Andrew Williams
January 22nd, 2026
American hegemony has been in decline for a while.
That decline didn’t start with the current administration.
The current administration is a symptom.
And the danger is that this administration is accelerating the decline by turning a slow erosion of credibility into a frantic, coercive scramble — the kind you see when an empire senses it is losing its grip.
Here’s the business translation: the thing that made American power (and American business) uniquely advantaged was never “virtue.” It was leverage, legitimacy, and institutions that looked stable enough for the world to price them as safe.
When a superpower starts relying on coercion instead of legitimacy, it’s not projecting strength. It’s signaling weakness.
And in late-stage empires, weakness doesn’t usually show up as humility. It shows up as bravado, threats, intimidation, and forced compliance.
Here are three signals that this is what we’re watching.
When a country believes it can’t win inside the system it built, it starts trying to seize outcomes outside the system.
This is not “strong leadership.” It’s the behavior of a power that can no longer reliably produce results through consent, credibility, and negotiated advantage.
For business, the signal is simple: if coercion becomes normal statecraft, then everything gets repriced.
Risk premiums rise. Rival blocs coordinate faster. “Strategic autonomy” becomes rational. And the incentive to build alternatives to the US-centered system stops being ideology and starts being risk management.
A confident power does not need to flirt with territorial acquisition.
That kind of talk is what happens when a country is trying to substitute raw will for actual influence.
In business terms: it’s a company that can’t compete on product anymore, so it starts leaning on choke points.