I think Ray Dalio does a good job talking about the decline of the American empire, but I'm not sure his huge bets on the rise of China are well-placed. India also appears to have a good case for "next big empire" and it is often the case that when two world powers fight, they destroy each other. For example, the UK and Germany in WWII - the UK won the war, but ended up in huge financial trouble that caused its decline.

With all due respect to you and Ray Dalio: Ray is examining patterns within a relative short timeframe and we can always expect a "this time is different" moment or we are in a radical shift in patterns, a black swan or whatever we like to call it. This is just an hypothesis: things follow a pattern until the pattern changes and we are living in an incredible moment when science and technology are accelerating and could solve many human problems that we see impossible now. US is in an incredible position if you compare it with other countries in the world.

US has a lot of issues but we can see it as a platform offering more chances to succeed than other (countries) platforms. You don't need the entire population to succeed, with only a few outliers (Google, Facebook, open Source, an NGO) you can structurally change US and the entire world. I don't want to sound positive about US but more negative about other countries in the world. You cannot take apart the military aspect (even after disastrous wars) the weapons are there in the US. A crisis is completely possible but the gap between the US and other countries is amazing AND US is a talent atractor.