Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan with ammunition ship USNS Flint. Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Navy.

Michael Lind August 21, 2016

The United States is in long-term relative decline. In absolute terms, the America of the future will be richer. But because other countries like China and India, and other regions like Africa, are growing more rapidly, America’s share of global wealth will decline. So will America’s share of global military power, which, in the industrial era, is loosely rather than perfectly correlated with relative economic weight.

Primacy, as a concept in international relations, can refer either to polarity (a country’s share of global economic and military resources) or to hegemony (a specialized function within an interdependent international community). Whether defined as polarity or hegemony, American global primacy is coming to an end.

Projections of national shares in GDP in 2050 by think tanks, investment banks and consulting firms tend to converge…