The Primacy Illusion: When US Strategy Outlives American Power Why American foreign policy operates as if unipolarity still exists
by Michael Lamonaca, 6 December 2025
The post-Cold War era of unchallenged American primacy is over, and a new period of global competition has taken its place—yet US foreign policy operates as if this transformation never occurred. Washington still deploys military forces to dozens of countries simultaneously, weaponizes financial systems with the expectation of universal compliance, and issues ultimatums assuming adversaries will capitulate rather than coordinate resistance. But the structural conditions that made unipolarity possible—overwhelming economic dominance, unchallenged technological superiority, alliance cohesion against common threats—have dissolved while the policy playbook remains unchanged. The result is a dangerous gap between strategic assumptions and operational reality: the United States conducts itself as a hegemon in a world that no longer recognizes hegemony, leading to interventions that achieve neither stated objectives nor sustainable outcomes. The Caribbean strikes killing 83 people without evidence, the Ukraine proxy war straining allied cohesion, the Taiwan commitments exceeding military capability—all reflect strategies designed for a power position America no longer occupies. The question isn’t whether primacy is gone; even Pentagon planning documents acknowledge multipolarity. The question is why US policy refuses to adjust to the world that already exists, and what happens when the gap between assumption and reality becomes too wide to sustain.
The institutional architecture of American foreign policy was built during the unipolar moment and remains calibrated for conditions that no longer exist. The National Security Council structure assumes Washington can set global agendas and enforce compliance. The military’s global footprint—800+ bases across 70+ countries—presupposes that American presence deters adversaries and reassures allies without meaningful resistance. The dollar’s role as reserve currency and primary sanctions weapon depends on the absence of viable alternatives and the willingness of other nations to absorb the costs of US fiscal policy. The alliance system treats burden-sharing as a request rather than necessity, operating on the assumption that American security guarantees are so valuable that allies will accept subordinate roles indefinitely. These structures worked when US GDP was 40% of global output, when American technology led by decades rather than years, and when adversaries operated in isolation rather than coordination. But China’s economy now rivals or exceeds America’s by some measures. Russia has demonstrated that determined resistance can outlast Western attention spans. Iran shows that regional powers with strategic patience can survive maximum pressure campaigns. And across domains—digital currency systems, satellite networks, hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence—the technological gaps that once seemed insurmountable have narrowed or disappeared. Yet the policy machinery continues to produce strategies that assume overwhelming advantage, as if the underlying power distribution remains frozen in 1995.
The human consequences of this strategic inertia manifest in operations designed for a world that no longer exists. The 83 people killed in Caribbean strikes on alleged drug boats received no trials, no evidence was presented justifying their deaths, and survivors from later strikes were released because the US had no legal authority to hold them—yet the operations continue under frameworks assuming American military action faces no meaningful constraints or consequences. Ukrainian soldiers fight with ammunition rationed because Western production capacity cannot match Russian artillery expenditure, revealing that the industrial base supporting global military commitments has atrophied while commitments expanded. Taiwan’s defense plans depend on American intervention that Pentagon wargames consistently show would fail absent force levels the US no longer maintains in theater, creating a commitment-capability gap that invites miscalculation from both Beijing and Taipei. Diplomats negotiate from positions of strength that no longer exist, issuing ultimatums that adversaries increasingly ignore because the costs of resistance have fallen while the costs of compliance have risen. The policy assumption remains that American preferences should determine outcomes because American power makes resistance futile—but power has fragmented, resistance has organized, and the outcomes increasingly reflect neither American preferences nor American influence. The human cost appears in the soldiers deployed to unwinnable positions, the civilians killed in operations justified by legal frameworks only hegemonies can sustain, and the allies abandoned when reality forces the triage that strategy refuses to acknowledge in advance.
Historical precedent shows that great powers clinging to outdated strategic assumptions typically escalate rather than adjust, with catastrophic results. The British Empire’s interwar policy assumed continued primacy even as economic exhaustion and rising challengers made that position untenable, leading to commitments in Europe and Asia that Britain lacked resources to defend simultaneously—a gap Germany and Japan exploited. The Soviet Union maintained global military presence and proxy commitments through the 1980s even as its economic model collapsed, accelerating the fiscal crisis that ultimately ended the system. Declining powers face a cruel choice: acknowledge limits and risk domestic political collapse as populations reject the psychological adjustment required, or maintain the performance of strength until external reality forces catastrophic retrenchment. The United States currently pursues the second path. Military budgets increase even as recruitment shortfalls and maintenance backlogs constrain actual capability. Sanctions expand even as target nations build alternative payment systems and trading relationships that reduce dollar dependence. Alliance commitments proliferate even as the industrial capacity and fiscal space to honor them simultaneously has shrunk. The rhetoric of competition and renewal masks the reality that current strategy requires resources America no longer commands and adversary mistakes America can no longer count on. The question is whether adjustment happens through deliberate policy recalibration or through operational failures that force recognition.
