Simplified empire is about ever increasing conquest and exploitation. At one point the conquests and military upkeep becomes more expensive than the spoils and the whole process starts going in reverse.
Of course I am not saying that this is what is happening right now; maybe Russia and China are falling apart and we are entering another unipolar moment.
Its power stems from sovereign, contiguous territory with resources, or a network of global treaties both economic and military.
In contrast, Britain was a globe-spanning empire, which disintegrated with national independence movements.
The equivalent would be if California and Texas decided to split from the United States.
And as the quip goes... the next few largest economies, including China, are pretty incentivized to keep the global economy rules as-is, because they benefit.
De-dollarization is happening, but is going to be a slow shift, with an uncertain outcome.
And I think in two hundred years when history is written by someone who is dispassionate about it, the US empire will be seen a continuation of the UK and Dutch empires that was before it.
The key difference with the post-WWII economic world order was that the US generally tried to ensure that everyone else got theirs.
Granted, the US got more, but there was insight that a global economy that benefited all was more stable than a system that left powerful economies outside, with an incentive to topple it.
- It has vast natural resources, some like its oil surplus are resources that even China needs to import.
- It has a vast, diverse economy that includes high representation in high-complexity high-value products like software, airplanes, and, yes, semiconductors (Intel manufactures 75% of their products in the US).
- It is highly developed and highly educated with particular strength in higher education
- It is essentially impossible to physically attack
- It produces a crazy amount of food
- Its multinational corporations own a large amount of foreign assets, with a banking system that is entangled with the rest of the world
- It is close allies with basically everyone that matters except China and Russia, and arguably China is more dependent on the US than the US depends on China.
- NAFTA countries are a huge strength to the US. The US now buys more from Mexico than China.
- The world’s second largest military and navy are basically non-existent, and the US military is unmatched in logistics.