Washington’s Soft Power Crisis is becoming a challenge for the global order. Amid the transitional phase of the world from the unipolar order led by the US to an increasingly multipolar world, the US-Israel-Iran war has intensified the doubts over the credibility, leadership, and legitimacy of the United States. In today’s world, where the influence of a state depends mainly on attraction rather than coercion, the soft power of the US is increasingly eroding at a time when it is needed the most, as the global opinion shifts due to double standards, hypocrisy, and unilateral actions of the US.
While the rising powers seek to assert themselves and the traditional allies re-evaluate their alignment, the US’s declining soft power not only calls into question its moral authority but also challenges its ability to lead in a world that is no longer unipolar.
Soft power is a concept coined by Joseph Nye, derives from a state’s culture, ideology, and foreign policy. Following WWII, the foreign policy of the US was largely shaped by the emerging neoliberal order, which promoted democracy, human rights, and liberal values. This vision appealed globally and provided Washington with a legitimate rivalry foundation with the USSR during the Cold War.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Washington justified its intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 under the banner of ‘war on terrorism’. However, in the contemporary era, the US clearly lacks a widely accepted justification for its actions that are against international norms and laws, fostering mistrust among its Middle East and European allies, and diminishing the weight of its voice in future international discourse.
United States in the Current Era
In the current era, the United States seems to be caught between strategic withdrawal and continued global interventions. Though the National Security Strategy 2025 acknowledged the prolonged military commitments of the US as a reason for its domestic weakening, and called for prioritizing the US’s national borders, economic and industrial growth, the US’s continued intervention in the Iran-Israel war explicitly contradicts the stated restraint and the actual policy behavior.
This inconsistency uncovers Trump’s weak long-term planning and a tendency to achieve immediate political gains, rather than a sustained strategic vision. This unpredictability raises a question among its allies: if strategy changes with time and pressure, can it still guide a superpower?
This framework must be seen through Robert Keohane’s theory of after hegemony, according to which even when a superpower persists materially, its ability to structure consent declines once its institutional legitimacy weakens. This is precisely what is visible today, i.e., the US’s leadership is merely accepted now out of necessity, not attraction.
This is evident from BRICS expansion, Saudi Arabia’s simultaneous engagement with Washington, Beijing, and Moscow, and Europe’s pursuit of its strategic autonomy. This risks the international system being in a ‘systematic drift’ where order is replaced by managed instability. In this way, the US’s leadership no longer operates by default, but as an option among many in the global market of fragmented power, which can soon be replaced.
Self-Created Strategic Dilemma for United States
In the Iran-Israel war, the United States is facing an unintentional but self-created strategic dilemma. The main purpose of the war was to demolish Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but it turned out to be the demise of the US-led global order. The initial stage of war exposed the fragility of its security guarantees among NATO and Middle Eastern allies.
At the same time, the accelerating geo-economic shift, particularly de-dollarization, and alternative currency arrangements (Petro yuan) at choke points like the Strait of Hormuz, pose serious challenges to the dollar’s reserve currency status, a main structural pillar of the US. In this context, the Strait of Hormuz-not Iran’s nuclear programme- is becoming a final litmus test for the US’s hegemonic durability. Interestingly, it is creating a space where even partial loss of control would signal not just a global setback but the complete erosion of the US’s soft power.
In the contemporary international system, superpower status is increasingly determined not by coercive power alone but by the ability to sustain trust with middle powers and the Global South. Thus, the legitimacy, soft power, and influence are now shaped by the broader range of actors that shape the outcomes through alignment, geographical importance, and interdependence.
In this context, the United States has lost its credibility and trust among the middle powers and has given leverage to China to capitalize on this, and has allowed Beijing to position itself as a more reliable partner through its non-intervention posture, as states now increasingly evaluate power not through military capabilities, but through economic utility and policy consistency. In this sense, the future hierarchy of global influence hinges more on the soft power factor, mainly among the global South and middle powers, which now shape the systemic legitimacy.
Gradual Restructuring of the Global System
The erosion of soft power doesn’t remain confined to Washington alone; it is gradually restructuring the broader architecture of the global system into a more fragmented order. While there’s a shift from rule-based order towards the interest-driven bargain, the institutions are losing their legitimacy, which allows the states to do selective compliance. This makes alliances more transactional, commitments more conditional, and international norms more flexible than binding. It will eventually result in a diffused authority rather than an orderly transition, where no single actor possesses the potential to universalize its vision of order. This system will drift towards a managed instability rather than cohesive leadership.
