[caption id="attachment_186729" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="picture: The Telegraph"][/caption] The American decline is not anyway a new topic of debate. The debate is between they who argue that US’ position as hegemony is being bothered by the rise of other actors (e.g. China, “the rise of the rest”) and they who insist against that argument. However, regardless how the debate goes, that there is something changes in American power is an undoubted fact. What is being change? What is the composition of American power would look like? These are the questions that we are going to try to answer in ISAFIS Biweekly Discussion I. Most of the times when we talk about power, we dichotomize the concept into two; hard power and soft power. The first concept captures any mean of states to achieve their goals through coercive instrument and approaches while the latter captures can be defined as the ability to shape the preferences of the others.[2] Soft power in other words is the ability to attract, and attraction often leads to acquiescence. Soft power takes form of trust, legitimacy, reputation, values, norms, policies and institutions. In real world, soft power exercised through trade deals, foreign aid, diplomacy and persuasion, political and cultural influences, etc. The last two decades, at the very least, witness the declining of American hard power relative to other particular states. US is still the biggest economy in the world and it possesses the mightiest military power among all the countries on the globe. Nevertheless, the progressive rise of China’s economy and military power spreads the awareness that American dominance in the terms of hard, material power would not be there forever. China, and also other emerging economies like India, are narrowing the gap with US. In fact, what amusing is that US’ market capitalism economic system that it has long been championed is better implemented by its closest rival, China. ‘We are all state capitalist now’ as Professor Niall Ferguson said. Who is going to be the winner in this contest equals to who is going to have a balance between the economic institutions that generate wealth and the political institutions that regulate and redistribute it. For now, it looks like that US is behind China. Now that the declining of American hard, material power is no longer open for question, we move to the second forms of power; soft power. Is US still the leader on exercising soft power? While conventional wisdom says yes, unfortunately we are seeing that it is not the case anymore. Using some indicators derived from various forms of soft power we will see that US is no longer the champion of soft power. 2008 financial crisis shows us how fragile the capitalistic economic system US had been echoed for a long time. At the same time, Doha Round has collapsed before it could create a new mechanism of global trade to replace the ruthless one. Desperately trying to find the way out, US moves to build form of institutions such as G-20 where it turns out find its influence is decreasing even more relative to the emerging powers in the club. US finds itself in a new world where it no longer possesses unlimited space to move. Two (stupid) wars that US waged in the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq also contribute to wreck US’ reputation as global leader as well as stabilizer. However, there is still some part of US culture and values that the world now even more embrace. Arab Springs show us how the value of freedom and democracy is still desired. Now, with most of its forms of power have been obsolete, we can have an image of American power in the future. Due to the government budget cut for the next 10-20 years and the recovery of financial crisis that is still taking place, it is quiet reasonable to predict that American hard, material power is going to be even more declining relative to other emerging powers such as China. In exercising its soft, leadership power, US will be also forced to try to adopt with new international environment where it has to accommodate various kind of interests. It is can be carried out through accommodating foreign policies mainly in international institutions. However, with it still dominating world-scale media, US still has a chance to revitalize its global image and position. Indeed, media plays a big role in portraying and shaping particular country’s image. The failure of US to use this chance is intolerable for the sake of its desire to continue dominating the world. [1] This essay is summarized from ISAFIS Biweekly Discussion I 3 March 2012 by Muhammad Arif, Director of Division of Research and Development with the help from other staffs of RnD. Some arguments in this essay may not be precisely same with what the speakers said in the discussion. Further confirmation is applicable. [2] Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), p. 5.
