Donald Trump addresses UN General Assembly in New York, September 22, 2026 - AFP photos
The trope of the United States being in a state of decline is a common one, but it should not be accepted without scrutiny. The U.S. faces crises but remains dangerous, powerful, and single-minded in its determination to achieve full-spectrum dominance over the world.
The claim that the United States is in a state of decline is a popular one and is often treated as being an axiomatic truth. The word “decline” is problematic, though. It gives an impression of weakness when the U.S. has the world’s most powerful military and the dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. Its recent actions indicate that while it faces significant crises, the Donald Trump administration and any administration coming after it will continue its wars of aggression and subterfuge, particularly in the absence of an equally strong opposing force.
While the extent of any decline in U.S. power internationally is debatable, the domestic decline is clear and is happening in large part because maintaining power around the world quite literally steals from the public’s needs. The U.S. military budget is now at least $1.5 trillion and dwarfs the military budgets of other countries. If anyone doubts that the figure impacts the lives of millions of people in the U.S., Donald Trump admitted as much himself. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”
Of course, the states cannot pay for these programs, that’s why they were federal programs to begin with. It is not possible to spend that amount of money on the military without impacting the social safety net. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill cuts billions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid and will literally jeopardize people’s lives all over the country. The high cost will be borne by the public in a very direct way and is just one indicator of a declining quality of life as wages stagnate and the ruling class remains committed to an austerity-driven race to the bottom and endless precarity.
The assertion that the U.S. is a declining international power is repeated ad nauseam even as it achieves its goals of conquest around the world. The specter of decline is now being evoked due to the failure of the U.S. to win the quick victory it predicted after the joint attack with Israel on the Islamic Republic of Iran, which began on February 28, 2026. The war of aggression was carried out with hubris and was emboldened by the U.S. success in capturing the Venezuelan president and the state of Venezuela in the previous month. The idea that kidnapping a president and his wife and pressuring a weak government into compliance would be akin to defeating a military power like Iran was a choice made out of arrogance and delusional power.
Yet the Iran failure cannot itself be given as proof of decline because it was preceded by a very significant success against Venezuela. Every president from George W. Bush to Trump 2.0 used sanctions and coercion against Venezuela. The first Trump administration attempted to install a president of their choosing, Juan Guaido, in 2019. The failed coup and end of support for Guaido led many anti-imperialists to celebrate perhaps too soon. While anti-imperialists were steadfast in supporting the Venezuelan government, the security state apparatus did not admit defeat and looked for new ways to undermine that nation.
The Trump administration has been particularly successful in the Americas. Turning Venezuela into a vassal state with huge reserves of oil was quite literally a dream come true. Without a military coup, assassination, or invasion, Venezuela fell quickly, and now its oil revenues sit in a U.S. treasury account, and the gold reserves held in London will soon be on their way to the U.S.
The U.S. has in the past year interfered in elections in Honduras, Colombia, Peru and Argentina. Zionists are taking land in the Patagonia region of Chile and Argentina and Cubans are being killed by a siege in cynical hope that they will undo the revolution and turn the country over to Washington and Cuban exiles.
Every U.S. president consolidates the work of his predecessors. Ronald Reagan sought to overthrow the Libyan government with a bombing campaign in 1986, but the deed was finally done under Barack Obama 25 years later in 2011. That awful success led the U.S. and its NATO allies to set their sights on Syria. But it took Obama, Trump, and finally Biden in his last month of office to bring about the fall of the Syrian Arab Republic at the hands of jihadist proxies.
These events should not bring about feelings of pessimism alone. They are history lessons which explain how the U.S. succeeds in bringing down government after government. Even as its military prowess lays waste to the domestic economy and the lives of millions of people, there has so far been no other power willing or able to counteract the U.S.
Russia began supporting the Syrian government, but not until 2015, when it was on the brink of collapse, and Vladimir Putin feared that Russian jihadis who joined that fight might come back home. But Russia made the mistake of agreeing to a kind of ceasefire, and then in 2022 the U.S. used Ukraine (after the Obama administration backed a 2014 coup) as a proxy against Russia. Russia was unable to fight in Ukraine and Syria simultaneously and now one of the jihadists who once had a U.S. bounty on his head is now the president.
But curiously, Russia and China lack the determination to take the fight to the U.S. even when they can. In November 2025, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Resolution 2803, which legitimized the so-called Board of Peace, which handed control of Gaza to the U.S., an act that actually violated the UN Charter. As two of the five permanent members of the UNSC, either Russia or China, could have vetoed what amounts to a surrender to global fascism, yet both abstained. Neither nation had to spend money, send troops, or risk the lives of their citizens. One of them could have voted no and sent the Board of Peace to the dustbin of history, yet neither of them was willing to do so.
Despite being targets of the U.S., both Russia and China chose a path of least resistance. It is said that Mahmoud Abbas, of the Palestinian Authority, asked them not to veto. But that excuse does not hold water. Abbas is seen as a collaborator and is not respected by Palestinians, whose rights were torn asunder by this agreement to take no action. This lack of determination means that the “decline” of the U.S. may be more wishful thinking than a reality if world powers are willing to go along in hopes of staying off of the menu themselves.
While Iran admirably has staved off destruction at the hands of the U.S. and Israel, it would be a mistake to think it is out of the proverbial woods. The U.S. is now using its influence at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to once again make false claims of Iran's nuclear capabilities. The goal is to continue making a case for war and to perhaps use the nuclear weapons which, unlike Iran, the U.S. and Israel have in abundance.
The JPMorgan Chase bank made headlines recently after admitting they could not predict an end to the war against Iran. JPMorgan predicted that specific breaking points such as the closing of the Strait of Hormuz and rising oil and gas prices would force an end to the conflict, but no such movement is in sight.
That inability to predict is a warning sign that the Trump administration has committed itself to continuing the war against Iran. They are prepared for a dangerous endgame, as Trump said himself in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.
“I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? "Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”
While the attack on Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz have driven people in the U.S. into yet another inflationary spiral, it is important not to think of a perceived decline. Instead, remember Syria and remember Venezuela. They were taken out by Washington when they appeared to be safe. The U.S. crises created by the pursuit of hegemony must be described that way, and not be diminished by overuse of a popular term. The decline which is spoken of so often may bring about a more ominous future than those who casually use the word are willing to contemplate. The U.S. may as Trump said, be willing to drive the world to hell with no chance of survival. That outcome would be the ultimate decline.
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram. She can be reached via email at margaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.
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