I'm not fully behind this argument, largely because this argument overindexes American success which is directly related to continuing to leverage the brain drain as well as manage a multilateral coalition.

Furthermore, Beckley is a member of the AEI and FPRI - both of whom played a role in Project 2025's foreign policy goals) - and has been strongly in favor of Trump's current foreign policy goals, arguing that American unilateralism will allow America to ascend other nations [0], which is not neccesarily true.

Additonally, this argument removes the agency that regional powers have and their ability to coalesce when needed, such as Japan-Australia-Korea-India cooperation in the Indo-Pac and ASEAN, along with Japanese and Korean leverage across much of ASEAN.

Finally, the power differential between a "great" and "regional" power is rapidly diminishing, as Russia's experience in Ukraine is clearly showing, despite Ukraine at first glance being a much weaker country that cannot project power to the same degree that Russia can. A regional power is by definition a power that can match head-to-head against a larger power within it's specific region. Thus, as regional powers increasingly retool and build domestic capacity, the power differential for "great" powers is steadily reduced.

I agree that American doomerism is overblown to a certain extent, but America's advantage lies in multilateral coalition management, as a NATO+, QUAD+, NAFTA, and other transnational coalitions not only give regional powers a say, but also prevent them from building their own alternative compacts.

[0] - https://www.aei.org/multimedia/america-ascendant-beckley-on-...