The new consensus is that the American empire is in steep decline.
Donald Trump departs Doral, Florida, en route to his Palm Beach mansion on May 2, 2026.
(Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images)
On Sunday, The New York Times published an essay with a startling headline: “America Is Officially An Empire In Decline.” To be sure, the column’s arguments—both that the United States is, in fact, an imperial power, and that Donald Trump’s failed war in Iran is only the latest evidence that America’s power is fading—are old hat on the left, made many times in publications like The Nation or Jacobin. They are much less likely to be found in the Times, save for the occasional op-ed. The newspaper as a whole prefers to speak to disguise the reality of empire in euphemistic terms such as “the liberal international order” or “American hegemony.”
Even more startling than the blunt language was the person behind it: not a left-winger, but conservative stalwart Christopher Caldwell. Over the last decade, Caldwell has occupied a lonely niche as the most intellectually cogent defender of Trumpism. A cosmopolitan and literate writer, Caldwell shares the core MAGA belief that liberal elites have damaged the United States through lax immigration, the promotion of cultural diversity, and economic globalism.
Caldwell seems to have taken Donald Trump’s “America First” rhetoric more seriously than the president himself. Giving credence to Trump’s criticism of neoconservative-regime change war, Caldwell hoped for a new foreign policy of restraint in Europe and the Middle East, coupled with a redoubling of US power in the Western Hemisphere. From this perspective, Caldwell can almost find some “coherence” in Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, his threats to invade Cuba, and even his talk of annexing Greenland.
The invasion of Iran undermines this project of hemispheric domination, and Caldwell knows it. In mid-March in The Spectator, he decried the Iran War as “the end of Trumpism.” In his latest Times column, he correctly notes that the war has shown the limits of US coercive power, especially since the depletion of cruise missiles in the conflict means the American Empire is now forced to cannibalize weapons deployed in Europe and Asia.
Caldwell’s strongest argument is that the US only faces bad options:
[The US] can desist in Iran—having demonstrated, for no good reason, that its military is far less dominant than the world had assumed. Or it can draw resources from theaters that are of vital national interest, such as Europe and East Asia, to fund what the president refers to as his Iranian “excursion.” Or it can resort to the extreme military options Mr. Trump darkly alluded to in social media posts starting in early April, which will redound to the everlasting shame of the country he leads. The United States stands to lose its reputation, its friends or its soul.
Caldwell is not alone in his pessimism. The Washington Post reports that “President Donald Trump’s war in Iran is as unpopular among Americans as the Iraq War during the year of peak violence in 2006 and the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.” According to a Washington Post/ABC News/IPSOS poll, “Sixty-one percent of Americans say that using military force against Iran was a mistake, with fewer than 2 in 10 Americans believing that the U.S. actions in Iran have been successful.”
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To be sure, there is a partisan divide on the conflict, with Republicans continuing to say they support Trump and his war. But that support could easily be motivated as much by knee-jerk loyalty as genuine belief. Strikingly, some of the most prominent extreme-right-wing pundits with a record of supporting Trump —like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelley, Alex Jones, and Candace Owens—are against the war. And pro-war right-wingers such as Ben Shapiro and the writers who work for him at The Daily Wire are seeing their audience shrink. On Friday, Shapiro announced layoffs at The Daily Wire.
The view that the Iran War has been lost is also gaining traction among establishment voices that could carry some weight among the congressional Republicans, if not the White House. On Friday, Foreign Affairs, a publication with a reputation for reflecting elite consensus on international relations, published a notable essay cowritten by Tom Pickering, a career diplomat who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations.
This article argues that in order to end the war, Washington needs to make “uncomfortable concessions.” These include “accepting that Iran has fundamental rights as a sovereign state, including to enrich uranium for civilian, peaceful purposes.” The article further suggests creating a “transpiration surcharge” on petroleum-based goods traveling through the strait, which can be used to help rebuild the region’s infrastructure (including inside Iran). And it advocates a diplomatic solution to end Israel’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
While these proposals provide a cogent map for ending the conflict, it is hard to see the Trump administration taking this path. De-escalation along this line would mean admitting defeat. Trump does sometimes retreat from an unwinnable fight, as he did in the trade wars he started last year. But he is also someone heavily invested in the idea that he’s a winner. The core problem with the Iran War is that it is hard to see how it can be ended in a way that allows Trump to maintain the fantasy that he is always victorious.
The reality is that the Iran War has been lost, a fact that even Trump’s more intelligent erstwhile supporters are now acknowledging. But a lost war is impossible to reconcile with the MAGA fantasy of Trump as an all-conquering deity. So, for the foreseeable future, what we’re likely to get a continuation of the unsatisfying status quo: a ceasefire combined with a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The one political force that could force Trump to change policy is Congress. As The New York Times reported on Friday, “Key Republicans in Congress are growing impatient about the complex and costly conflict in the Middle East as the war reaches its 60-day mark, pivoting after weeks of deferring to President Trump to a more skeptical posture.” But it would be foolish to put too much faith in the grumbles now being heard from voices such as Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. When push comes to shove, such Republicans usually yield to Trump.
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The dangers the war poses to the world economy are so great that the status quo can’t last forever. Right now, we’re watching a large dam start cracking under pressure. We don’t know when the dam will break, but the break is coming.
One of Christopher Caldwell’s optimistic fantasies was that the US Empire could be dismantled in a peaceful and orderly fashion. In his New York Times article, he laid out this scenario:
Britain had to surrender its far-flung system of colonies and protectorates after World War II…. Its disengagement was a success, though this can be hard to see because what was being managed was decline. Mr. Trump had a chance of pulling off something similar.
It’s safe to say that an orderly retreat is not how the US Empire will end. All the evidence points to a much more apocalyptic destiny.
From illegal war on Iran to an inhumane fuel blockade of Cuba, from AI weapons to crypto corruption, this is a time of staggering chaos, cruelty, and violence.
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