Soft power sounds like manipulation to me. So if we destroyed our manipulation, great. The United States has put its fingers on too many scales rather than respecting the rights of individuals in other countries to manage their affairs the way they see fit.
I welcome tech competition from Europe. Let the best products and services win.
Something like 40% of the humanitarian contribution in the world came from USAID, and Thanos just fingersnapped it out of existence last Tuesday.
Until that gap is filled, there will be tons of unnecessary suffering. A "more humane" way would have been to slowly wind down over a period of months/years, giving the market time to react. Even better would have been to work with foreign powers to spin off USAID-backed initiatives and transfer control+funding responsibility to them, but I'm just a girl with a unrealistic dream at that point
Wow. So hard power -- literally killing others -- is OK, but "manipulating" them is not?
The fact is, power is power, "soft" or "hard," and we are discarding ours for nothing.
Also, alliances are not "manipulation." Working together against a common foe is not manipulation. Trade agreements are not manipulation.
I'm not sure where you read that in my comment. That's not something I wrote, and it's not something I believe.