A gendered analysis of US decline: a cautionary tale

Abstract

This article offers an innovative gendered analysis of the thesis of US decline, a prominent theory shared amongst International Relations scholars and US foreign policy experts about the impending end of US hegemony and the US-led international order. Inspired by feminist International Relations, it demonstrates that masculinism underscores the theory in three important ways: the methodologies used to (dis)prove US decline, the values declinism privileges and reinforces, and the way US decline appeals to phallocentric imagery. The article illustrates this argument through a discourse analytical reading of hi/stories of decline since the end of the Cold War in which I argue that US declinism paved the way for ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) and the return to a hybrid masculinity embodied by Donald Trump and his supporters. The article thus acts a cautionary tale against declinism by showing the constitutive effects of alarming scenarios of falling empires. It offers an original inquiry in the thesis of US decline and advances wider studies on declinism, and in so doing, contributes to International Relations scholarship.