美国衰落

中华人民共和国、俄罗斯、伊朗的崛起正在挑战美国的全球主导地位，是关于美国衰落争论中的一个核心因素。美国不再是唯一在世界各个地区的各个领域都占据主导地位的无争议的超级大国。根据2021年亚洲实力指数显示，在亚洲范围内，美国在文化影响力、外交影响力和防御网络方面仍然处于领先地位，但在经济能力和经济关系这两个参数上落后于中国。

美国军事优势的持续缩小、预算赤字不断加大、地缘政治上的过度扩张、道德及社会的转变，都被认为是美国衰落的可能原因。一些评论员将这种衰落与特朗普政府的政策联系起来，其他人则认为特朗普的崛起只是加速了美国领导力、稳定性和权力的衰落。

一些学者指，美国衰落的理论长期以来一直都是美国文化的一部分。在2021年国会大厦骚乱后，媒体对1019名美国人进行了民意调查，其中79%的受访者表示美国正在“分崩离析”；同时，类似比例的受访者表示，他们“为自己是美国人而自豪”。

2025年，美国政治学学者约瑟夫·奈尔表示：“如果说‘国际秩序正在被侵蚀’，那么美国的国内政治与中国的崛起同样都是其成因。问题在于：我们是否正在进入一个美国衰落的全新时期？或者说，特朗普第二届政府对美国世纪体制和联盟的攻击，将成为另一次周期性衰落？关于这一切，我们可能要等到2029年才知道答案。”

American decline is the idea that the United States is diminishing in power on a relative basis geopolitically, militarily, financially, economically, and technologically. It can also refer to absolute declines demographically, socially, morally, spiritually, culturally, in matters of healthcare, and/or on environmental issues. There has been debate over the extent of the decline and whether it is relative or absolute. Empirical research on public opinion has found that responses on metrics such as national pride, faith in government, belief in the "American Dream", and belief in the future of the country, reached their historic lowest in the 2020s-present.

Shrinking military advantages, deficit spending, geopolitical overreach, and a shift in moral, social, and behavioral conditions have been associated with American decline. The ascent of China as a potential superpower emerged as a central concern in discussions about the decline of American influence since the late 2010s, with some scholars suggesting that China has the potential to challenge the United States' current position as the world's leading superpower, though other scholars have criticized this view.

Scholars say that the perception of decline, or declinism, has long been part of American culture. Rhetoric of American decline was prevalent in the 1950s, 1970s and 1980s, as well as during the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020s. However, recent public opinion polls conducted in the 2020s have found that Americans' beliefs in the future of the country have reached their lowest point since public tracking began.

Assessment

According to Jeet Heer, U.S. hegemony has always been supported by three pillars: "economic strength, military might, and the soft power of cultural dominance." According to American diplomat Eric S. Edelman, the declinists, or those who believe America is in decline, have been "consistently wrong" in the past. However, American political scientist Aaron Friedberg cautioned that just because the declinists were wrong in the past does not mean they will be incorrect in their future predictions, and that some of the arguments by the declinists deserve to be taken seriously.

Political scientist Matthew Kroenig argues Washington has "followed the same basic, three-step geopolitical plan since 1945.

Comparisons with earlier states

Since the mid-20th century, imperial decline and fall is the most popular theme in imperiology and the only widely accepted case of historical inevitability. Robert Conquest explains the phenomenon psychologically: "This is usually a set of false parallels designed to show that America is inevitably heading for a fall."

Samuel P. Huntington noticed that predictions of American decline have been part of American politics since the late 1950s.

Commentators

Columnist Charles Krauthammer: "If the Roman empire had declined at this rate, you'd be reading this column in Latin."

Philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri theorize in the mid-1990s about an ongoing transition to an emergent construct created among ruling powers, which the authors call "Empire".

American historian Morris Berman wrote a trilogy of books published between 2000 and 2011 about the decline of American civilization.

Igor Panarin, a political scientist and graduate of the Higher Military Command School of Telecommunications of the KGB, predicted that, starting in 1998, the US would collapse into six parts in 2010. He also wrote The Crash of the Dollar and the Disintegration of the USA (2009).

Public opinion

A 2019 survey carried out by Pew Research Center shows that a majority of Americans predicted the U.S. economy to be weaker in 2050. The survey also found that a majority of the people thought the U.S. would be "a country with a burgeoning national debt, a wider gap between the rich and the poor and a workforce threatened by automation."

In a poll conducted January 11–13, 2021, of 1,019 Americans, shortly after the January 6 Capitol attack, 79% of those surveyed said that America is "falling apart".

According to a September 2025 WSJ-NORC poll, the percentage of US citizens who believe that hard work leads to economic gain fell to 25%, a record low in initial surveys dating back to 1987.