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FIGHTING TO SHAPE THE NEXT WORLD ORDER  
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Max Elbaum
July 22, 2026
Convergence
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_ Even in decline, the US will play a big role in global affairs.
With control over the trajectory of US politics and the map of world
power now up for grabs, the Left has an opportunity to influence both.
_

, Kimmie Dearest

 

_Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links to __Convergence’s
Bookshop_ [[link removed]]_. 10% of
purchases made through our bookshop support our movement media work._

he US failure to win the Iran War is the most obvious sign that
Washington’s capacity to dominate the globe is waning. But
Washington retains immense military power and substantial economic
clout. What policies the US government pursues in the final years of
Trump 2.0 and after will have an enormous impact on what replaces the
now-ruptured Washington-dominated world order.

The challenge—and opportunity—facing the Left is to make sure that
US policies are not determined solely by the intra-elite battle
between the “America First” MAGA bloc and a Democratic Party
leadership still trapped in a Cold War mindset. We can galvanize
support for a compelling alternative if we (1) are clear-eyed about
the ways US power is and is not diminished; (2) are realistic about
the difficulties of doing politics in a declining empire; (3) grasp
the factors that favor progressive advance; and (4) promote a vision
of a transformed role for the US in the world that addresses the most
urgent needs of the global majority and can be realized given the
balance of forces in today’s rapidly changing world.

US decline and US power co-exist

The introduction to the first issue of a new journal, _Phenomenal
World_
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captures the complexity of a moment in which US global power is
declining but the guardians of the US empire retain unique strengths.
The argument is worth an extended quotation:

_Are we at the end of the American Century? The question looms over
the turbulent global politics of this millennium—and, over the past
eighteen months, has yielded answers that take the form of a seeming
paradox. On the one hand, the United States appears as a waning
hegemon, accelerating the transition away from its own unipolar era.
On the other, each unprecedented shock reaffirms Washington’s unique
privilege to directly reshape the world…_

_The United States is “__forfeiting its role as the leader of the
free world_
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while “termites are slowly__ feasting away at the foundations of the
dollar’s dominance_
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On the other side of the ledger, a parade of extraterritorial military
and economic violence coincides with __blissed out financial returns_
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$1.5 trillion defense budget proposal, the largest IPO in history, and
related dreams of a new era of AI-induced primacy. The empire is in
free fall, but also hanging steady; its claim to legitimacy has been
shredded, but its extreme authority prevails._

_Embarrassments of a sundowning autocrat, ruptured diplomatic
alliances, and strategic defeat in Iran notwithstanding, who but Uncle
Sam could incinerate girls’ schools, assassinate cabinets, bankrupt
aid organizations, kidnap sitting presidents, and wage world-bending
economic war?_

 
The punchline is that even in decline the US will play a major
role—perhaps even the dominant one—in shaping the next world
order.

Empires in decline tend to go down hard

Empires in decline have historically tended to go down hard. They wage
losing [[link removed]] but very bloody
wars. They furnish fertile soil for reactionary movements aiming to
restore the lost glory of a (usually mythic) past. Such movements gin
up “blood-and-soil” racist nationalism aiming at preserving or
restoring social hierarchies. Their demagogic leaders demonize
vulnerable communities and political opponents who allegedly
“infect” the body politic and whose very existence is allegedly
responsible for the country’s decline.

 
It’s all there in MAGA today. This is largely the reason MAGA has
been able to take control of the Republican Party and seize the
initiative from a complacent and complicit Democratic Party
leadership. Even as Trump’s popularity tanks, the fierce partisans
of MAGA pathologies retain deep roots in white America—white
Evangelical churches in particular—and are not going away any time
soon.

An insurgency driven by the “Third World Within”

Fortunately, other factors indicate the potential for the US to break
the general historical pattern of reactionary political blocs leading
empires in decline.