The competing interpretations of American decline reveal how different actors understand the same power transition through incompatible frameworks. Washington’s official position, reflected in National Security Strategy documents and presidential speeches, acknowledges “strategic competition” with China and Russia but frames this as a challenge to meet rather than a condition to accept—implying that with sufficient will and investment, primacy can be restored or maintained. This narrative treats multipolarity as temporary and reversible rather than structural and permanent. America’s allies, particularly in Europe and East Asia, increasingly operate on different assumptions. They expand military capabilities, diversify supply chains, and hedge relationships because they no longer trust that American power will be available when needed or that American interests will align with theirs in every contingency. Their behavior reveals beliefs their official statements cannot express: that American security guarantees may not be credible, that regions must develop capacity for self-defense, and that the post-Cold War arrangement where Washington managed security while others focused on prosperity is ending. Adversaries, meanwhile, interpret every American setback—Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine stalemate, semiconductor export controls that accelerate rather than prevent Chinese technological development—as confirmation that primacy is finished and the window for challenging American positions is open. They coordinate resistance, build parallel institutions, and test commitments in ways that would have been suicidal during unipolarity but now carry acceptable risk. The gap between these interpretations creates dangerous misalignments: Washington acts on assumptions of durable strength, allies prepare for American retreat, and adversaries probe for weakness, with each party’s actions confirming the others’ fears.
The verification challenge in assessing American power lies in the distinction between demonstrated capability and assumed authority. The United States still possesses overwhelming military force by conventional measures—largest defense budget, most advanced weapons systems, global logistics reach. But capability divorced from sustainable strategy produces Pyrrhic victories or outright failures. Afghanistan demonstrated that America can topple regimes and occupy territory but cannot build stable governance or outlast patient resistance. Iraq showed that overwhelming conventional superiority doesn’t translate to political outcomes when the costs of occupation exceed the population’s willingness to bear them. The Caribbean strikes killing 83 without evidence reveal that America can conduct operations in legal gray zones but cannot compel other nations to accept the legitimacy of those operations. Each display of capability without strategic success erodes the authority that once made capability decisive—adversaries learn that American military action, while destructive, can be survived, outlasted, or deflected through methods that don’t require matching firepower. The verification problem compounds because American institutions resist acknowledging this erosion. Intelligence assessments that highlight capability gaps or strategic failures face political pressure to soften conclusions. Military leaders who advocate for force structure matching commitments rather than expanding commitments to match political ambitions find their careers constrained. The policy process selects for optimism about American power, creating internal information environments where the gap between capability and commitment remains invisible until operational failure makes it undeniable.
The consequences of operating on outdated assumptions extend far beyond individual policy failures to the structure of international order itself. If the United States continues strategies designed for primacy in a multipolar world, three dynamics accelerate. First, overextension becomes inevitable as commitments exceed resources, forcing eventual triage that will seem like betrayal to those who relied on American guarantees. Better to acknowledge limits and prioritize than to promise everything and deliver nothing when simultaneous crises expose resource constraints. Second, adversary coordination intensifies as targets of American pressure recognize that collective resistance succeeds where isolation fails. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea already coordinate in ways that would have been impossible during unipolarity, sharing technology, providing diplomatic cover, and creating alternative economic institutions. The more America operates as if it can impose costs without coordination risk, the more adversaries build the very coordination architecture that makes American pressure ineffective. Third, the domestic political system becomes increasingly ungovernable as gap between strategic performance and strategic reality widens. Populations demand results that policy cannot deliver, blame leaders for failures structural conditions cause, and empower demagogues promising restoration of dominance through will rather than capability. The danger isn’t multipolarity itself—history shows that balanced systems can be stable. The danger is the transition period when one power behaves as a hegemon while others treat it as a peer competitor, creating misperceptions and commitment traps that convert manageable competitions into existential confrontations.
When strategic assumptions outlive the power structure that made them viable, institutions face a choice between adaptation and collapse—and the longer adaptation is delayed, the more violent collapse becomes when reality forces recognition that performance cannot substitute for capability indefinitely.
Tags: US Foreign Policy, American Primacy, Geopolitics, Multipolarity, Great Power Competition, Strategic Overextension, Unipolarity, International Relations, Defense Policy, Global Power Shift