Ray Dalio just finished a 10-day trip to China. He says global leaders know America ‘doesn’t have what it takes to fight to maintain its empire’

Ray Dalio has spent 42 years visiting China, building relationships with senior officials and studying its political history back to 221 BCE. But after a recent 10-day trip to Beijing—part of a monthlong tour of Asia—the Bridgewater Associates founder says something has changed, and changed fast.

“Over the past few months there has been a big shift in the world order,” Dalio wrote in a sweeping essay published June 18 on LinkedIn, where his newsletter has 750,000 subscribers. (A truncated version of the piece also previously appeared in the Financial Times.)

The catalyst, in Dalio’s telling, was the United States’ handling of Iran’s seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. The episode convinced leaders across Asia—including those who host American military bases—of something they had long suspected but never quite said aloud: that the American public “does not have the willingness to endure the discomforts of war,” and that Washington “doesn’t have what it takes to fight to maintain its empire.”

The historical parallel Dalio reaches for is pointed. “This situation looks a lot like the British handling of Egypt’s taking of the Suez Canal,” he ...