Economic chaos for a little while, and then everyone would just go on with their lives. Economically it would matter of course; America became the richest power after the first world war when all of Europe needed loans to fight their “great war”, causing the greatest transfer of wealth the world had ever seen.

But culturally, I’m betting the number of people who would give a shit if the United States stopped bossing everybody around is far less than they think it is.

The american sense of importance is strongest mostly in their own heads.