The United States of America is the latest in world history’s chain of empires.

Since the end of World War II, the only challenge to America’s position as the world’s most powerful nation came from the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And because the U.S.S.R. was basically the Russians domineering a lot of neighboring nations that really didn’t like them very much, and we basically held our ground, the threat didn’t last.

Imperialism is a tough job. What you want is a world that’s generally at peace. With stable, sustained economic growth.

That was what the Romans meant by their Pax Romana, a nearly 200-year period when their control was mostly unchallenged. It wasn’t really that – it was during that time that a cult formed a Jewish carpenter would upend the whole thing.

But you and I have – probably without thinking much about it – lived through Pax Americana. The world has revolved around us. American music, American film and television, American technology, American food and American ideals can be found just about everywhere.

And, of course, America’s economy is the world’s benchmark. The dollar is practically a universal currency, with the majority of transactions being conducted through it.

In part, the world has been stabilized by American force. We invented the atomic bomb – we actually used it. And we have more than a few of them, all of them way more powerful than the weapons that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This may sound bad – and there are lots of people in other countries who don’t particularly like us. 

But empire has its privileges. Even for those of us on the Bernie Sanders-AOC side of the political spectrum. Having the world run by the dollar makes our goods cheaper, and easier to buy and sell. It gives consumers the confidence to shop for stuff. 

So you have to wonder why Trump and his economic wizards thought it was such a good idea to throw that all away.

Not just because he decided to launch a trade war against almost every being on the planet, from the more than a billion people of China to the penguins on Heard and McDonald Islands in the South Pacific.

It was also the stupid bluster. Threatening Canada and Denmark, worry-free allies that didn’t do a blessed thing to deserve that. Talking tough to Europe and cozying to Russia, the world’s outcast nation for good reason.

And it’s the way he’s gone after people not born white and in a red state. Tourism is sharply lower because who the hell wants to come to a place where they hold or cart off people the administration doesn’t like. When you act like Russia and North Korea, you don’t get respect. You get contempt.

Trump has forced the world to reexamine the order that gave the United States so much control over things. 

In a research report this month, Goldman Sachs – not exactly the wobbly left – warns of the world decreasing its reliance on us. Consumers throughout the world are making the decision to not buy things tied to us. Governments are looking into ways to negotiate high finance without the steadiest currency the world has ever known.

That could lead to a decrease in our standard of living. Inflation, unemployment, isolation.

We’ve walked the world as Americans, loud and proud. Trump is in the process of reducing us to what conservatives in the 1970s feared – a pitiful, helpless giant.

In the late 1700s, more than 1300 years after the fall of Rome, British historian Edward Gibbon wrote his masterwork, “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” While believing Rome’s embrace of Christianity contributed to its fall, he thought it came about more through decadence – Rome got too rich and complacent.

Someday, if the human race makes it to the 3300s, somebody will look back at what the Americans did to quash their command of the planet. The answer wlll be that Americans got too filled with self-interest and self-pity to care what anyone thought. They thought they go it alone in a world that thrives only when it’s cooperative.

The American Empire didn’t shoot itself in the foot. It gave the gun to a huckster, and he shot the foot.