Joseph Nye, the late American scholar who first coined and popularized the concept of “soft power”, wrote an article in the Financial Times on March 8, lamenting that the soft power of the United States ended after President Donald Trump took office. It can be imagined that Nye died (on May 6) with regrets. In his article, Nye particularly underscored that the “America First” foreign policy of the Trump administration had severely eroded the liberal values and institutions of the US, thus significantly weakening its soft power in the world.
From a historical perspective, the rapid dissipation of the US’ soft power is undoubtedly related to the self-serving “America First” policy, connivance in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and unilateral tariff war against the world, but these are probably not the most important reasons. The more critical reason is that the American values that have long been extolled as “universal values”, based on liberalism, have been constantly eroded, rejected, and abandoned by the US itself over the past period. This set of liberal values has always been the core of American soft power. In various instances, American liberalism may not be applied equally when it comes to ethnic minorities, pagans, disadvantaged groups, and other countries. Oftentimes, the inconsistencies in application reflect the interests of the US or its leaders. Nonetheless, as a “lofty” ideal, liberal values rooted in individualism and humanistic care have tremendous persuasiveness and appeal for many people. Many worldwide are eager to embrace values such as freedom, equality, the rule of law, human rights, democracy, inclusiveness, checks and balances, pluralism, free trade, market economy, internationalism, and humanitarianism. Many people also tend to confuse ideals with reality, mistakenly believing that liberal values are thoroughly and accurately realized in the US’ domestic and foreign policies.
For a long time, many American scholars have claimed that liberalism is the “only” or “mainstream” value of the US. Indisputably, for a long time after the end of the Cold War, American liberalism dominated the global ideological field, and the US’ soft power was unparalleled.
However, as a country with multiple ethnic groups, religions, values, vast regional differences, deep class conflicts and divergent interests, it is unrealistic to expect all Americans to believe in the same set of values forever. In fact, since the 1970s, with the rapid increase in immigrants, cultural conflicts and contradictions among Americans have become increasingly sharp, severe and fierce, and they often evolve into political conflicts and contradictions. In many cases, Americans regard cultural conflicts as more crucial and overriding than economic or class conflicts, and cultural differences are more difficult to reconcile than conflicts of material interest. For this reason, in the past half century, the “culture war” centered on value differences has intensified in the US, thus seriously tearing apart the politics and society of the country. Many American scholars believe that the US has seen the eruption of an increasingly cruel, lethal, and interminable “civil war”.
In this culture war, liberalism is severely challenged by various illiberal ideas such as racism, populism, multiculturalism, religious conservatism and authoritarianism. However, until the last decade, liberalism barely had the upper hand. Since Trump’s election as US president in 2016, the foundation of liberalism in the US has become fragile. However, Trump could not capably pursue his illiberal program during his first term. By the time Trump became the US president again in 2025, he had already accumulated considerable strength, talent and experience to carry out his illiberal program vigorously and, to some extent, had succeeded in expelling liberalism from American politics and society.
The culture war between liberalism and illiberalism in the US has been raging in many different areas for decades, including religion and secularism, gender roles and feminism, abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, religion in public life, race and identity, educational rights, free speech vs political correctness, immigration, gun rights and gun control, and patriotism and historical memory.
Today, although American society is highly divided according to value divergences, American scholars still disagree on classifying different social groups according to values. In his book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity, published in 2004, Samuel P Huntington, a well-known American political scientist, argues that American national identity is rooted in Anglo-Protestant culture. He believes this cultural foundation has historically unified the country and made the American Creed possible. However, with the influx of immigrants from different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds, the US has lost a single belief that can unite Americans, and the identity of what it means to be “American” has become blurred and contested.
Trump was re-elected president with a majority of votes. His supporters controlled both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, indicating that the illiberalism they espouse, commonly known as white nationalism, right-wing populism, Christian nationalism, Trumpism, MAGAism, etc., has become the US’ “mainstream” ideology.
