‘The decaying American empire’ argument is disputable. The comparison with the collapse of the Soviet Union misses the different economic structures of the two countries. The US economic power has not been experiencing a long term stagnation, for example.
Actually, the argument should be the way around: in 1980s there was no ‘whip of external necessity’ compelling the US to outcompete the Soviet Union. The latter was not an economic threat to the US. Today China is the ‘external whip’ but to an already more powerful American economy – a dynamic one in terms of capital-intensive industries, productivity and an array of industrially-advanced allies and subordinates.
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