First, this country’s large and growing population of people of
color has a strong basis to identify with peoples abroad who have been
negatively impacted by the militarism and racism of the US empire.
They are connected to homelands in Asia, Africa, or Latin America via
past or present kinship ties, and face structures of white supremacy
that stand in the way of achieving full “Americanness.” And these
structures are now being reinforced as the empire’s power wanes: the
MAGA-packed Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act; MAGA
ideologues spew racism-permeated claims that urban areas are rife with
voter fraud
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and Trump 2.0 continues its furious anti-immigrant campaign and flanks
it with rhetoric claiming “heritage Americans” are the only
first-class citizens. These are the material reasons why communities
of color—the “Third World Within”
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(not immune) to restore-lost-glory/make-America-great-again thinking
than the white population. Of course it takes political work to move
an anti-imperialist agenda in any sector, but it is no accident that
past and present movements for racial and immigrant justice, the Black
Freedom Movement in the first place, lean toward internationalism.

Second, the US has a rich history of antiwar, solidarity, and
anti-imperialist movements, which remain reference points for
significant sections of the population despite persistent ruling-class
efforts to erase them from the country’s collective memory. The
recent upsurge for Palestinian rights has rekindled interest in the
anti-Vietnam War movement, the movement to end South African
apartheid, and the “world’s second superpower” protests against
the war against Iraq. The Left can draw important lessons from these
movements that can help us understand why they have not yet been
translated into a durable, institutionalized
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anti-empire political force. And for both the Left and the broad
populace, the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
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sanitize his radicalism—stands as a reminder that US domestic and
foreign policies are interconnected.

Third, an especially high proportion of conspiracy theorists,
grifters, and incompetent toadies play important roles in the MAGA
bloc, and its central leader is a corrupt, unstable narcissist. This
combination has led MAGA to overreach on several battlefronts,
alienating people it could have won over. This opens up opportunities
for an insurgency built on multi-racial, gender-inclusive democracy,
working-class economics and internationalism to find allies in fights
against authoritarianism and oligarchy.

Fourth, as in the Vietnam era, figures from the national security
establishment are re-thinking basic assumptions about US policy and
even critiquing American Exceptionalism: Daniel Ellsberg
[[link removed]] then, Ben Rhodes
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today. This opens up possibilities for a serious “inside” effort,
as well as bolsters the indispensable “outside” pressure from
social movements and public opinion for deep-going change. The
explicit opposition to war-making and anti-migrant scapegoating and
the implicit critique of American exceptionalism coming from the
current Pope
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is also a factor on our side of the scales.

Fifth, in the wake of the Gaza genocide and then Washington first
starting and then losing the war against Iran, there is wider public
questioning of US foreign policy than at any time since the years
immediately following the Vietnam War. More people than ever before
are open to fresh ideas about the wisdom of foreign wars, the
US–Israel “special relationship”
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and the role the US should play in the world in general.

And on the global level…

Finally, on the global level, no power is directly challenging the US
and vying to replace it as a new global hegemon. The only possible
candidate would be China, and the Chinese leadership, in both rhetoric
and practice, is refusing to take on such a role. On the contrary,
while China does seek changes in international institutions such as
the IMF and the World Bank, and in the “norms” of international
relations, its priority at least for this next stage of world history
is minimum inter-state conflict and maximum international stability.
The Chinese leadership seems to think if nuclear war or climate
catastrophe can be avoided—and China will do its part to prevent
those outcomes—it will inevitably become the world’s paramount
power.

This means that no country on earth poses any kind of military threat
to the US. US capital does face economic competitors. There are plenty
of bad actors across the globe and authoritarianism is on the rise
worldwide. But dangerous as these negative factors are, there are no
serious military threats against the US “homeland.” (The violent
threat that does in fact exist, small-group terrorism, is mainly a
response to imperial aggression, and would be drastically reduced if
not eliminated with a transformed foreign policy.) And almost all of
the world’s governments—including the one in Beijing—favor
preventing any nuclear arms race and cooperating on fighting climate
change.

