Is The US Empire in Jeopardy?

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Not necessarily. It’s more like the playing field, internationally, is evening out.

Yep, and that lessening of relative soft & hard power is being mistaken for an absolute diminishing: which I don’t see any evidence for.
If anything absolute US powers are still increasing, but some other nations are also increasing their power at a faster rate.
Alarming for many, Welcome for many others: will most likely have both positive and negative effects long-term.

(Also the US is not an empire, although it is the hegemonic global power of our era.)

Angela Merkel has been in power just 15 years. Let's try to be a bit more accurate when throwing numbers around.

No world super power goes forever,every empire has crumbled,some like Egypt fell to chaos,others like Britain landed with a golden parachute.

China and India are both over a billion people and could rise to new empire,if you wouldn't say China sort of already is one,but India being the world largest democracy could become very powerful.

I don't know if it's the end for America but if it is,it's just part of the natural cycle of human civilization.If we do fall lets hope were like England and Spain and are good countries to live in post empire status.

The old saying was that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because it spanned the globe. And yet Britain seems to be fairing alright since the collapse of its empire which officially ended in 1979.

The US was never really an empire to begin with.

Given the territorial size, resource base, level of popular education and nature of governmental institutions I think the only scenario within which the US could cease to be a broadly decent country to live in with a government in the top 15 world powers would be a second civil war with foreign countries intervening and using it as a proxy war leading to balkanisation... which involves too many variables to be a probable future.

Yep, I’ve tried explaining to folks here that the “good old pre-EU days” they want to go back to were the last days of a defunct empire, and not little Britain on her own. To no avail.


I think the phrase “Empire of Liberty” was used to describe the US in it’s early decades, as a compliment by way of analogy.

Only recent usages of the term “empire” to describe the US I’ve come across has been either hard leftists repeating Cold War agit-prop, or CGP Grey on YouTube using the term as a thought tool to help him explain the US’s various overseas territories.

The US has territories but they are unlikely to become independent or regain independence from the US like India did from the BE. Or go back to being part of the country they originated from like Hong Kong. If the US lost Hawaii, Guam, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico etc it wouldn't exactly be devastating to the US. But of course with the exception of Puerto Rico what would they convert to or go back to? I doubt Alaska plans on converting back to Russia.

Having studied American History, my impression is that the US never wanted an empire. We basically had to be forced into WWII by a sneak attack by the Japanese. But, we have always had more than just natural resources. Immigrants like Tesla were allowed to do amazing things. I can't imagine an immigrant doing anything like that in Japan. We have a tremendous resource of talented people. I don't think that is going to change with just one idiot in charge of the White House.

Well yes, quite: most US overseas territories are either uninhabited or naval refuelling stations.
Alaska & Hawaii are both full states, so not really overseas in a legal sense: and Puerto Rico, as far as I’m aware, tends more towards wanting admission as 51st state than independence.
Guam, unless I’m grossly misinformed, is generally content as is for the timebeing.

But yes, with the possible exception of the Philippines the US has never had colonies.

Ah yes, forgot about the Philippines.

We had Cuba, briefly.

Hawaii and Alaska were “territories” in the sense that Oregon Territory was a “territory.” All both Hawaii and Alaska had to do was to reach a certain population, and some few other criteria which I have to research. It was a much easier path to statehood for them than for a place like Puerto Rico.

Yea,I would tend to agree,I think fundamentalist Islam is a lot of what left post empire Egypt and Persia(Iran) in chaos.

Yes, and the British and French governments gave encouragement to them in their early days as a counterweight against secular national independence movements.
Something that gets left out of the picture in the rush to blame the CIA’s Cold War activities for everything (whilst also conveniently forgetting all the KGB shenanigans of the era).

When America's GNP relies solely upon travel and tourism, THEN we can say it is no longer an 'empire'.