‘We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline’, said US Foreign Secretary Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference. And he added: We will ‘renew the greatest civilization in human history’. So his message is: The empire is back”!

As the US is overstretching its military power and the centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting towards Asia and Latin America, the formerly so mighty US empire is in decline. With no single new superpower emerging, we are inexorably moving towards a multipolar world. Decline is always difficult to manage and with the unprecedented US military power the process is extremely dangerous. Will the US be able to manage this gracefully?