A quote from Noam Chomsky, interviewed on Iranian television (via Information Clearing House, 14 October 2008)

I don't agree with the conclusions about loss of US hegemony. I mean, first of all this financial crisis is very likely going to hit Europe even harder than the United States. Several European countries have already declared official recession, which the US has not. Banks are collapsing rapidly in Europe. […]

As for US hegemony, it is based on objective factors. One is what you mentioned, the military view, the US military is approximately at the scale of the rest of the world combined, and far ahead technologically. But it's also a very rich country with plenty of resources and it is homogenous unlike Europe. Europe is roughly on the same scale economically but it is not homogenous. You could see that in the reactions to the financial crises, in the United States they're uniform taken by the federal government and in Europe they are national and not consistent.