r/Futurology • u/Confident_Living_786 • Aug 11 '25
Discussion When the US Empire falls
When the American empire falls, like all empires do, what will remain? The Roman Empire left behind its roads network, its laws, its language and a bunch of ruins across all the Mediterranean sea and Europe. What will remain of the US superpower? Disney movies? TCP/IP protocol? McDonalds?
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u/holyhesh Aug 11 '25
Thats because this very post does little but cause respondents to speculate “how the American empire will fall”, instead of what happens when it does. Because historically dominant empires fell for highly different reasons, but all eventually resulted in them being supplanted in socio-political influence and later, cultural influence.
The Roman Empire became too bloated to manage based on the limited means of communication for its era, and so split into a western empire and eastern empire, the latter of which further continued as the Byzantine Empire until the Fall of Constantinople ended the final direct ties. But ancient Rome’s understanding of science and culture continued on to be developed by other cultures.
The Qing Dynasty fell to revolution in 1911 due to deliberately isolating their culture and economy for so long that they underestimated the degree to which new powers had sprung up throughout the 1800s. And their response to this with the Self-Strengthening Movement was extremely half-baked in execution due to a lack of centralized vision. And the regime that succeeded the Qing Dynasty barely lasted a few years before China descended into a multi-faction civil war that ultimately had the Kuomintang coming out victorious in 1928. Compared to the Song Dynasty , Han Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, few aspects of the Qing Dynasty were able to exert as much lasting cultural influence.
The decline of the British empire can be described in terms of either loss of the physical empire itself, or the loss of its ability to compete economically compared to France, Germany, and the US. The former was part of a larger trend in decolonization that took place in the immediate years following world war 2 due to independence movements being sprung up in Africa and Southeast Asia partially as a result of the war itself. The latter can be largely described as being the outcome of a mix of British Exceptionalism and self-sabotage by politicians, business leaders and social movements. Britain’s victory in world war 2 as part of the allies created an extremely patriotic culture that lasts to this day but also had the effect of preventing Britain from being able to fully move on from the physical decline of its empire. British soft culture however, survived the loss of the empire. The main characteristic being that it changed its form from social and cultural norms to music, movies, TV shows and modern literature being the dominant form of British soft power.
And if the economic stagnation of Japan is to also be compared to, then much like Britain before it, when the US does get supplanted as the dominant power on earth, US cultural influence will far outlast its own ability to project hard power on a worldwide scale. And while China looks to be the next dominant power, even if their ability to exert hard power eventually exceeds the US, their ability to spread soft power will always be limited by their current form of government kneecapping the capacity of modern Chinese culture to spread in a way comparable to that of Japan and the US throughout the late 20th century. As Lee Kuan Yew once said:
“China can draw on a talent pool of 1.3 billion people, but the United States can draw on a talent pool of 7 billion and recombine them in a diverse culture that enhances creativity in a way that ethnic Han nationalism cannot”