumptions across the length and breadth, the other side of the coin needs to be consciously analyzed. Numerous authors may have quoted serious and series of frameworks to deal with the fall and decline of the American empire. They may be politically correct as of rising of China is concerned. They may be economically correct for the rise of India. And they may be correct when CNN calls it the “darkest mystery at the heart of Donald Trump’s presidency”. But the most prominent picture that really needs to be unearthed is what Fareed Zakaria in his book “The post-American world” called, “not the downfall of United Stated but the rise of the rest”.

China, India and to some extent Russia, if, are countering the United States, it is only because of their “Hard Power”. The hard power is the military equipment that is necessary for national security concerns. And these powers are held by almost all the countries in the whole world. Then what exception does the United States make? It is what Joseph S. Nye Jr called “Soft Power”. The soft power is the capability and ability of a person or a state to purse and attract the people or states rather than using coercive means to get them to do what one wants. For the same reason, Joseph quite appositely puts it that it the soft power that the United States uses to deal with the critical global issues which call for close cooperation from states.

No doubt possessions play a pivotal role for a state to become supreme in power. This power may be latent or manifest in the shape of hard or soft power, respectively. But as far as America is concerned, its power is based on a two-fold paradigm. It is the combination of both soft and hard power. The United States has the highest expenditure on military as compared to China, India, Russia and other European countries combined. Clearly, the United States has better hard power than the rest of the world. Where the soft power supremacy is concerned, the American cultural export, soft drinks, fast food, business, trade, internet, and social media are ‘omnipresent’ in the world. These all determine the supremacy of American soft power.

To sum entire debate on the American decline, it would not be worth ending if one does not pass through the thesis by Josef Joffe in his book “The myth of American decline: politics, economics and half centuries of false prophecies”. He proclaims very astonishingly that despite numerous failings, the United States remains the leading business, political and intellectual model for all the other nations. His empirical pieces of evidence proved that the failings of the United States are flawed. For sure, Donald Trump is one of those failings. But the decline of the American empire in recent years is a myth. It is only because the United States may not be ‘omnipotent’ but it surely is ‘omnipresent’ in contemporary world politics.

The writer is a social researcher interested in various social and political issues.