The Paradox of MAGA: How Trump May Be Accelerating America's Decline
By Sedat Laçiner
Most people assume that by invoking "MAGA," Trump is celebrating America's greatness. In reality, however, the slogan is built on the assumption—and indeed the assertion—that the United States is no longer a great power.
The key lies in a single word: "again." If a country must be made great again, it implies that it has lost the greatness it once possessed. By championing MAGA, Trump is effectively arguing that America has ceased to be "great" and that he alone can restore its former status.
Put differently, Trump's message is: "America used to be great. It isn't anymore. I will make it great again."
Previous American presidents openly acknowledged that the country faced serious challenges. When Barack Obama declared, "Yes We Can," he was referring to those very problems, while expressing confidence that the United States possessed the capacity to overcome them.
Joe Biden's principal campaign slogan in the 2020 presidential election was "Build Back Better" (BBB). The phrase encapsulated his promise to rebuild America—to create a country that would be stronger and more prosperous in areas such as the economy, infrastructure, healthcare, climate policy, and social justice.
Both Obama's "Yes We Can" and Biden's "Build Back Better" recognized that the United States had major problems requiring urgent attention. Yet, in modern American political history, no president other than Donald Trump has governed on the explicit premise that the United States is no longer a "great nation."
In fact, through his relentless use of the MAGA slogan, Trump unintentionally transformed the long-standing International Relations concept of American decline into a much more dramatic public perception—that of American collapse.
FROM DECLINE TO COLLAPSE?
During the 1970s, the notion of American decline occupied only a marginal place in discussions about the United States. It was Paul Kennedy's landmark book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), that firmly established and popularized the concept within the field of International Relations. At the heart of Kennedy's argument was his influential theory of imperial overstretch.
According to Kennedy, great powers throughout history tend to follow a recurring pattern. First, they rise through economic growth and technological innovation. Second, they expand their influence across the globe by establishing military bases, forging alliances, and engaging in military interventions. Third, their strategic and military commitments eventually outgrow their economic capacity—a condition Kennedy described as "imperial overstretch". Finally, this imbalance leads to a period of relative decline.
Kennedy argued that, by the late 1980s, the United States was confronting precisely this danger. Throughout the Cold War, Washington had constructed a vast global military network, maintained extensive alliance systems, and intervened in conflicts across multiple regions—from Vietnam to the Persian Gulf while sustaining an enormous military presence throughout Europe. Over time, Kennedy argued, the financial burden of these worldwide commitments was eroding America's productive capacity and weakening its long-term economic strength.
Meanwhile, economic competitors such as Japan and Western Europe were expanding rapidly. In Kennedy's view, while these rivals were strengthening their productive economies, the United States was becoming increasingly weighed down by the costs of maintaining its global empire.
If these trends continued, Kennedy predicted, the United States would eventually follow the historical trajectory of earlier great powers—including Britain, Spain, and the Ottoman Empire—which had likewise overextended themselves before entering periods of decline.
Throughout the 1990s, concerns about America's relative decline resurfaced as Japan was widely perceived as an emerging economic challenger. Yet during the Clinton administration, many observers believed that the United States had actually reached the height of its global power. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, America stood as the world's sole superpower, unmatched in economic, political, and military influence.
THE RISE OF THE DRAGON
The International Relations scholars of the 1990s were mistaken in their predictions about Japan. It was not Japan—or even Western Europe—that would ultimately emerge as America's principal challenger, but China. In many respects, the United States and the broader Western world helped cultivate their own future rival. The policies that integrated China into the global economy enabled it to achieve one of the most extraordinary transformations in modern history. China rapidly advanced across virtually every sector, becoming the world's second-largest economy and a formidable military power. By the early 2000s, the dominant debate in American foreign policy had shifted to two closely intertwined issues: the decline of the United States and the spectacular rise of the Chinese dragon.
The period following the 2008 global financial crisis marked a new and far more anxious phase in discussions about American decline. After costly and controversial military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States had suffered not only enormous financial losses but also significant damage to its international credibility. Many observers argued that Washington's military interventions had weakened both its economic position and its global standing.
