When a nation ascends to the status of a superpower, its delusions cease to be fantasies—they become enforced realities. Until the 1930s, the British Empire reigned supreme, and its illusions were treated as immutable truths. With fleets that darkened the oceans and legions that marched across continents, Britain had the might to impose its worldview on the rest of humanity. Its delusions—racial superiority, imperial destiny, and the civilizing mission—were not merely tolerated; they were systematized, exported, and enshrined in policy across vast swathes of the globe.
After the Second World War, the imperial torch passed to the United States. And with it came a new set of delusions, more global in ambition and cloaked in the language of liberty, democracy, and free markets. America did not merely wish to shape the world—it wished to redeem it. But in its zealous drive to remake reality, the United States turned ideology into orthodoxy, often blind to the cultural, historical, and geopolitical complexities of the nations it sought to “save.”
These American delusions have sown chaos on a planetary scale. From coups in Latin America and regime changes in the Middle East to the economic dismantling of post-Soviet states, the superpower’s interventions have too often left behind scorched institutions, shattered economies, and fractured societies. Its prescriptions for growth, healthcare, and environmental reform—formulated in think tanks and boardrooms far removed from the lives of the global poor—have undermined livelihoods and exacerbated inequalities.
Perhaps nowhere is this delusional overreach more visible than in Eastern Europe. The American ambition to transplant its model of liberal democracy and NATO-driven security onto the fragile post-Cold War terrain of Russia’s near abroad has ignited the tragic war in Ukraine. What was framed as freedom’s march was, in fact, a reckless gamble that ignored history’s warnings and provoked a wounded bear into a brutal counterattack.
There is, however, a curious contrast between the two great Anglophone empires. The British, in their pomp, were content to be great. Their rule was ruthless, but it rarely pretended to be virtuous. The Americans, by contrast, are burdened by a messianic impulse—to be both great and good. But in trying to be both, they are often neither. Their self-image as benevolent hegemon clashes painfully with the devastation their interventions leave behind.
History teaches that when a superpower’s delusions harden into dogma, the world is made to suffer. The question is no longer whether these delusions are true. It is whether the world can afford to live with them.