It's not an empire, it's a superpower, and least you forget, it's not the only superpower in town: China and Russia are still present, with China being quite scary too be honest.

It's been a while since I took my geopolitics class, but I think most people that study geopolitics would claim that the USA is in fact an empire, and that China and Russia are considered "great powers" and not superpowers. While China is still on the rise, it exerts dominating influence over a very large region and not quite globally.

It is indeed an empire. Two good books:

[1] How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr https://www.amazon.com/How-Hide-Empire-History-Greater/dp/03...

[2] Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-Indispensible-Cho...

I would wager it is an empire judging on how many military bases it has all pver the world, global cultural influence, global trade and monetary influence.

If it looks like a duck. If it quacks like a duck.

I thought the US does not consider Russia superpower anymore. They call it regional power.

Just semantics ultimately. Both have enough warheads to turn the planet into dust, and a large enough intelligence apparatus to conduct espionage and cyber warfare.

Calling it semantics glosses over some realities. Russia’s GDP is roughly 1/10th that of the United States - the size of the US economy and the dominance of the US dollar as a reserve currency have arguably been stronger levers of power. Russia, for all its nuclear and military ability, does not exert anything like the economic power the US does. There’s more to “power” than just guns, rockets and espionage.

Yes, Russia is far less rich. But the superior might and reach of the US (or EU or NATO) tends to be to leveraged to overthrow countries that are much weaker, such as Libya. Meanwhile Russia's expansion into Crimea has only been met with sanctions, and they have carved out a growing sphere of influence in Syria by helping Assad turn the tide in the civil war.

That's why I called it semantics. With nuclear weapons and the logistical capability to deploy them, asymmetric economic power doesn't matter as much.

US is FAR scarier than China. Just try to ask in Europe who the (educated) people there consider to be the primary threat to the world. I am not talking about european "mainstream media", these are eventually on the US food chain.

If by hundreds of years you mean since the 1960's, sure.