It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
Throughout my 40 years on this planet, Pax Americana was a constant that seemed to hold the world together (+/-). It's scary to see it vanish and with such speed and efficiency.
> amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
Has that happened? Give us something concrete a real example of that. Europe seems to be increasing it's dependency on the USA with large military spendings. They bent the knee really quickly during the last round of trade talks....
If this is a damaged USA's soft power what we've really learned is that we've been wildly overestimating other countries.
> It requires some level of skill and talent to be able to cause this amount of damage to the soft power and influence that the US projected around the world in less than a year.
The world was somewhat sympathetic to the US when we elected Trump the first time: it's disappointing, but you can get tricked sometimes. When we re-elected him it casts the first time as not an error, but rather a deliberate choice.
A nation that makes that kind of choice is not a reliable ally. We're just beginning to see the repercussions of that loss of trust.
