LogFAQs > #913883251

The US hegemony has been slowly dying for ~20 years now. Bill Clinton was really the last president to use America's strengths - both hard and soft - effectively on the international stage. Bush Jr. dealt the first blow to US interests with his disastrous misadventures in the Middle East (and his domestic financial policies being a huge contributor to a global recession the scale of which hadn't been seen for a century certainly didn't help); Obama repaired a lot of the PR damage that move caused, but he failed to assert himself forcefully against aggressive moves by China, Russia, and Syria. Trump basically kicked the last legs out on the deal by treating allies like enemies and constantly picking fights with them, all while rolling out the red carpet for regimes who can straight-up murder US journalists without a whisper of serious repercussions from the White House.

It's not out of the question that a future president could rebuild America's influence abroad, but major emphasis on the word "rebuild" - the position of preeminence that America used to enjoy as the world's only real superpower is basically dead now and well beyond simple repair. China is rising and its economy will soon overtake America's as the largest in the world, American military might is no longer a thing that autocrats have reason to fear so long as they ally themselves with the interests of Russia or China, and the damage dealt to America's relations with its allies is not something that can be easily undone.

America is and will continue to be a strong country and a global leader, but it is no longer the unquestioned most important voice in the room. Other countries (or blocs, like the EU) are now approaching that same level of influence, so the US is - and will continue to - increasingly finding itself one voice amongst many on the global stage.
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