Donald J. Trump entered the American political scene promising to “Make America Great Again” after eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency, and decades of what Trump saw as the mismanagement of America. “The decades of decay, division and decline will come to an end. The years of American Greatness will return…We are going to make American Great Again,” he promised on the campaign trail in 2016. Four years later in his 2020 State of the Union address, President Trump changed course, claiming that his administration had ended the “American carnage” that he lamented in his inaugural address. Trump took on the role of America’s cheerleader in chief in his 2020 State of the Union address, proclaiming that his administration had put America’s “enemies on the run,” its “fortunes on the rise,” and promising, “We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never ever going back.” Throughout the first term of his presidency, Trump pursued a foreign policy characterized by bellicosity, a confrontational (and protectionist) stance vis-à-vis China, pushed for increases in the defense budget and new weapons programs, and withdrew the United States from international agreements and commitments. Trump returned to his message of American decline during his 2024 presidential campaign and, since becoming president again, has threatened to take Greenland and the Panama Canal by military force and absorbing Canada into the United States as the “51st state.”

The “radical, non-conformist, undeferential” Joseph Chamberlain championed a message of British decline and renewal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More recently, the leader of the Japan Restoration Party, Tōru Hashimoto, engaged in such a narrative, arguing that “our glorious country Japan has fallen into a state of decline” during his announcement that he would run for national leadership in 2012 following the “triple disasters” in Japan the previous year. American politicians have deployed narratives of international decline. John F. Kennedy voiced his concerns over Soviet missiles and declining US prestige, and Ronald Reagan promised to “make America great again” against the backdrop of what he thought was a serious diminution of American power under Jimmy Carter.

International relations scholarship has largely ignored when narratives of international decline—what I term “declinism”— become politically salient or has implicitly treated declinism as simply a by-product of objectively occurring international decline. However, declinism can emerge and be independent of decline. As just one example, in the case of JFK, the apparent decline in military strength that JFK championed was a complete myth. In other words, there can be significant declinism even when there is little or no observed decline. This suggests a puzzle: Why does declinism emerge and become a major theme in major powers? What are the consequences of narratives of international decline? My book answers these questions.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom that declinism emerges as a result of objective decline, this book argues that declinism arises in great powers for three largely domestic political reasons. First, I maintain that the political opposition is most likely to cultivate a narrative of decline. Members of the opposition have an incentive to charge the incumbent government with having brought about the nation’s decline and to promise that their preferred policies will lead to national renewal and greatness. Promoting declinism is not politically available to or productive for those in power.

Second, I argue that particular actors—brokers—are best positioned to bridge political networks and advance a message of decline. Brokers are “actors who bridge ‘structural holes’” in networks, bringing together “actors that would otherwise remain unconnected.” Brokers, by virtue of their position, can mobilize new coalitions of otherwise disconnected groups and individuals. Brokers can present themselves to the public as outsiders or newcomers to politics and can blame the establishment, and even members of their own party, for national decline. Narratives of decline can emerge and resonate only when advanced by political oppositions and/or brokers. Finally, I argue that negative events, such as domestic strife, economic turbulence, or rival states’ successes, render decline more likely to resonate with audiences.

Dominant declinist narratives have important implications for policy: declinists often choose policies that can be characterized as expansionist and pugilistic—policies of “punching back” against decline—rather than policies of retrenchment (or “pulling back”). Declinist narratives sustain policies of global expansion to save face, regain lost glory, and reverse decline. Drawing on prospect theory and status literatures in international relations, I argue that this impulse is a result of psychological and political factors that make retrenchment difficult and expansion more alluring. The trappings of great power status mean that declinists want the country to exert more—not less—force and power on the international stage. Moreover, retrenchment leaves declinists open to claims that they are further weakening the nation’s status and standing in international relations.

These psychological and social forces lead me to expect that declinism produces impulses to punch rather than pull back. However, fiscal realities moderate such impulses. Sometimes the material (fiscal) constraints placed upon leaders lead to policies of retrenchment and/or what I term “performative expansion.” When fiscal pressure is low, declinists most often engage in policies of expansion, including increases in defense spending and more aggressive foreign policies. If fiscal pressure is high, declinists may not have the means and opportunity to fully pursue an expansionary policy. In such circumstances, I expect some retrenchment and some ‘flashy’ expansion to shore up domestic support at home as well as to reinforce status abroad. In situations of extreme fiscal pressure (e.g., teetering on financial and state collapse), declinists may have no choice but to retrench.

I evaluate these arguments using a mixed-methods approach that combines computerized text analyses and archival work. Through text analyses of legislative speech, presidential speech, newspaper articles, and campaign speeches, I construct original measures of declinism in the UK and US from 1946 through the 2000s and identify periods of declinism that are especially puzzling. To analyze the origins and consequences of these declinist episodes, I have conducted archival research in the Labour Party Archives, the National Archives, and the Conservative Party Archives in the United Kingdom and in the John F. Kennedy, Ronald R. Reagan, and Jimmy Carter Presidential libraries in the United States. In each of the case studies, I demonstrate how and why declinism arose and then trace the consequences of declinism for defense and foreign policy.

This book contributes to ongoing conversations about the role of narratives for security and foreign policy. It problematizes current treatments in international security of decline as an ‘objective’ reality and adds insight into when decline and declinism may matter most in major powers. In particular, it highlights the disconnect between decline, as measured by IR scholars, and declinism. The mismatch between decline and declinism questions common assumptions about the relationship between decline and domestic narratives of decline. If decline and declinism do not neatly correlate most of the time, then something else must explain bouts of declinism in national discourse. To miss periods in which decline is less prevalent in commonly-used metrics, but rampant in domestic politics, means that scholars not only miss cases in which decline is on the tongues of key politicians, but also the opportunity to unpack the political dynamics through which decline is interpreted, narrated, and acted upon in the domestic politics of major powers. Moreover, if we cannot assume that commonly used metrics are interpreted, narrated, and acted upon in the same way between states, or within states across time, then this book suggests that decline is at least as much a political process as it is an ‘objective’ or structural one.

Theoretically, the book theorizes the types of actors (brokers) and conditions (negative events) which give rise to these important narratives. Empirically, it complements, and in some cases corrects, the existing impressionistic literature on declinism through its rigorous content analyses. The book provides rich detail about declinist narratives, including their origins, content, reception, and consequences. My archival research provides new insights into how leaders and their parties debate, measure, and understand decline. Finally, with respect to policy, the argument has implications for the United States against the backdrop of a rising China and the return of great-power competition. My argument suggests that arguments about American decline are often driven by domestic politics rather than the needs and realities of America’s true power position. The mismatch between decline and declinism means that, in those instances where decline is not happening, declinists are addressing problems that do not exist. Scarce resources may be devoted to guns instead of butter. National alarm about the nation’s decline may in fact lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Absent fiscal pressure moderating the effect of declinism, declinism means expansion ultimately for the sake of expansion. This leads to increases in defense spending, pugilistic foreign policies, and can prompt arms racing and competitiveness with adversaries. More generally, this book shows that declinism feeds an impulse to punch back, irrespective of objective conditions. As arguments about American decline become louder, such declinism is likely to push the US to pursue policies would likely lead to or hasten US decline.