America’s Longtime Sources of Power Have Turned Weak
The US used to be good at persuading allies to pursue its ends and deterring enemies from pursuing theirs. That advantage is being squandered in seven significant ways.
All the president’s (foreign policy) men: Jake Sullivan (left) and Antony Blinken (right).
Photographer: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
“What is the power that moves peoples?" asks Tolstoy in the philosophical essay at the end of War and Peace. “How did individuals” — he has in mind Napoleon — “make nations act as they wished?”
The political theorist Robert Dahl once offered a very simple answer to that question. “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” A great power can make other states or entities do what is in its national interest; and can shrug off their pressures on it to do what would suit them better.