PNN – When, contrary to the grand narrative of America, one individual dominates the decisions of this country, the scenario of decline of its empire is drawn.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, the United States, at the height of its rise, was not just a huge military or economic arsenal that devoured markets and redefined the maps of influence, but a carefully constructed image of a state whose deepest power was said to lie in its institutions: in its ability to curb the unilateral decisions of individuals, regulate decisions, and prevent emotional feelings from becoming a global destiny.
Trump’s Destruction of the American Power Narrative
This was the great American narrative: One president may come and another may go, but the state remains, deeper than the occupant of the White House (the president), more rooted than the emotions of the moment, and more capable of transforming power into order, not chaos.
But what the world is seeing in Washington today upends that image. In America today, we are not just dealing with a loud, narcissistic, or show-offy president, but with a scene that shows, with rare rudeness, that a government that has always presented itself as the pinnacle of institutionalism sometimes behaves as if it were governed by personal temperament, not institutional logic.
This is the picture of America now: a president who wakes up in the morning, drinks his coffee, sends out a tweet that ignites markets, policies, and coalitions, and then hours later sends another message that contradicts or nullifies the first, as if the entire world is held hostage between the emotions of the morning and the restlessness of the night.
The main question here is about the meaning of what is happening at the heart of the empire itself. For the issue is, in essence, not just a loose form of communication, but a political and historical revelation of a state in which the individual (referring to US President Donald Trump) has begun to compete with the institution, improvise with planning, and make noise with that cold intelligence that has always been said to be one of the secrets of American superiority.
The Age of American Absurdity and the Great Transformation of the World
When this happens in an ordinary country, it is a crisis of governance; but when it occurs in a power that still wields the most extensive network of military, financial, and political influence in the world, it becomes a global issue that affects the fate of entire nations and continents.
Here, in fact, the scene goes beyond politics to something like a great absurdity. But this time, this absurdity is not written in philosophical texts, or even in Tawfiq al-Hakim’s imaginations of a world in which logic is disrupted, but is written directly on maps of the world; an absurdity that the American empire today emits from its center, not from its surroundings; an absurdity that does not stop at America’s internal confusion, but simultaneously confuses allies, enemies, markets, and battlefields.
When the world’s greatest power reaches this level of daily contradiction between a message and its counter-message, between threats and retreats, we are faced not only with a political confusion but with a crack in the very image of the center of power.
Previously, a fundamental part of the United States’ credibility rested on the fact that its decisions, even in the most violent moments, came from a state apparatus, not from the whims and passions of an individual. Previously, the world had treated Washington not as a just or moral power, but as a power that was understandable and predictable, at least to a minimum.
But today, one of the most dangerous developments is that this predictability is beginning to erode, and the image of a “government that knows what it wants” is receding in favor of another: a government that has excess power, but is gradually losing the order and meaning of that power.
The Declining US Empire
Here lies the essence of the imperial impasse. Empires begin to decline not only when they are militarily defeated or overrun by their enemies, but also when they can no longer govern themselves with the wisdom with which they built their glory.
When the display of power replaces its proper use, when noise replaces coordination, when the distance between the state and the individual erodes to the point where strategic decision seems more like a spur-of-the-moment reaction or a mood response; it is precisely at this point that imperial pride changes from a sign of dominance to a sign of disorder and decline begins.
The United States is, without a doubt, still a world power, and no sane person can deny its military, financial, or technological weight, or the depth of its coalition networks. But the point here is not to deny power, but to understand the nature of the moment. An empire can be very powerful, and yet enter a period of decline. Perhaps the tragedy of great empires is that they continue to behave as if their heyday was still going on, even as they begin to lose their internal equilibrium.
This is what makes the current American scene so significant: Washington is trying to act as the only pole that is not being reviewed; while the gaps in its center are growing, and it is becoming more difficult to distinguish between the government’s decision and the president’s feelings.
Hence, talk of unipolarity shaking does not seem like just an ideological wish among Washington’s enemies, but a reading that the realities themselves impose, and the world is no longer experiencing the pure moment of American power that existed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Today, China is rising rapidly, Russia is fighting to define its place, regional powers are expanding their margin for maneuver, and traditional U.S. allies have become less confident and more concerned about the volatility of the American center of decision-making. Of course, global multipolarity is not yet established, but what is certain is that the confident American unipolar stage no longer exists as it once did.
More dangerously, this transformation stems not only from the rise of others, but also from America’s own confusion. When the center is shaken, the world does not need the fall of an empire to feel that an entire era is coming to an end.