W hen liberalism, which used to support the soft power of the US, is marginalized in its homeland, it is inevitable that the US’ soft power will crumble globally, especially when many countries have become victims of its illiberal claims, policies and behaviors
The illiberalism Trump advocates is fully reflected in Project 2025, a political action plan compiled for him by the Heritage Foundation for the new administration. In simple terms, the core tenets of “Trumpism” include: 1) Nationalism and America First: Firm belief in national sovereignty, border control, and America’s dominant position in global affairs; opposition to globalism, international trade agreements, and multilateral organizations. 2) Populism: Deep distrust of political elites, mainstream media, academia, and established institutions. 3) Opposition to “political correctness” and rejection of extreme liberal ideas such as “wokeness”, support for traditional values and law and order, and strong opposition to various movements that promote social progress. 4) Authoritarianism: Belief in strong and assertive leadership, support for the enlargement of executive power, opposition to checks and balances among the three powers, and emphasis on security, order, and patriotism. 5) Suspicion and distrust of the government, especially the “deep state” composed of career bureaucrats. 6) Strict immigration control and advocacy of racism to maintain the dominance of white people in the US. 7) Christian traditionalism: Support for Christian morality, the traditional family, and pro-life policies, and opposition to abortion. 8) Economic nationalism, suspicion of free trade and globalization, and decisive government intervention in economic affairs.
After Trump came to power again, his government could not wait to push the culture war to a new and higher level, and broader arenas, with brutal use of executive power. He reshaped the US government and American society by issuing many executive orders, some of whose constitutionality and legality are dubious. Related phenomena include: the continuous expansion of presidential power and the onset of “presidential hegemony”; the government’s failure to respect the court’s rulings; the executive branch’s lack of subjectivity to checks and balances by the legislative and judicial branches; the large number of officials deemed to disagree with illiberalism, violate illiberalism, or who are considered to be disloyal to Trump that have been dismissed, including military personnel, diplomats, intelligence personnel, and education officials; that some federal departments deemed unable to implement illiberalism have been or will be abolished, such as the United States Agency for International Development and the Federal Department of Education; the weakening of powers and responsibilities in some departments, such as those responsible for environmental protection and regulation of business activities; and the promotion and dismissal of officials based on political loyalty rather than ability. Socially, the White House has harshly deported large numbers of illegal immigrants; attempted to deprive American-born people of their civil rights; tried to force universities to adopt policies that violate freedom of speech and academic freedom by canceling or cutting funding; tightened control over teaching methods and content in elementary and secondary schools; discriminated against and cracked down on dissidents in the media; and drastically reduced funding for scientific research, especially to end research that violates illiberal beliefs, such as research on racial injustice and gender roles.
On the external front, under the guidance of illiberalism, the Trump administration brazenly launched the most extensive and intense tariff war in history against most countries in the world, withdrew from some international organizations such as the World Health Organization, no longer assumed responsibility for addressing climate change, practiced unilateralism, isolationism and bullying, promoted various forms of protectionism, undermined international law and international rules, mistreated allies and partners, coveted other countries’ territories, violated other countries’ sovereignty and cut foreign aid.
As a value system, the illiberalism espoused by Trump has no market in the world. As an ideal, it has no intellectual or emotional appeal. It can even be described as a backward and barbaric thought. Therefore, when liberalism, which used to support the soft power of the US, is marginalized in its homeland, it is inevitable that the US’ soft power will crumble globally, especially when many countries have become victims of its illiberal claims, policies and behaviors. Of course, Trump couldn’t care less about the state of American soft power worldwide. What is important to him is whether the US can gain actual benefits by relying on hard military and economic power, and political transactions. In any case, Trump has no intention of exporting his illiberalism. Even so, I believe that the rise of illiberalism in the US represents the secular decline of the country itself. Trump’s unscrupulous and brutal exercise of political power to promote illiberalism is undermining the foundation of the US’ global hegemony and making the US isolated, disrespected and distrusted internationally.
The author is a professor emeritus of sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a consultant to the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
