The thesis of American decline has been around for several decades. In recent years, the Ukraine war and the growing conflict between the U.S. and China have given the debate a new lease of life. Declinistic scholars have argued that the U.S. is militarily overextended, financially overspent and ideologically bankrupt. They view China’s rise as a new global hegemon as inevitable. Anti-declinist researchers have rejected these arguments as a myth. They doubt that the American Century will be over anytime soon. What is often lacking in the debate, is a critical understanding of the structural underpinnings of U.S. global domination. The power of the U.S. rests primarily on two pillars: its unchallenged military capabiliites and the dominant role of the U.S. dollar in global trade and financial transactions.