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Notes -
There is a difference between "is the pre-eminent power in the known world" and "has over 50% of the power in the known world, such that balancing fails and hegemony ensues because it can defeat every other nation put together". Tanista's claim is that #1 is true of the USA but #2 is false, which means the USA does in fact still need to do normal diplomacy (because while it could defeat any one nation, there is more than one non-US nation and it could not defeat them all at once).
The obvious historical parallel is Britain moving from "splendid isolation" and the "rule of two"* in the nineteenth century to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Entente Cordiale and Special Relationship in the early twentieth (in which Britain was still the pre-eminent power, just not by such an impressive margin).
*The "rule of two" was that the British navy was larger than the second-largest and third-largest navies put together. This enabled "splendid isolation", in which Britain refused to form long-term alliances because it was invincible anyway. Indeed, one thing that stands out during the Napoleonic Wars was that Britain was the only country in the anti-Napoleon coalitions to never make peace with Napoleon; they didn't have to, because even with Napoleon and his puppet states across Europe - and for the last few years, the USA - against them simultaneously, the Royal Navy still made Britain and most of its dominions completely safe. That is the power that lets you say "fuck you" to diplomacy. It's the power the Romans had in Europe and the Med. It's the power the Persians sometimes had in West Asia (though not all that often). It's the power the Chinese had in the Far East for so long they forgot it could end (which is why they got bitchslapped in the Opium Wars; they said "fuck you" to Britain without the capability to back it up). You can maybe find some more examples, but there aren't many.
Indeed. American can claim to be a regional hegemon (notice that I'm not complaining how it treats Venezuela) but the world is a much bigger place and not all states are as vulnerable. To apply the same logic to all states - and I suspect this is Trump's mistake too - is a dangerous error.
A little bit of realism is a dangerous thing.
I was giving regions in terms of pre-modern hegemons (and hedged "known world") because of the whole issue where transcontinental wars were basically not a thing you could do back then, so Rome and Beijing didn't really have to concern themselves with what the other thought. These days the concept of a "regional hegemon" has been severely undermined (though it's still not quite nothing).
A nitpick, but the Chinese state’s capital back in the days of Rome would have been Chang’an (modern day Xi’an) or Luoyang, not Beijing. Beijing has really only been the Chinese capital ever since the Ming.
I knew about Nanjing, but not about the others. Good catch.
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