Episode
Live! What's Causing America's Imperial Decline? | Ep. 285
- Podcast
- The Un-Diplomatic Podcast
- Published
- Feb 10, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 886
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.undiplomaticpodcast.com/episodes/285-K1Z7k3Zu
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Summary
Recorded on location in the wilds of New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. Why is America declining? Grand strategists, pundits, and scholars have been debating the best label for US foreign policy during the Trump presidency: illiberal hegemony; neo-royalism; reactionary nationalism; predatory hegemony. But none of these labels offer an account of themselves. Why is the US engaged in predatory behavior abroad? Why has American hegemony ended? The answer can be found in imperialism and its causes. A crisis of capitalism is accelerating imperial decline, which is birthing what you might call the Age of Primitive Accumulation. Geopolitics has fundamentally changed, and if we don't recognize the shift as a turn to imperialist foreign policy--which facilitates primitive accumulation--we will fail to understand and respond to the darkness washing over the world.