Is the United States on its way to losing its hegemonic status?
On the heels of President Trump pulling out of talks with North Korea over nuclear disarmament in the Korean peninsula, the United States' pending withdrawal from the Paris agreement (coming soon! ... the day after the next presidential election), and the United States' unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, combined with ongoing Russian and Iranian leadership in resolving the Syrian civil war and Chinese leadership in talks with North Korea, we seem to be heading toward an ambiguous point in international geopolitics.
So this question is simple and nasty: Is the United States on its way to losing its status as the unquestioned dominant world power in the international order?
If it is on its way off the top of the food chain, who will challenge it? Are we returning to a cold war-style era or are the lines shifting and different? If the United States is not on its way to losing its dominant status, how might it maintain its footing in a world that seems increasingly disillusioned with it?
I think we're finding ourselves in the same position as the British might have in the 1940's and 50's. Although still a powerful and influential nation, most of their colonies that they formerly commanded wanted firm independence for themselves, and increasingly they found themselves as more of an influencer then a dictator. I think the US is now finding ourselves in that position; many countries or organizations that used to take our influence without question now want to decide and settle their own affairs. That doesn't mean we'll be weak or insignificant, but we are going to have to really work on our cooperation skills.
I think it's interesting though that whereas the British's losses were caused primarily by external forces, such as WW1 & 2, the US's has been primarily self-caused.
The British analogy is interesting to me because if you look at the GDPs of the countries in the early 20th century, it's very clear that GDP was a leading indicator of what nations were about to ascend to international leadership and which were about to descend. The conflicts were had the huge subtext involving the different windows of maximized GDPs, and making the most of those windows for geopolitical gain.
And while WWII effectively created an end of the British colonial order, it was not until the Suez crisis in 1956 where the UK was made to realize just how far it had fallen as a world power that it (along with France and Israel) was now taking its direction from Eisenhower and the United States.
You're saying that you don't see GDP or world crisis events as being the main reasons for a shift in the US' power in international politics?
Eh, partially. On one hand I think that certain events like the Iraq war as a whole have shaken the rest of the world's confidence in our abilities, but yeah, I'd say most of it was caused by our perceptions of ourselves. Maybe this is a little too easy, but look at Trump's attitude to dealing with foreign countries and most people's apathy to it. There's no strong reason or event why we had to leave the Paris Climate Accord and give up our chance to influence the standards, for example. Another example is the Trans Pacific Partnership; had the controversial sections on copyright and international regulations been removed or at least revised, I don't think most Americans would have opposed it, and it would have kept our position as the dominant trading power in the Pacific. Instead we're finding ourselves left out of it, and our agriculture / livestock industries are expected to take significant hits as a result. The key isn't that these things happened, but more of how little most people care; even on the Democratic side for example, you don't see much passion for rejoining a revised TPP or intervening more directly in Syria. It's clear (to me at least) that most Americans don't prioritize or are indifferent about international power or influence anymore, whereas in the UK most people wanted to remain the #1 power. Heck, even on our cabinet's many scandals, few people talk about the massive loss of our diplomatic personnel over the last year, even though it's arguably the most severely damaged part of the executive branch.
Small quibble here, but we haven't yet left the Paris Climate Accord. The White House said they would hold to the agreed earliest possible date to leave, which is the day after the next presidential election (so while Trump is still in office, but maybe as a lame duck).
I have a somewhat different interpretation of what the TPP was about, since it was largely wrested on getting the region to agree on trading standards to pressure China to hold to those standards too (especially with the US).
I also think you might be misreading the US electorate's concern for the TPP. I think Unionists generally are opposed to trade agreements having seen what free trade with Mexico has done to its membership rates. While the internet types who are also opposed to the rollback of Internet Neutrality regulation might have been upset about copyright regulations under the TPP, most other people just didn't care.
Final point on the TPP is that trade agreements have far less overall impact on a larger nation's economy than on smaller economies. NAFTA was found to have a very, very slight positive impact on the United States' overall GDP (meanwhile, various sectors in both Mexico and the United States underwent rapid and painful change). I doubt that the overall impact on the United States' agriculture industry will be very large either.
You don't see democratic fervor for revisiting the TPP because the agreement itself split the left (see also: Unionists). You did see Trump himself seeming to revisit it on the Republican side, but that is about as likely to go anywhere as North Korea is to turn into a good-faith actor in the current international order.
I feel like this is not true. Not only are there very popular books from the likes of Ronan Farrow (War on Peace) heavily emphasize this particular trend under Rex Tillerson and goes into great detail on the why, interviewing Rex Tillerson directly.
Now maybe it's fair to say that not enough people are talking about the decimation of careered diplomats, just as bureaucrats in just about every major agency are finding their positions hotly contested. But that's a different order from "few people."
Current politics in the US (but also past ones) are being seen with more and more disdain everywhere else. But I think everyone recognizes the strength of the country and I don't see it losing much of its influence in the near future, but maybe some of the respect other countries have had.
In any case, I think the power shift towards East Asia has been going on for a couple of decades now, and it's now solidifying especially in China's grip.
China is leading the AI field, the renewable energy deployment, economic growth (though slower now) and it's investing heavily in Africa and South America (without the interventionist lines of the US), not to talk about its influence in Southeast Asia.
I believe one of the few sectors that are still untouched by China are cultural products and exportable values, of which the US is still king (I'm talking about art, media, fiction, music, etc.) along, maybe, with the EU in regards to values. For one, the cultural production is very limited in China by censorship and a technology or pragmatism focused education as well as a general discouragement of critical and individual thinking and also the language barrier is certainly very high with Mandarin and it makes it also difficult to know everything that is going on there. Regarding values, their strategies are not well accepted in the West or even in many places in Asia, although that is probably changing as well, as neighbors see how it is working out for the development of the country.
In any case, they have the luxury of being able to ignore the rest of the world to a great extent (as the US has done in some aspects), since their domestic market is huge and there is no need to justify most of their questionable decisions since most people there just prefer to avoid problems, make little noise and be as comfortable as possible, whether it is because they still remember their turbulent recent past or because they perceive the increased access to quality of life improvements (people can make money, and money is happiness, moreso than anything else).
I am a little curious, what makes you think of Venezuela as a power...?