Did the US? I would argue it’s been going on for 80 years, in tandem with the rise of the military industrial complex. Go back much further than that, though, and the argument starts leaking into whether the US was ever great to begin with (assuming “great” = “empire”, loosely).
But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.
But the US was never really an empire in the traditional sense, no? More of a cultural hegemon / terrorist petrostate.