One Trump move brought the 'American Age' to an end: security expert

Since the end of World War Two, the United States has been the dominant nation in the world due to its military, economic and diplomatic power. But according to a leading global security expert, President Donald Trump has hastened the “American Age” to its end, and while a number of his policies have contributed to U.S. decline, none have exposed the country’s diminished capacity like the spiraling war with Iran. This is according to strategic studies professor Phillips P. O’Brien, who on Wednesday wrote in the Atlantic that Trump has brought the end of American dominance within “plain sight.”

“In the past six months,” writes O’Brien, “America’s power — long exemplified by the world’s best warfighting equipment and most highly trained military personnel, a global network of bases and logistics systems, and military and diplomatic partnerships with all corners of the world — has proved insufficient to defeat Iran, a repressive, economically stagnant regime armed with cheap missiles and drones.” O’Brien asserts that while Trump did not erode U.S. capabilities on his own, his “war with Iran has revealed just how the underlying dynamics of global power have shifted — and just how much American might has decayed.”

According to O’Brien, there is much evidence of this. For example, Iran no longer fears being overwhelmed militarily, and its cheap drones and missiles have destroyed military bases and air defense installations across the region. This has disrupted supply chains, reduced U.S. military presence, and led to a major drop in morale. Now the U.S. has outright abandoned key military sites across the Middle East. When one service member asked Admiral Daryl Caudle about retrieving personal items from a major base in Bahrain, Caudle admitted, “We’re not getting back in there anytime soon. I just want to be completely honest with that.” All of this has prompted the U.S. military to “reconsider” its presence in the Gulf entirely.

O’Brien notes that these issues have resulted in a cascading effect, writing, “To maintain its military effort against Iran, the United States has had to strip the western Pacific of vital equipment. The Trump administration finally relieved the Abraham Lincoln last month; taking its place in the Arabian Sea was USS George Washington, which is normally based in Japan. Its normal task is to discourage military action by China — a deterrence that is now greatly weakened.” The war has also depleted stockpiles of weapons that are essential to deterring China and Russia, while declining manufacturing capacity in the U.S. has made it impossible to catch back up.

In the past, says O’Brien, the U.S. could rely on allies to amplify its own power, but no longer. Trump “perceives governments that have followed American leadership for decades as free riders, annoyances, even hindrances,” and has done everything he can to disrupt these vital diplomatic ties. He’s withdrawn military support for Europe, launched a trade war with Canada, and brushed off South Korea, and as a result, all of these allies are now looking for security and economic solutions that exclude the United States.

What’s more, there may be no turning back. According to O’Brien, “Even if the United States tries to revert to more of its earlier way of doing business, recent events suggest that its global reach will decrease.” In any case, U.S. decline has gone from being almost unthinkable to starkly apparent. “As recently as February, few experts would have predicted that the United States — a global colossus for more than 80 years — would end up so hamstrung by Iran.” In the face of this disaster, however, O’Brien says it’s impossible to avoid drawing an obvious conclusion: “The American age has come to an end.”