The Empire at a Moment of Exposure: The American Condition

In recent years, international politics has witnessed remarkable shifts in leadership patterns, sources of legitimacy, and the limits of power, necessitating a rethinking of the United States' position and global role, not as a fixed given, but as a dynamic historical phenomenon subject, like others, to the logic of transformation, ascent, and decline. American behavior globally today can be understood as an expression of a profound transformation in the nature of the American role, rather than merely a fleeting disturbance in policies or a leadership whim. The United States appears to be transitioning from a position of power that led an international system based on rules, institutions, and legitimacy, to a power acting with a harsher logic, seeking to maximize gains and minimize costs, even if it comes at the expense of the stability of the international system itself. This transformation brings to the forefront an old question in the literature of empire history: after nearly a quarter of a millennium since the United States emerged from the ruins of indigenous peoples, are we seeing signs of imperial fatigue preceding decline? This question intensifies when the transformation is accompanied by a highly personalized leadership style, characterized by showmanship and simplistic certainties, where the leader presents himself as an embodiment of timeless and placeless power, a source of exceptional inspiration, claiming to possess the keys to salvation and prosperity, not only for America but for the world as well, through the privatization of everything, including international relations, and through the reduction of politics to the logic of wealth and money, as the sole path to correcting the course of history, in a narrative that excludes the moral dimension and prioritizes naked profit over the centrality of rights and blood.

In my opinion, Ibn Khaldun offers an important interpretive entry point here, as he believes that states do not collapse suddenly, but rather go through successive historical cycles: from ascent based on 'asabiyyah (group solidarity) and a unifying meaning, to expansion, then luxury, then the stage of calcification, where internal legitimacy erodes, the cost of governance increases, and consensus is replaced by coercion, and meaning by force. If this logic is applied to the American case, one can observe a decline in internal 'asabiyyah amidst the fracturing of what was historically known as the melting pot, which long contributed to producing broad internal consensus around the global role of the United States, and the rise of sharp internal division over the meaning, nature, and utility of international leadership. With this erosion of unifying meaning, the state tends to adopt faster and harsher tools in managing its international position, such as imposing harsh tariffs, withdrawing from international institutions, and exerting direct pressure on allies and adversaries alike.

However, this transformation, I believe, does not necessarily mean that the United States has lost its ability to act, as it still possesses immense tools of power, through the dollar, control over markets, technology, alliances, and the ability to weaponize the global economy. But what has changed is what the United States wants and how it seeks it. Today, it wants to re-shore strategic industries, force allies to bear the cost of protection and the relationship, manage major conflicts, such as Ukraine, with a logic of deals rather than long-term commitments, and reduce its involvement in institutions it now sees as a burden on its freedom of decision. It also seeks to engineer regional arrangements with the lowest possible cost, especially in the region called the Middle East, based on security, management, and deterrence, rather than radical political solutions.

In contrast, the world is not a passive observer. Major and emerging powers are not moving towards a break with the United States, but rather adopting calculated hedging policies, based on negotiation where possible, confrontation where necessary, and building gradual alternatives that reduce reliance on American decisions. China seeks to manage competition with Washington, not to break it directly, while quietly and systematically working to dismantle the technological and financial restrictions and setbacks imposed by the current international environment. While Russia invests in every available opportunity to consolidate its gains and redefine its position as a disruptive international power capable of unsettling the existing order, Europe, India, and other powers tend to diversify their economic and political partnerships and reduce risk levels in their dealings with the international system, in a world that has become less predictable, more fragile, and volatile.

This American logic is clearly manifested in a series of positions and policies that, at first glance, seemed shocking or unprecedented, but in essence, they are consistent with the same logic, the logic of naked power and crude deals. The American military raid on Venezuela and the forceful abduction of its president cannot be understood solely in the context of rivalry with a regime hostile to Washington, but rather as a broader message that national sovereignty has become conditional on alignment with American interests. Here, the language of classical empires is revived, meaning that those who do not comply are punished, and those who possess strategic resources, like oil in the case of Venezuela (and the Arab region), become legitimate targets for political re-engineering by coercion.

