Empires rarely fall in dramatic fashion. They do not collapse overnight, nor do they recognize their own end while it is already underway. In Rome, even in the centuries of Late Antiquity, it was widely believed that crises were temporary: the borders could be secured, the army reorganized, and order restored.
In reality, no single external enemy brought down the Roman Empire. What did it in was internal decay—institutions that no longer functioned, an elite that had become detached from the people, and a system that lost its ability to renew itself and respond to a changing world.
The United States is not, strictly speaking, an empire, but the current condition of the federal republic bears an unsettling resemblance to this trajectory. This is not a deviation in democratic continuity caused by a single president, but the result of a process unfolding over decades.
After the Cold War, the United States and its allies embraced the idea of the “end of history”: liberal democracy and market capitalism were seen not only as superior but as permanent. Politics gradually narrowed into technocratic management, where major ideological divides were explained away or dismissed as cultural misunderstandings.
At the same time, economic reality moved in the opposite direction. Globalization enriched America’s coasts and financial centers but hollowed out traditional industrial cities and rural areas. Like Rome, the “empire” expanded and prospered, yet internal cohesion eroded. When a shared narrative disappears, loyalties shift to individuals and tribes. In Rome, the emperor became the last unifying symbol of the state. In the United States, the presidency has begun to resemble this role: rather than serving institutions, Donald Trump appears as a wielder of power standing above them.
The 2016 election functioned as a kind of turning point—not because Donald Trump’s improbable victory created a new crisis, but because it exposed one that had long been smoldering beneath the surface. When Hillary Clinton described Trump’s supporters during the campaign as “deplorables,” she did what the late Roman aristocracy did to its provinces: she spoke down to them.
The political leadership no longer saw itself as part of the same community as those left behind by globalization.
This was not merely an insult, but a message. It signaled that the political leadership no longer viewed itself as part of the same community as those who had been left behind. In the industrial towns of the Midwest, the Appalachian region, and rural America, the remark was not heard as a simple verbal misstep or moral judgment, but as a final disavowal of ordinary people.
In Rome, senators held the “mob” in contempt, convinced that it did not understand politics. In the United States, the democratic elite conveyed the message that citizens who voted “wrong” were the problem—not their living conditions or their struggles to make ends meet. The result was that Trump did not merely win an election; he received from an elite-disillusioned segment of the population a mandate to break the entire system.
In this vacuum, Trump’s rise was not an unexpected accident but a logical historical outcome. When the politics of those in power cease to offer answers to people’s problems, what often follows is a promise of change built on simple explanations, force, and revenge.
The weakness of the counterforce has been striking. The Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party but a loyalty network centered on Donald Trump, where personal careers and positions are placed above the system itself. Democrats, meanwhile, appear incapable of speaking to anyone beyond their own already-convinced audience. In the final phase of Rome, the Senate continued to exist, but real power shifted to imperial decrees. In the United States, a similar development can be seen in how legislation has increasingly given way to executive orders. Congress is beginning to look like a detached, sidelined institution.
Barack Obama and George W. Bush remain silent—and that silence tells a harsh truth.
The silence of former leaders is also part of this picture. In late Rome, former consuls and emperors retreated to their villas, wrote memoirs, and waited for better times. They knew they represented a system that had already lost its legitimacy. In the United States, former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and other figures of the major parties appear to be in a similar position. They are not foolish; they understand that the politics of their era produced today’s problems. That is why they no longer have words that could unite the nation. They remain silent—and that silence speaks volumes.
Perhaps the most essential question for us in Finland, however, is not whether the American empire will collapse, but whether the United States ever built its empire alone. When Rome fell, it was not just one state that disintegrated, but an entire order that had held the Mediterranean world together. Trade, law, and security unraveled at different paces in different regions. Likewise, we must now ask whether we are witnessing not only the decline of American democracy, but a crisis of the entire Western world order.
The joints of the Western worldview—and of the societies built upon it—are creaking in Europe as well.
Liberalism, free trade, international institutions, and the rule of law were constructed in the last century on the foundation of American power and influence. When that center begins to wobble, the structures built upon it also begin to strain—Europe included. Populism challenges the rule of law, trust in institutions erodes, and security policy increasingly reverts to overt power politics.
If we continue with historical analogies, Europe may still be living in a moment reminiscent of the eastern half of Rome: order persists, but largely due to old structures and habit. Eastern Rome—Byzantium—survived for another thousand years after the fall of the Western Empire, but today everything happens faster, and complacency would be dangerous.
The collapse of an empire does not necessarily mean total chaos. It signifies a transition period in which old certainties vanish before new ones can emerge. After Rome, Europe did not cease to exist—but it was fundamentally transformed. The same may await the United States—and, by extension, all of us who have grown up within the Western world order. That is why Donald Trump’s America is not merely a crisis of American society. It is a question of what happens to the West when it stops believing in its own rules.
One thing is certain: there is no return to the old world.