I hope so, but if this goes awry in any way, especially if – god forbid – they lose the crew, my fear is it’ll be a blow to the American hegemony that will be very hard to recover from. Orange man is bad, but I think something like that would add a whole other dimension to the US’s loss of face. I’m as anti-american as they come, but despite everything Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.
> Pax Americana must be acknowledged and I shudder at the thought of it shattering.
Shudder away! We've already had both Carney and the finance minister of Singapore essentially declare Pax Americana to have ended. Everybody else is just being polite.
[EDIT: prime minister of Singapore, not finance minister]
When the US stops being the main topic on the internet then you'll know it's over. As it stands everyone is still fully obsessed with America. Their cultural dominance is far from over.
I'd expect the US to be the main topic on the English speaking internet far after its global dominance ends. I highly doubt that Canada or Australia (let alone the UK) are going to take English speaking dominance any time soon.
The Pax thing generally covers economic, military, and cultural dominance in a hegemonic way (the "peace" part is very relative, especially if you consider Britannica and Romana times). China might compete on some of those but still pretty far, they have little cultural export and lack global trade/influence. Europe is pretty far behind in everything but it'd be cool if they got their shit together.
Godspeed!