The United States at 250: The past as prologue
There are striking parallels between the US at 200 and the US at 250 that should give us hope for today.
Professor Gordon Flake
CEO
Perth USAsia Centre
9 July 2026
Observing the United States celebrate its 250th birthday over the weekend caused me to reflect on my own experiences as a child in Arizona, on the occasion of the US Bicentennial in 1976. Foremost in my memory are images of the parade: of majestic tall ships in New York harbour, ubiquitous fireworks, and commemorative bicentennial coins. I must confess, however, that I did not pay much attention to the evening news, which was always on in our living room as we prepared dinner. Looking back 50 years, it is tempting, amid the chaos of the world in 2026, to see 1976 as a simpler time and the United States then as devoid of controversy or challenges.
There are, however, striking parallels between the US at 200 and the US at 250 that should give us hope for today.
Arguably, the most powerful force in global politics over the past several years has been inflation and the political impact of the cost-of-living pressures faced by ordinary Americans, as well as citizens around the world, still reeling from COVID and other supply chain disruptions. In 1976, the US inflation rate, at 5.76 per cent, was higher than the current rate of 4.25 per cent, despite ongoing energy market uncertainty linked to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Similarly, the US Bicentennial took place just a few years after the oil crisis of 1973. Unlike the energy behemoth it is today, at this time the US was still deeply vulnerable to external energy shocks, and the US economy was undergoing a period of high inflation and low growth, which became known as an era of stagflation.
Politics in the US were also uncertain. US President Gerald Ford had assumed the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon in the face of almost certain impeachment, and he was confronted by frustrations surrounding the demoralising end of the Vietnam War, high unemployment, and a fierce domestic political debate over the use of executive power. By November, he would lose the election to Jimmy Carter. Despite all the pageantry, in 1976 it was relatively easy to be pessimistic about the prospects of the United States. The contrast between the idealistic zeal of the revolutionary capital city of Philadelphia in 1776 – the birthplace of the independent United States – and the gritty streets of that same city portrayed in the award-winning boxing movie ‘Rocky’ 200 years later could not have been more jarring.
Much has changed in the intervening five decades. The United States’ population has increased by over four times the current population of Australia – from 221 million to nearly 350 million. Eight of the top ten companies in the world by market valuation are still American firms, yet none of them were in existence in 1976. The US is also much more diverse, from 85 per cent white in 1976 to 56 per cent white today. In that same time, the US GDP has grown from USD1.87 trillion to USD32.3 trillion. Less positive, the US gross national debt has grown at double the rate of GDP, from USD620 billion to USD39.2 trillion. Add to that declining spending power and constant cost of living pressure, not to mention the disruption of the information age, social media, and de-industrialisation, and one begins to understand many of the economic and political challenges facing the US in 2026.
For internationally minded Americans, as well as key partners of the United States around the world, this semiquincentennial year has been deeply unsettling. The United States’ commitment to the international system, the rules-based order, and even alliances have been called into question. It would have been inconceivable in 1976 that the United States today would equivocate between Russia and Ukraine, threaten allies in Greenland, Denmark, and even Canada, or denigrate NATO.
For internationally minded Americans, as well as key partners of the United States around the world, this semiquincentennial year has been deeply unsettling.
Given unilateral US actions from Venezuela to Iran, combined with an even more disruptive approach to tariffs and the international trading system, and a drastic retreat from multilateral efforts to combat climate change, US humanitarian aid, and traditional US leadership in sectors from human rights to international health, it is not surprising that the latest poll from the Lowy Institute indicates that Australian’s trust in the US has hit a record low. Only 31 per cent of respondents believe that the US would ‘act responsibly in the world’.
Yet the United States is just four months away from mid-term elections, and if polling is to be believed, the US could look very different next year, let alone in 2076 when the US celebrates its tricentennial. Coupled with the events of 6 January 2021, challenges to the traditional ‘checks and balances’ that are the beating heart of American democracy – and, perhaps most egregious for Australian sports fans, overt intervention in the World Cup – these developments have led many to suggest that the United States is in terminal decline, that the damage caused to its global image is generational.
It is here that the lessons of 1976 are perhaps helpful, and where we can find hope in the capability of democratic systems to change course. In a 1947 speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously said:
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’
On the eve of the US Bicentennial, Samuel P. Huntington and his co-authors addressed a similar sentiment in their Trilateral Commission report on the governability of democracies, The Crisis of Democracy. Written at a time that was characterised as an era of American ‘malaise’ or a ‘crisis of confidence’, they nonetheless arrived at the same conclusion.
Today the United States is the proud custodian of the world’s oldest written national constitution still in force. Though there is currently some concern that this constitution is no longer fit for purpose – that America is attempting to drive a 2026 automobile with a 250-year-old owner’s manual – history shows a remarkable capacity for prevailing through periods of major economic, social, and political upheaval. The strength and resilience of the American system have rested on the Constitution and on its institutions, checks and balances, and democratic traditions.
Without downplaying the severity of the challenges the United States faces at present, the clearest lesson from the past 250 years, and strongest reason for optimism about the next, is that decade after decade, democratic systems are capable of renewal and rejuvenation.
[T]he clearest lesson from the past 250 years, and strongest reason for optimism about the next, is that decade after decade, democratic systems are capable of renewal and rejuvenation.
About the author
Professor Gordon Flake is the founding Chief Executive Officer of the Perth USAsia Centre and one of the world’s leading authorities on strategic developments in the Indo-Pacific.
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