Under these circumstances, we can envision a world order coming into
being that is far better than one shaped by MAGA’s notion of a world
where “the strong do as they can and the weak suffer what they must
[[link removed]],” or by the
Democratic Party leadership‘s dream of restoring something close to
US global hegemony. To make it possible, we will need to assemble the
forces required to put a US government in power that changes course
enough for a movement of the global majority to bring it about.

An initial hypothesis

The starting point for a transformative vision that benefits both the
majority of the people in the US and across the globe is recognizing
that we live in a deeply interconnected world, where security for the
people of any one country depends on security for people of all
countries, and where the well-being of the working class and popular
majority in any one country is tied to the well-being of the working
class and popular majority everywhere.

The foreign policy platform that flows from the above prioritizes
global cooperation to combat threats to human survival (including
those posed by fossil fuels); demilitarization (including nuclear
disarmament initiatives); and new frameworks for international trade
and economic policies that prioritize labor, human, and migrant rights
over corporate profit. Additional priorities include creating a global
mechanism to regulate new technologies such as AI, and building a
global health infrastructure (including but not limited to
strengthening the World Health Organization [[link removed]])
capable of tackling current health issues and responding rapidly to
future threats. 

Such a platform would include measures to strengthen and democratize
the UN, the World Court, and other institutions of global governance
in ways that make relations among and within states consistent with
the UN Charter [[link removed]]
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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Solving political disputes via diplomacy rather than military force
will need to be a core plank of this new foreign policy. US defense
policy would be reoriented toward “sufficient defense,” meaning
the maintenance of a military that is only large and strong enough to
defend the country against a foreign attack. Such a policy would cut
at least 50% from the current defense budget and remove all US troops
and bases from foreign soil.

Grassroots movements calling for each of the above already exist in
the US; experts and scholars in and out of academia and think-tanks
can help flesh out specific workable details on each point. A
sustained effort to tie all these threads together and make the
overall package a rallying point for insurgent movements and
progressive elected officials and candidates can create a pole of
attraction in mainstream politics and influence the 2028 elections.

An urgent step on a longer road

If we succeed, the effect will ripple far beyond the US. Instead of a
global dystopia in either its America First (MAGA) or American Primacy
(Clinton–Biden) varieties, we could help set favorable conditions
for movements in all countries—especially in the global South—to
make gains for democracy, workers’ rights, and peace.

A US government that moved even part way in the direction of global
cooperation would alleviate the main source of economic bullying and
threats of violence that currently afflict the nations of the global
South. It would set conditions that are less favorable for a global
authoritarian Right that thrives on the spread of violence,
inter-state conflict, and demonization of “the other.” It would
increase opportunities for radical movements which do best when they
have maximum democratic space and cannot be dragged behind one or
another banner of “national security.”

A breakthrough in moving this kind of agenda would still fall short of
the transformation we need. Until capitalism is dismantled in at least
a major portion of the world, powerful forces will work to undermine
any government basing its policies on peace and human rights. A defeat
of capitalism on that scale is not on the near-term agenda, but the
battles that will shape the next world order are already underway and
being waged between scenarios that are possible to achieve. We as a
Left can develop and offer a positive vision and invite the public to
compare it to the perspectives of our class adversaries. Or we can
abstain from doing so and relegate ourselves to the margins as a new
world order comes into being.

_MAX ELBAUM is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board
and the author of __Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to
Lenin, Mao and Che _
[[link removed]]_(Verso
Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New
Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is
also a co-editor, with Linda Burnham and María Poblet, of __Power
Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections _
[[link removed]]_(OR Books, 2022)._

_CONVERGENCE MAGAZINE a magazine for radical insights – helping
people who animate movements for social, economic, & environmental
justice understand the balance of power and asking crucial strategic
questions about what we need to do today to make the impossible
possible tomorrow._

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* Iran war
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* imperialism
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* History
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* anti-war
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* Solidarity
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* anti-imperialism
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* Donald Trump
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* MAGA
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* Democratic Party
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* democracy
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* workers rights
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* peace
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