The same applies to Trump's repeated insistence on acquiring Greenland. This idea, which provoked widespread disapproval and rejection in Europe, is not merely a rhetorical whim, but rather a concentrated expression of a profound shift in Washington's perception of the world. In this logic, geography becomes purchasable, sovereignty a subject of bartering, and alliances relationships managed by market logic, not by principles, values, or legal rules. Greenland, with its strategic location and potential resources in the Arctic, reveals how the United States views the future as an open race for resources and new passages, outside any established moral or legal consideration.

These approaches have had a significant impact on American-European relations. Europe, which used to view the United States as a leader of the liberal "free world" system and a protector of its rules, now finds itself facing a partner who acts as a supra-legal power, not hesitating to threaten its allies or blackmail them politically and economically. This tension does not mean a transatlantic rupture, but it deepens European doubts about absolute reliance on the American umbrella, and pushes, albeit slowly and hesitantly, towards strategic independence.

This international scene becomes more turbulent with the repeated escalation of military tension between the United States and Iran, a tension that cannot be read in isolation from the broader shift in overall American behavior. America today tends to brandish coercion before opening negotiation channels, and manages crises with a logic of rapid deterrence and potential deals, not with a logic of stable and long-term settlements. In this context, sending fleets does not carry a purely military dimension, but rather performs simultaneous functions: sending a clear deterrent message, preparing the ground for limited military options when necessary, and exerting intense negotiating pressure aimed at pushing Tehran to the negotiating table on terms less balanced than before.

Even if the United States does not militarily attack Iran, current indicators suggest that the regional and international scene is moving on the brink of a wide spectrum of open scenarios, ranging from tense containment governed by mutual deterrence calculations, to limited and calculated strikes aimed at restoring disrupted balances, leading, in the worst estimates, to an explosion that could result from miscalculation or an unforeseen incident in an international system that has lost a great deal of institutional control mechanisms and effective mediation. If matters slide towards a military confrontation, its repercussions are likely to be complex and intertwined, including disruption in the global economy, widespread security escalation in our region, along with increasing political pressures on regional countries, pushing them towards forced alignment instead of maintaining margins for maneuver and balance. As for the option of an agreement, despite remaining present in principle, it seems closer to a conditional and fragile deal, reflecting the depth of mistrust between the parties involved, rather than a stable or sustainable long-term settlement.

It is self-evident that this American approach of imposing facts by force in the region will directly reflect on Israeli ambitions. The atmosphere of escalation strengthens the position of the occupying state within American calculations and grants it a wider margin to advance its security priorities and impose new realities. In contrast, Israel fears an American-Iranian deal that would leave Tehran considerable influence, even if controlled, due to the long-term threat it poses. Thus, Israel transforms into an actor benefiting from the tension, but remains concerned about its negotiated outcomes.

As for the Arab region, with the Palestinian issue at its heart, it has paid, and continues to pay, and is likely to continue paying the heaviest cost of this global transformation. The more international politics slides towards the logic of deterrence and deals, the greater the risk of reducing Palestine to a security or humanitarian file, managed within temporary regional arrangements based on imbalanced equations: actual surrender in exchange for conditional reconstruction, technical management in exchange for fragile stability, and transitional control arrangements in exchange for soft and eroding political promises. This path is entirely consistent with the prevailing American pattern of managing crises instead of resolving them, and of squandering fundamental rights in favor of promises of "stability," which, each time, quickly proves to be false stability that does not address the roots of the conflict but rather reproduces it in a more fragile form.

In this sense, what we are witnessing today cannot be reduced to the policies of a specific American president, but rather should be understood as an expression of a deep moment of disintegration in the moral and political structure of the American experience itself, a moment whose effects are not confined within its borders, but whose contagion extends to the entire international system. In this moment, power, its components, and its tools are being redefined, geography is becoming a subject of bargaining, and crises are managed by the logic of fleets and deals, not by the logic of law and justice. This is a transformation that not only presents the world with political and strategic questions, but also with an increasing degree of existential anxiety about the civility of relations between states, about the future of the international system, and indeed about the fate of humanity as a whole in a world where moral controls are eroding in favor of the logic of naked power.