University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer:

I think there are two things going on. The first is that there has been a major shift in the global balance of power. As you said, for a long time we were very powerful. We might think we could run around the world dictating to people how they should behave. This world is gone. The unipolar moment has given way to multipolarity. And now we have three great powers in the system. Not only the US, but also China and Russia. But secondly, when you talk about soft power, about our ability to use our ideology to positively influence people, to try to sell liberal democracy in a subtle way, to portray the US as a beneficent force in the world – we used to be very good at this, but we lost this skill. And as a result, we look very tough. People all over the planet think that the US behaves like bandits most of the time.

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