The Fourth of July and the End of American Empire

America after unipolarity

Constantin von Hoffmeister on the forgotten meaning of independence in an age of multipolarity.

Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the birth of a republic that declared its independence from an empire. Fireworks, flags, and speeches commemorate a people who rejected distant rule, foreign entanglements, and the concentration of power beyond the consent of their own communities. Yet the deepest irony of the holiday is that the United States gradually became the very thing it was created to resist. The republic of farmers, merchants, craftsmen, and self-governing states transformed into a global empire with military bases scattered across continents, fleets patrolling every ocean, and political ambitions extending far beyond its own shores. The anniversary of American independence therefore raises a more urgent question than patriotic ceremony usually allows: whether the United States can once again become a republic, or whether it will continue to exhaust itself attempting to preserve a global order that no longer exists.

The rise of a multipolar world has exposed the limits of the imperial project with increasing clarity. For decades, Washington enjoyed a position that allowed it to shape international finance, military alliances, and diplomatic institutions with relatively little resistance. That period has come to an end. New centers of power have emerged across Eurasia and the wider Global South, not because they were granted permission to do so, but because economic development, technological progress, and demographic change have altered the balance of power. No amount of military spending or diplomatic pressure can permanently reverse these structural changes. The effort to preserve unipolar dominance has instead produced endless wars, mounting public debt, domestic division, and growing distrust among allies who increasingly recognize that the world is changing regardless of American wishes. The end of empire is therefore not the result of a single defeat but of a historical transformation that no state can simply legislate away.

This transformation also reveals a conflict within America itself. The United States has always contained two competing impulses. One looks towards the sea, seeking commercial expansion, financial influence, military projection, and a universal mission extending across the globe. The other looks towards the land, emphasizing productive industry, local communities, secure borders, national cohesion, and the cultivation of the republic at home. These traditions have existed side by side since the country’s earliest history, yet the maritime vision gradually overwhelmed the continental one. Industrial strength increasingly served financial interests, foreign commitments multiplied, and domestic renewal became secondary to global management. As imperial obligations expanded, the foundations of the republic weakened. Infrastructure aged, manufacturing declined in many regions, communities fractured, and political life became consumed by struggles over distant crises while problems at home accumulated year after year.

The promise of America First briefly appeared to recognize this reality. Millions of voters understood that endless interventions abroad had brought little benefit to ordinary Americans while imposing immense financial and human costs. They hoped for a return to a foreign policy guided by restraint, national interest, and constitutional limits rather than ideological missions overseas. Yet hopes alone cannot overcome entrenched institutions. Campaign promises collided with a political, bureaucratic, military, and financial establishment deeply invested in maintaining the existing order. Whether through compromise, pressure, calculation, or conviction, the movement that promised national renewal increasingly found itself participating in many of the same patterns it had once condemned. For many supporters, this represented not merely a political disappointment but a reminder that changing personalities is easier than changing the structures of an empire that has grown over generations.

If the United States wishes to recover its strength, it must abandon the illusion that global predominance can be restored through greater exertion. A republic becomes durable not by governing the world but by governing itself well. Economic production, technological innovation, border security, infrastructure, education, and the stability of local communities contribute more to national greatness than another military commitment on the far side of the globe. A genuine America First policy would therefore accept the emergence of multipolarity rather than treating it as a catastrophe. It would recognize other great civilizations as permanent features of international life while concentrating American resources on rebuilding the country itself. Such a course would not represent surrender but strategic maturity, replacing imperial overstretch with national consolidation.

The Fourth of July should therefore become more than a celebration of the past. It should serve as an opportunity to remember the original purpose of American independence and to measure how far the nation has drifted from it. The empire that emerged during the twentieth century is entering its final chapter because the conditions that sustained it have disappeared. Clinging to its remnants will only deepen decline. Recovering the republic, by contrast, remains possible if Americans rediscover the wisdom that animated their founding: that a free people should govern themselves rather than seek to govern the world. The age of empire is ending. Whether this marks the decline of America or the beginning of its renewal depends upon whether the nation chooses to remain an empire or once again become a republic.

If you enjoy Constantin von Hoffmeister’s writing, order his new book, The Fate of White America, here.