[allemagne]

I don't see your points as necessarily in conflict with the article at all.

The diminishing power differential between regional/great powers seems to be exactly in line with what's being said about the shrinking incentives for conquest and the illustrative quagmires of Russia and America's foreign wars.

The ability for regional powers to coalesce feels like it underscores the way geopolitics have changed in exactly the way the author is arguing. Instead of a new Asean Empire that neatly fits into the patterns of a rising power from the 19th and 20th centuries, disparate polities with shared interests cooperate in a way that preserves their independent sovereignty and resists challenges to the status quo.

I can't speak to the author's sympathies with Project 2025, but if there is some related bias I didn't catch it on a first read where I wasn't aware of it. The mentions of "unvarnished unilateralism" and "U.S. strategy is shedding values and historical memory" and "democracies rotting from within" seem to imply Beckley has some idea of the existential dangers the current administration poses to American hegemony.

The view appears to be that the only credible rival to America (China) faces demographic headwinds that America doesn't to the same degree in trying to capitalize on any broader decline.