US’ 250th anniversary celebrations will put its decline on display

There is a long tradition of reading a nation’s character in the way it marks its own milestones. When the United States turned 150, Philadelphia raised an 80-foot-tall luminous replica of the Liberty Bell and hosted a six-month Sesquicentennial International Exposition.

When it turned 200, a country shaken by Vietnam, Watergate and political assassinations nonetheless found in its bicentennial a moment of genuine collective catharsis: a million people on the National Mall, the Freedom Train crossing 48 states, tall ships sailing into New York Harbour – what contemporaries judged the emotional centrepiece of a nation not triumphant, but still capable of dignity.

US President Donald Trump responded on social media to the artist walkouts by proposing to replace them with what he described as “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World”. He has since confirmed he will headline the opening ceremony personally. Before the main commemorations, cage fighting is scheduled to take place on the south lawn of the White House.

The planned spectacle tells you something about where American power now stands.

Decline is notoriously difficult to measure in real time. Republics rarely announce their turning points; historians locate them later, working backwards from wreckage. But the indicators that matter are no longer ambiguous. In 1970, US share of global gross domestic product stood at over one-third of the world economy. It is now around 25 per cent.