The United States is a paradox that defies the typical categories of power analysis. Is the United States an empire on the brink of decline, or is it still the world’s greatest concentration of human innovation? The answer is perhaps both.
Thesis: The inexorable descent
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, written by scholar Paul Kennedy in 1987, remains the prism through which imperial decline is assessed to this day. “Military overstretch, and a concomitant relative decline are the consistent threats facing powers whose ambitions and security needs are greater than their resources can sustain.” The term “imperial overstretch,” coined by Kennedy, remains frightingly accurate in its analysis.
The arithmetic of decline adds up quickly. The United States’ gross national debt reached $37 trillion in August 2025. The current level of debt, at 100 percent of GDP, is higher than at any peacetime period in US history, except for the periods following World War II. The country is spending $1 trillion a year on interest alone.
Kennedy showed how military buildup and deficit spending contribute to decline. Today, America has more than 800 military bases worldwide. America has an unprecedented military presence. The manufacturing sector that made America the “arsenal of democracy,” with a total contribution to global production reaching 50 percent in 1945, has been depleted.
The emergence of multipolarity is a threat to American dominance that could be described as “existential.” Graham Allison’s “Destined for War” popularized the “Thucydides’s Trap” concept, a difficult structural stress that “is created when a rising power challenges a ruling power, potentially dissolving dominant positions and relationships.” This has happened sixteen times over the past five hundred years, and in twelve cases, there was a war. In the last 35 years, China’s economy, which was less than a tenth the size of the United States’ economy, has surpassed the US economy in PPP terms.
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Today, the BRICS bloc’s aggregate GDP has surpassed that of the G7 countries. The dollar’s status as the unit of international exchange finds itself in historically unprecedented circumstances. In 2023, Kennedy acknowledged that “relative productive power is shifting to the east” and expressed uncertainty about “whether America can stay ahead everywhere.”
Ever since the brief “unipolar moment” in 1991, the planet has been shifting toward a multipolar system. As Kennedy so famously observed, “The great powers which overlapped the globe found it near impossible to prioritise their assets and obligations.” This paradox now pertains to the United States as well.
Antithesis: The Lasting Dominant Power
Nevertheless, the United States clearly has a proven ability to innovate. The reign of Silicon Valley in artificial intelligence is intensifying. There were almost 70 AI startups in the US that each secured over $100 million in 2025, symbolizing “a fundamental reorganization of the venture capital asset class” around AI
In venture growth-stage investments in the first half of 2025, $83.9 billion was recorded. Currently, more than half of the world’s AI firms are based in the United States (6,956), followed by China (1,605). These countries control the commanding heights of the world economy.
The United States’ university system is second to none. In fact, the top 20 research universities in the world are primarily located in the United States. Bright minds move to American universities, which attract the best companies, which in turn attract the best capital, which funds innovations for the future. NVIDIA dominates with an estimated 70-95% market share and a revenue that exploded by $115.2 billion during fiscal year 2025.
Rather than a drain on the economy like Kennedy argued, the American military has become the world’s leading technologically advanced force. Quantum computing, hypersonic weapons, autonomous weaponry, space-based assets—advances in next-generation weapons make traditional measures of military strength unnecessary. A component of the defense budget funds R&D that trickles down into the development of various non-military technologies, including the internet.
American democracy has proved quite robust. The dollar’s strength persists despite forecasts of its eventual collapse. As of mid-2024, foreign possession of American debt is substantial, with China owning some $770 billion of US Treasury securities.
Synthesis: The Paradox Explained
How can both stories be true at the same time? The Kennedy model assumed that productivity, military power, and international influence are perfectly synchronized. A country’s decreasing foundation directly equates to a commensurate decrease in power. Yet the connection between innovation power and traditional concepts of power has effectively been severed. The United States is experiencing an “asymmetric decline” even as its innovative power is surging.
Indeed, Kennedy wrote that “great power decline usually takes a long time—often centuries” and that “decline’ in international politics is a relative term.” Thus, America is likely in decline relative to the rest of the world since the end of World War II, even as it expands its dominance in the technologies that will shape the 22nd century.
The Thucydides Trap model might not include the most essential variables in a situation. The fact that there are four instances in which the challenger state and the extraordinary power avoided war leads one to believe that nuclear weapons, economic interdependence, and the institutional structures in place can trump history. The relationship between the US and China is unique in history: a mutual assured economic destruction.
Additionally, the kind of power exercised by America today is no longer based on landmass or manufacturing, but on technology, financial, and innovation-based platforms. The latter types of power don’t decline linearly. America, for example, could have enormous deficits and a tech industry worth trillions of dollars, simply because the tech industry operates in an international space that ignores America’s economic realities.
The $37 trillion debt must be understood in context. Approximately $24.4 trillion of that debt is held by private investors in the United States. The rules governing debt denominated in one’s own currency are very different from those governing foreign currencies.
Kennedy’s commentary about the situation in 2023 identifies the crucial question: “How should it (US) manage its relative decline?” It seems from the evidence that something much more intricate and even paradoxical—namely, being both weak and strong—is going on in America: It is simultaneously becoming weak and strong; weak to shape international politics by military and economic force and strong to produce technologies which will define international life for decades to come.
The Verdict: Fifty Years Hence
What will the historians think in the year 2075? Samuel Huntington’s Voltaire reminder is applicable: “If Rome and Carthage fell, which country is then immortal?” No country can evade this process. If current trends continue, Kennedy’s framework forecasts an inevitable decline. The BRICS and regional powers will fill the power voids. The dollar will no longer be a reserve currency. The standard of living of Americans will continue to decline relative to that of people in other countries. In 2075, America will be just one of several great powers; its dominance of the twentieth century will be relegated to a footnote in history. The most probable one is not solely degradation or dominance but a metamorphosis of the very definition of “power”. The USA of 2075 might be both weakened and dominant, to the point that it could no longer undertake imperial military campaigns yet retain a technological superiority that would render such campaigns unnecessary. Weaker in conventional terms, but rich due to its inherent innovative development. It might have lost its dominance in global affairs, but it would wield such influence through culture and technology that it would shape the planet’s destiny in ways surpassing those of any empire in history.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
