The Trump administration’s return to power has confirmed what many on the left already knew: the rot within the American dominant class has reached its terminal phase. If the first Trump presidency was a chaotic pantomime of incompetence, corruption, and white nationalist grievance, its sequel is shaping up to be a full-throated embrace of imperial decay. This reality was laid bare at the Munich Security Conference, where JD Vance’s unhinged rant against European leaders signalled that the United States no longer even pretends to engage in serious diplomacy. As for Pete Hegseth’s remarks on NATO and Ukraine, absurdly arguing that the US should ignore European security altogether, exemplify the reckless ignorance now guiding American foreign policy.
Vance’s tirade against European allies, delivered in a setting traditionally meant for sober-minded geopolitical discussion, revealed a man entirely out of his depth (see his recent tweet about court authority). His speech, dripping with resentment, lashed out at European nations for their supposed failures1, as if it were they, and not the US, that has serially destabilised regions for the sake of capital accumulation. The speech wasn’t just laugable, it was a symptom of a dominant elite that, sensing its own decline, lashes out at old allies. This isn’t a sign of strength but of a failing empire unable to reconcile its diminishing power with the reality of multipolarity.
“The speech wasn’t just embarrassing, it was a symptom of a dominant elite that, sensing its own decline, lashes out at old allies.”
Hegseth’s anti-NATO stance, while draped in the language of anti-interventionism, is little more than crude isolationism dressed up as strategy. The far-right’s hostility toward NATO is not rooted in principled opposition to militarism but in the fantasy that the US can withdraw from entanglements in Europe without consequence. This delusion, exacerbated by Trump’s openly transactional approach, ignores the fact that US hegemony has long depended on these very military networks. The hypocrisy is glaring: the same forces that previously advocated unrestrained military spending now seek to dismantle the very structures that sustain their global influence. Trump’s recent hints at abandoning NATO, essentially greenlighting Russian expansionism, show not an administration strengthening American dominance, but one blundering into irrelevance out of sheer reactionary spite. At the same time, while stepping away from Europe and creating the conditions for Putin’s continued aggression, Trump continues to surround himself with China and Iran hawks, revealing the incoherence at the heart of his foreign policy. His administration’s geopolitical stance is not one of calculated strategy but of erratic, self-serving posturing that leaves the US directionless.
Trump’s stated desire to cut the US defence budget by half raises deeper questions about the military-industrial complex (MIC) and its entanglement with the American economy. The defence contractors who have long relied on endless war and interventionism to maintain their bloated profits would see a massive reduction in sales. How does this administration reconcile its habitual pandering to corporate interests with a policy that, if enacted, would kneecap the very entities that bankroll the right’s militarist agenda? The contradictions pile up: the same reactionaries who decry so-called globalist military entanglements have spent decades championing the unchecked expansion of the Pentagon’s budget. Now, Trump’s populist grandstanding threatens to disrupt the lucrative arrangements between the state and private arms manufacturers, unless, of course, this supposed defence reduction is little more than empty rhetoric meant to serve his latest political whim.
A Domiant Class of Reactionary Buffoons
This is what happens when an empire declines: the quality of its dominant class degenerates. The new Trump administration is not staffed by serious imperial managers but by hucksters, culture warriors, and right-wing demagogues who mistake bluster for governance. While the US dominant class has always been defined by its commitment to capital accumulation through force, its previous iterations at least understood the need for strategy. Figures like Vance and Hegseth reveals an administration more interested in performative posturing than in sustaining US hegemony in any meaningful sense.
“This is what happens when an empire declines: the quality of its dominant class degenerates. The new Trump administration is not staffed by serious imperial managers but by hucksters, culture warriors, and right-wing demagogues”
The contradictions of US imperialism are becoming unsustainable. On the one hand, Washington needs its European allies to maintain its global dominance; on the other, the far-right nationalists in Trump’s orbit see any international engagement as a betrayal of their revanchist America First fantasy. This fundamental contradiction is why the administration lurches from one incoherent position to another, incapable of resolving the crisis of US hegemony in an era where its power is waning.
A Crisis of Legitimacy
Beyond the geopolitical theatre, this administration’s incompetence is a reflection of the deeper crisis at the heart of American capitalism. The decline of US hegemony is not merely the result of Trump’s specific brand of ignorance; it is the inevitable consequence of an economic system that prioritises short-term profiteering over long-term stability. The US dominant class has hollowed out its own industrial base, impoverished its working class, and relied on military expansion as a substitute for real economic growth. Now, even the mechanisms of imperial control (alliances, diplomatic credibility2, and soft power3) are being eroded by the very reactionaries who claim to be restoring American greatness.
“Trump’s second term is not a resurgence of American power but a spectacle of its decay.”
This crisis of legitimacy will only intensify. The more the US dominant class fails to manage its own decline, the more reactionary and incompetent its leadership will become. Trump’s second term is not a resurgence of American power but a spectacle of its decay. Figures like Vance and Hegseth are not architects of a new world order; they are the jesters of a crumbling empire, performing their farcical roles as the US slips further into irrelevance.
“This crisis of legitimacy will only intensify. The more the US dominant class fails to manage its own decline, the more reactionary and incompetent its leadership will become”
For the global left, this moment should be seen not as a triumph (as hard as that may be) of the right but as an opportunity to build alternatives outside the crumbling edifice of American imperialism. The task now is not to rescue the sinking ship of US global dominance but to construct the foundations for a world beyond its ruin.
Artificial Intelligence (5) Authoritarianism (5) Books (6) Capitalism (8) China (4) Class (5) Climate Change (5) Conservative Government (34) Conspiracy Theories (4) COVID-19 (5) Creeping Fascism (12) Crime and Punishment (4) Donald J Trump (11) Economics (5) Elon Musk (6) Film (7) Finance (4) France (9) GB News (4) Imperialism (6) Israel (5) Keir Starmer (5) Labour Party (8) Marxist Theory (8) Messing Around (6) Migrants (10) Palestine (5) Police (5) Protest (12) Russia (6) Social Media (6) Suella Braverman (8) Trade Unionism (5) United States of America (25) War (9)
