Fireworks lit up the skies on Saturday, July 4 as the United States marked 250 years of a national experiment that changed the world.
Every nation claims exceptionalism, but America is the only one that has managed to convince much of the world to believe its advertising.
America began as an audacious experiment. A collection of adventurers, religious dissenters, fortune-seekers and castaways arrived on the edge of a vast continent, displaced native peoples and built a society that eventually rebelled against the greatest empire of its age. Out of that rebellion emerged a nation founded on the radical proposition that ordinary people could govern themselves and shape their own destiny.
The US was born out of self-determination, grit and a stubborn instinct for survival. Over two and a half centuries, it became the most influential country of the modern era. It built industries, fought wars, generated immense wealth and, perhaps more than any other nation, colonised the global imagination. American films, technology, language and symbols have become part of the world’s cultural DNA. Kenya bears the imprint of America’s century — from constitutionalism and higher education to television, social media and even the language of rights.
Yet America’s greatest export was not jazz, or Coca-Cola but capitalism. For much of the twentieth century, the world became a giant referendum on capitalism, organised around an ideological struggle between two competing visions of human progress. On one side stood socialism, with its promise of equality, collective ownership and state direction of the economy. On the other stood capitalism, championing private enterprise, markets and individual initiative.
The Cold War was essentially a battle over ideas and the meaning of prosperity and freedom. The world was split into two rival camps, although countries such as India, Yugoslavia and Ghana tried to chart a non-aligned path.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, capitalism appeared to have won a final and irreversible victory. Liberal democracy and free markets seemed destined to become the universal model. America emerged as the lone superpower and the chief proselytiser of this new order. But contrary to Francis Fukuyama’s prophecy in The End of History, history had other plans. Nationalism returned, authoritarian capitalism flourished and liberal democracy itself entered a period of doubt.
The very system that generated immense wealth had also produced staggering inequality, financial crises and social dislocation. The globalisation that enriched millions also hollowed out communities and fuelled resentment. Today, capitalism itself is under scrutiny as growing questions emerge about inequality, corporate power and whether economic growth alone can guarantee social stability.
The US has always embodied contradictions. It proclaimed that all men are created equal while enslaving millions. Its leaders presented the country as a beacon of liberty while dispossessing indigenous peoples. America defended democracy abroad while supporting dictators whenever its strategic interests demanded it.
Contradiction is the essence of the American story: America is both the land of the civil rights movement and racial segregation; of the Marshall Plan and the war in Iraq; of the moon landing and the legal black hole at Guantanamo Bay.
At 250, America faces an unusually profound moment of self-doubt. Its politics are polarised. Trust in institutions has eroded. Economic inequality is widening. Immigration, the very force that made the country dynamic, has become a source of cultural anxiety. Millions of Americans no longer agree on the meaning of patriotism, citizenship or even truth.
The brief era when the US stood as the sole superpower is over. The rise of China has created the first serious strategic competitor since the end of the Cold War. Technology has dispersed power. Supply chains have become geopolitical weapons. Artificial intelligence promises to reorder economies in ways that are yet to be fully understood.
The age of unchallenged American primacy has ended, but it would be premature to write America’s obituary.
Predictions of American decline have been made repeatedly, yet that republic demonstrates an astonishing capacity for regeneration. Few countries combine such formidable assets: world-class universities, unrivalled financial markets, military reach and an unmatched ability to attract talent.
The US might not dominate the 21st century in the way it did the 20th. The future will be more contested and less deferential to Washington. But America will remain the most consequential country in the world, even if it will not be the uncontested architect of the international order. Even diminished American power remains immense because its currency, universities, technologies and cultural products continue to shape how much of the world works and imagines itself.
For decades, Africa has related to America largely through the lenses of aid and security. The future demands a more mature relationship based on trade, technology and investment.
At 250, America remains an unfinished argument — about freedom, identity and power. It is also an unfinished argument about capitalism. Its future matters because the world it helped create is still being written. Admirers, imitators, haters and opposers alike live in the long shadow of the American experiment—and of the economic creed for which it became the world’s most powerful symbol.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected]
