*Originally published in 2025 and preserved as part of our archive project.Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber to support our work.

Following Donald Trump's victory in the recent 2024 US Presidential elections, there has been an increasing number of references to the concept of “multipolarity” and the idea of “American disengagement” from Europe. Not that these issues, especially “multipolarity”, have not been discussed before. But after the second presidential victory of Trump, they have overwhelmed the podcasts of journalists and pundits. The theme, especially, of the “American disengagement” from Europe is central to the latest Munich Security Report 2025, which states that “the US may be abdicating its historic role as Europe’s security guarantor.” We agree with this observation about the American disengagement. But it is not a new phenomenon. Rather, from a structural and macro-historical point of view, it has been an ongoing process for at least several decades. Aware of this, subsequent U.S. administrations have tried to reverse it but without any significant success. They were simply postponing the day of reckoning.

The current deep uncertainty and crisis, which is essentially embedded in the Western core states, did not emerge without warning; rather, they are the direct results of the structural changes and entrenched contradictions that have developed within the global system since the collapse of the Bretton Woods system at the end of the 1960s. This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the Global Shift—a transformation in the hegemonic structures of the world system, moving away from North America and Western Europe toward the rising powers of Asia, as well as those in Latin America and South Africa. This shift undergirds the disarticulation of the "hub-and-spoke" system of global imperial governance, which was established under U.S. hegemony and connected Europe, North America, Japan, and Australasia—a process that began in the late 1960s.

Initially, the central position of the United States in the distribution of global power was undermined due to a reduction in gold reserves and heightened competitive trade, what Robert Brenner called “competitive constraint”. U.S. corporate profits faced significant downward pressure from intense competition with West Germany and Japan during the Cold War – a period in which both Europe and Japan experienced remarkable rates of growth, often referred to as the "Golden Age of capitalism”. Intense competition among the members of the “triad” (West Germany/Europe-Japan-USA) created structural constrains upon the performance of U.S.-centred industrial capital, the result being a fall in the rate of profit and pressure to find profiteering outlets other than material production. The Vietnam War apart, the result had been the sapping of the dollar-gold parity, exacerbating the........

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