Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Multi-Polar World Does Not Favor US
The United States built a post-World War II global system for its own benefit. As the only sizaable developed power that did not suffer massive damage to its economy during the war, it was in a position to do so. Rivals were not in a position to argue, as the failure of the Soviet Union ultimately proved. The system rested on the dominance of the dollar, a web of alliances and an economy that dwarfed all others. In a way, it was artificial. Europe and Japan would rise from the ashes because they already knew how to structure a developed economy and society. The world has now reached a point, thanks to natural historical forces and the folly of Trumpism, where the American dominance is almost all gone.
The biggest changes to the global order have been the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of China. Marxism-Leninism left Russia and its captive satellites with world-class military power and a third-world domestic economy. Since 1991when the USSR filed for bankruptcy, Russia has seen its military power decay while its consumer economy remains stunted. The oligarchs do their shopping in the West.
China benefitted from an abandonment of Maoism, a ludicrous faux "philosophy" and ideology. When Deng Xiaoping announced "it is glorious to grow rich," he set the stage for China to return to the center of the global economy that has been its historical position. The American ambition to split China and Russia succeeded, but it did so too well. America is currently suffering from the loss of jobs to China and a failure to retrain workers, who did not seem to want retraining.
Meanwhile, Western Europe recovered economically and became more successful than the USA at happiness for its citizens. Some of that was built on the US security guarantees of NATO, but some of it was a more community-based view of society. Europe is not a region of "rugged individuals."
As part of the US-led post-1945 world, decolonization has brought India and its massive economic potential into goloba relevance. The Muslim world is stuggling to find its former glory, but it is in a position to try. Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil and so on are regional players that were formerly on the periphery.
Had the US stayed on the course it charted from 1945, the world would be a more stable place where the rise of China and the decline of Russia could be managed, adapting to the new constellation of power without damaging the system that had worked so well. But it chose to give Donald Trump something neither Caligula and Nero got, a second term.
Mr. Trump, whose knowledge of the world is best measured in angstroms, has decided to take a sledgehammer to the entire system. With his Greenland fixation, he has damanged the trust upon which NATO rested. He has undermined organizations like USAID through which American soft power was deployed. He does not understand anything but force, and the genius of the American system had been to create a system of incentives that got other nations to do America's bidding. His destruction of those soft-power channels has created a vacuum that others will fill. Indeed, China is already engaged in neo-colonial exploitation of Africa.
When there are multiple powerful nations that work together, like NATO or the Concert of Europe in in the 19th century, peace can be more likely than war. When they are rivals, such as in WWI through the end of WWII, war is all but inevitable. War, as Ike Eisenhower himself said, steals from the civilian population. It makes nations poorer, and by definition, less peaceful.
While the actual shape of the future global power arrangements has yet to emerge, it is clear that this century is not the American Century.
The decline under the Trump administration continues to accelerate.
© Copyright 2026 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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