The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the depth of America's dependence on China. From toys and consumer electronics to computers and critical manufacturing components, the crisis revealed how deeply integrated—and vulnerable—U.S. supply chains had become. Many economists argued that the American economy was not necessarily performing poorly in absolute terms; rather, it was expanding at a much slower pace than China's. Between 2008 and 2026, successive U.S. administrations increasingly concluded that, if left unchecked, China would eventually overtake the United States. As a result, rather than focusing exclusively on making America stronger, Washington devoted growing attention to slowing China's rise and constraining its economic and technological expansion.
During the Biden administration, this strategic outlook became even more pronounced. Washington's priorities included reducing America's dependence on China and other foreign suppliers in manufacturing, rebuilding domestic industrial capacity, restoring the country's competitiveness in advanced manufacturing, and bringing critical industries back to the United States. At the same time, the administration sought to preserve America's technological leadership in strategic sectors such as artificial intelligence and semiconductors while restricting China's access to cutting-edge technologies in which the United States still enjoyed a decisive advantage.
In other words, despite their sharp political differences, Trump and Biden shared remarkably similar strategic objectives in both economic and foreign policy. They also arrived at many of the same conclusions regarding America's long-term competitive position. Indeed, the Biden administration dramatically increased tariffs on a wide range of Chinese products. It also introduced sweeping restrictions designed to limit China's access to advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence technologies, and other high-end technologies regarded as critical to future geopolitical competition.
During his first term (2017–2021), President Trump had already made the semiconductor industry a central pillar of his "America First" agenda and his broader strategy of reshoring critical industries. He repeatedly urged companies such as Intel and TSMC to build semiconductor fabrication plants in the United States, arguing that technological competition with China and concerns over national security required America to reclaim its leadership in one of the world's most strategically important industries.
Although Trump was the first to raise the issue publicly, he failed to translate his rhetoric into concrete policy. Biden, by contrast, institutionalized the effort to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the United States by signing the CHIPS and Science Act in 2022, which allocated approximately $52 billion in incentives to support domestic chip production.
As a result, major semiconductor manufacturers—including Intel, TSMC, Samsung, and GlobalFoundries—have invested in new fabrication facilities across the United States, with major projects in states such as Arizona, Ohio, and Texas.
In other words, there is a remarkable degree of convergence between Trump's economic diagnosis and rhetoric and the policy agenda pursued by Democratic administrations. Both sides largely agree that the United States is experiencing a period of relative decline in key areas of economic competitiveness, scientific innovation, and technological leadership. Nor is this challenge confined to China's rise. A growing number of countries are now competing successfully in sectors that were once dominated almost exclusively by the United States and Europe. In this new global environment, America must not only improve its overall economic performance but also preserve its leadership in strategic industries such as artificial intelligence.
If Trump and the Democrats share similar assessments on so many fundamental issues, why, then, does Trump appear so fundamentally different?
The answer lies primarily in his governing style.
Trump consistently surprises allies and adversaries alike with abrupt, sweeping, and often unexpected decisions. He appears to regard this as an effective negotiating strategy: first intimidate, then compel the other side to settle on terms more favorable than they had originally intended to accept.
Such a "Trumpian" approach may prove effective in private business negotiations or local commercial disputes. On the international stage, however, it has often produced the opposite effect, inflicting considerable damage on American interests while undermining the very policies Trump seeks to advance.
His tariff policy provides perhaps the clearest example. For roughly a year and a half, President Trump has sought to use tariffs as a tool to revive American manufacturing and encourage companies to relocate production back to the United States. Yet the implementation has been deeply problematic. His administration has struggled to establish a durable legal foundation for many of the tariff increases, leading to prolonged litigation in U.S. courts. Internationally, the uncertainty surrounding his tariff policy has strained relations with America's closest friends and allies, many of whom have found it increasingly difficult to anticipate Washington's next move.
Barack Obama once observed, "The United States is like a large battleship or a massive ocean liner. You cannot turn it around on a dime. Changing course takes time." With this analogy, Obama was emphasizing that American foreign policy—shaped by an enormous bureaucracy, extensive global commitments, and complex domestic political constraints—is inherently resistant to sudden and dramatic shifts. Meaningful change, he argued, must be gradual rather than abrupt.
President Trump appears to embrace the exact opposite philosophy. From the first days of his presidency, he has attempted to steer the immense ship of the American state less like the captain of an ocean liner than someone turning the handlebars of a bicycle, rapidly shifting direction from one moment to the next. Such sudden and aggressive movements of the rudder do not merely unsettle those sailing alongside the vessel; they risk destabilizing the ship itself. In this case, that ship is the United States.
