Commentators increasingly warn that the United States is losing its soft power—and the data backs them up. of Brand Finance Global Soft Power Index 2026 ranked the US as the biggest decliner among 193 countries surveyed, with China now less than 1.5 points behind.
Richard Stengel, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in the Obama administration, recently compared Trump’s America in post-war Britain – an imperial hegemon shrinking to “Little America”. The analogy is vivid, if a little misleading. And it risks obscuring a more important story at play, at least in Southeast Asia.
The UK comparison has real limits. Britain’s postwar decline was structural and largely irreversible: the empire was economically unsustainable, decolonization had its own momentum, and the United States was actively displacing British influence.
It is not where the US is today. American universities still dominate the global rankings. The dollar remains the world’s main reserve currency. American technology firms still shape how much of the world communicates, works and consumes. These are not depleted imperial assets.
Fallers also have a poor track record. After Iraq, US favorability ratings dipped in most of the world and remained low until 2008 – then returned to pre-war levels within a year of Obama taking office.
After Trump’s first term, the pattern repeated itself: favorability jumped from 34% to 62% almost overnight when Joe Biden took office. Each time, the institutional infrastructure of US influence remained intact and American soft power was restored.
So the real question is not whether the US is really becoming “Little England”. It is if the damage is accumulating faster than it can be repaired. The declinist framing, for all its flaws, captures something real about purpose.
What is new under Trump is not American decline, but American indifference. USAID violation, 80% funding cuts to US Global Media Agency, decrease of 17%. in new international student enrollments – none of which is a by-product of excess resources. These are deliberate choices to withdraw from the influence infrastructure.
It’s not just attraction. The administration is actively replacing the old brand of soft power with something much less exportable.
of Trump the embrace of Christian nationalism, the privileging of conservative Christian constituencies in foreign policy and the racial undertones that run through the administration’s immigration and trade messages resonate almost nowhere, especially not in a region as religiously and ethnically diverse as Southeast Asia.
The US once offered itself, however imperfectly, as a pluralist model. What he is projecting now looks more like a civilizational preference – and that does not build coalitions in a region that is home to the world’s largest Muslim-majority country and significant Buddhist, Hindu and Christian populations.
And in Southeast Asia, indifference is functionally equivalent to decline. This matters because the region is where the strategic competition with China will really take place – not in the Middle East, where the war with Iran has consumed almost all of Washington’s time since late February.
US soft power in Southeast Asia has not relied on attracting liberal democracy or seducing “bright city on a hill.” It is built on practical foundations: scholarships and exchange programs that connect Southeast Asian elites and talent with American institutions; development partnerships that give Washington a seat at the table on everything from energy security to public health, or military training pipelines that socialize officers into American doctrine.
Regional preferences for the US over China are driven less by admiration for American democracy than by anxiety about Chinese assertiveness in the region and a pragmatic desire for a security counterbalance.
Pragmatism might suggest that hard power is what matters most. But military presence depends on political access — basing rights, overflight agreements and intelligence sharing — and that access depends on the broader political trust that diplomatic and commercial engagement, whether cultural exchange, scholarship, development aid or market penetration, has built over decades.
These pipes are quiet, unglamorous and easy to cut. They are also extremely difficult to rebuild once broken. The US has spent decades building defense relationships in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand – from training officers to The IMET program in large-scale multilateral exercises such as Balikatan and Cobra Gold.
Cut those pipelines and you reshape professional networks and influence those officers to complete decades of career advancement. China is already working to build its own version, having funded officer training in Cambodia and expanding military education exchanges throughout the region.
But Beijing’s reach extends far beyond the military. Chinese dramas dominate streaming platforms across Southeast Asia, TikTok shapes how younger Southeast Asians consume information, and Chinese brands from Huawei to BYD are becoming part of everyday life.
Across the board, Beijing is filling the gaps that Washington is voluntarily creating. And despite reservations, the gap is closing fast.
The consequences are already visible. of ISEAS 2026 surveypublished this week, found that a majority of Southeast Asian respondents would now choose China over the US if forced to line up. Trump’s leadership was named the region’s top geopolitical concern, ahead of global hubbub and tensions in the South China Sea.
The irony is that the Trump administration’s own strategic logic requires exactly the kind of soft power investment it is dismantling. The Indo-Pacific strategy that both sides nominally endorse depends on willing partners – countries that choose alignment with Washington because US institutions and economic engagement make it the most attractive option. Strip that away and strategy is reduced to military posturing and transactional deal-making.
None of this is to say that the US has lost Southeast Asia to China. Structural advantages remain formidable. But structural advantages are not self-executing. They require that the connective tissue of engagement—scholarships, training programs, diplomatic presence—be translated into actual impact.
The structural decline of US soft power, at least for now, is overstated. But the strategic cost of indifference is being underestimated. In Southeast Asia, the US is not being displaced as a rising power. She’s voluntarily leaving the field — and the seats she’s vacating won’t stay empty for long.
Lam Duc Vu is a Vietnam-based risk analyst focused on trade and regional geopolitics
