The US must come to terms with ceding its monopoly on superpower status because other countries have caught up, but it also has correctable problems on multiple fronts due to:
- Lack of infrastructure investment
- Civic infighting
- Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
Power will be projected in the future through alliances with Australia, Japan, and Great Britain. The problems you listed are real, but they are solvable.
Absolutely. I think the prime problem is large swaths of the American populace has lost hope, confidence, and resiliency. OTOH, people in China have a much more of a "can do" attitude buoyed by achievements and rapid progress. America needs younger politicians and leaders out there delivering projects and emanating positive vibes of hope and possibility.
> America needs younger politicians and leaders out there
Not just America, the world needs younger politicians who don't want to send the whole world to hell when they die. We really have a shitty geriatric crew right now--Putin, Xi, Modi, Biden, Trump.
The people are hurting but the establishment isn't listening, and so conspiracy theorists, cranks, racist nationalists lite, and brash jerks are seen as ways to lash out against a system that doesn't appear to be helping them.
There are a holistic set of overlapping problems:
- Failure of the mainstream left to empathize properly with both working people and small business owners while pushing back against unreasonable demands of the very rich
- Failure to mentor young leaders in 4 domains: academia, industry, political parties, and community orgs
There are no quick or easy solutions, but require sustained, organized, and collaborative efforts to nudge the needle over years. This is quite difficult when a large fraction of the demographic voting for absurd leaders either don't have free time to volunteer, are unable to prioritize civic participation for whatever reason(s), or don't see the value in it.
- Inability of the intellectual and political elites to define and enforce basic rules and norms for a coherent society. Diversity is great, but it ought to be paired with engagement with the country's history, culture. We have citizenry who are increasingly more detached from the society they live in and more connected to groups that transcend borders.
- Rise of religion. We should be done with that thing by now, but its back and growing in strength, undermining democratic institutions. We are making concessions to religion on the grounds of religious freedom.
Personnel of the mainstream news media (fourth estate) are richer than average and live in megacities, and so their interests align to their own bubbles, celebrities, and the political class they're unable or unwilling to hold accountable. It creates a situation where dissenting voices who don't condone beating the drums to war are excommunicated as pariahs like Chris Hedges and Ralph Nader.
You have good friends if their primary war objective is to support you.
I think that these days, a lot of Europeans are being reminded that the US is a friend.
So long as US politics can avoid undermining NATO the US won't be short on friends.
"America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests" -- Henry Kissinger.
The same applies to other countries. Those who subscribe to the democratic principles, rule of law, and individual freedoms will typically align themselves with US interests, at least where it is beneficial to them.
This is true, both cynically and literally. There have been many complete and partial defections recently as China swoops in with B&R foreign direct infrastructure and industrial investment.
The US needs to adjust with more competitive foreign economic policies because tariffs aren't it. All of those trillions wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq for diesel power plants to nowhere could've been sprinkled around the Global South to advance economic development resulting in greater wealth elsewhere able to afford American goods and services, source raw materials, and develop manufacturing relationship in various countries in, say, Africa... like China is doing.
The US and Western Europe have to adjust their eyesight if we are to have peace and prosperity worldwide. The war in Ukraine, for example, is the result of Germany and the rest of the old West pandering to Russia and making deals over Eastern European heads whilst lecturing Eastern Europe on European ideals and the need for them to catch up with progressive Germany and France. Going forward, large players on the international scale have to work with smaller players. We also need to take a look at the basket cases of Austria and Germany and ask them to explain how their actions square with what they preach. Germany was given gren light to unify and generally rule the EU and the results aren't that great.
- Lack of infrastructure investment
- Civic infighting
- Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
- Social regression
- Gender disparity in undergraduate education
- Declining standards of living