Indeed, this is precisely what has unfolded. Trump's abrupt decisions, unexpected reversals, and frequent policy U-turns have made the United States appear less predictable and, consequently, less reliable—even in the eyes of its closest allies, including fellow NATO members.
DESTROYING THE PILLARS OF AMERICAN PRIMACY
Most importantly, Trump entered office promising to restore American strength and once again make the United States the world's preeminent power. Yet the very premise of that promise rests on the assumption that America is no longer a great power. In doing so, he inadvertently accepts the proposition that the United States has already lost the status he pledges to restore.
Power, after all, is not measured solely by military capabilities or economic output; it also depends heavily on perception. America's global influence has always rested, in part, on the widespread belief that it is an exceptional and indispensable power. Rather than reinforcing that perception, Trump's relentless emphasis on "Make America Great Again" risks conveying the opposite message: that America is no longer great. Instead of strengthening the country's image, the slogan can unintentionally weaken one of the most important foundations of American power—its reputation and the global perception of its strength.
Secondly, President Trump, through his highly unconventional—and often reality-defying—style of governance, is dismantling the political, economic, and legal legacy that the United States has painstakingly built over the past century, if not over the past 250 years. His policies are not merely disrupting America's foreign trade relationships; they are also eroding the alliance structures, international institutions, and diplomatic networks that Washington spent decades constructing and sustaining.
THE FORGOTTEN FOUNDATION OF GREAT POWER: MORAL LEGITIMACY
Thirdly, every great power in history has possessed a set of moral ideals that helped legitimize and sustain its greatness. Even in antiquity, states did not seek to dominate others through military force alone. The Roman Empire, for example, justified its expansion by claiming to spread civilization and justice. The territories under Roman rule were said to enjoy peace and stability under the principle of Pax Romana. The Ottoman Empire portrayed itself as a guardian of justice, while the British Empire framed its global mission in terms of bringing civilization.
The United States, which emerged as the world's sole superpower after the Cold War, attained that position not merely because of its military or economic strength, but because it presented itself as the defender of freedom, democracy, and human rights. President Trump, however, has shown little regard for these humanitarian values. One of his first actions upon returning to office was to drastically curtail humanitarian assistance to many of the world's poorer countries. At the same time, the methods employed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have become so aggressive that, in certain respects, the United States increasingly resembles countries with fragile democracies rather than the democratic model it once claimed to embody.
For decades, American democracy and its institutions served as a global model. The American story inspired generations of people living under authoritarian governments or in developing nations. To many around the world, the United States represented the promise of liberty, constitutional government, and individual rights. Admittedly, America's image as the global champion of freedom had already been weakened by controversial interventions in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Yet, under President Trump, the very idea of "model America" has suffered perhaps its most profound blow.
NO LONGER GREAT NO LONGER A MODEL
Today's America under Trump increasingly risks becoming a cautionary tale rather than a source of inspiration. From Latin America to Africa and Asia, authoritarian leaders no longer regard Washington as a credible defender of democracy or human rights. On the contrary, as numerous examples in Latin America have demonstrated, the Trump administration has often appeared more willing to cultivate close relations with authoritarian governments than with democratic partners.
Yet lofty moral principles are not simply a matter of ethical responsibility; they are also a strategic asset. From the Roman Empire to the era of Pax Americana, no great power has been able to sustain its global leadership through military and economic strength alone. Durable influence has always depended upon the ability to combine hard power with moral legitimacy. The United States prevailed over the Soviet Union in the Cold War not only because of its superior economic and military capabilities, but also because it was widely regarded as the leader of the Free World and the standard-bearer of liberal democratic values.
In short, President Trump, while claiming to "Make America Great Again," is systematically weakening many of the very foundations upon which American greatness was built. More troubling still, this approach not only diminishes America's own influence but also sends a damaging signal to the rest of the world by encouraging authoritarian leaders and emboldening dictators. If the United States intends to preserve its position as the world's leading power, it must continue to offer a more compelling moral vision than its principal strategic rivals, including China and Russia.
Prof. Dr. Sedat Laçiner, Current Articles, 12 August 2026
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