The US has overall amazing projection generally, be it propaganda, military, culture, etc. I find it funny, looking back a couple years ago, that people were outright dismissing American hegemony but it looks alive and well today imo.
*This is probably true in some areas but the opposite in others - our influence simply shifted.
Was the humanity better off during the Bi-polar era of the Cold War, with continuously escalating nuclear threats and proxy wars vs 1991-2010? What about the multi-polar world of 1919-1938?
Multi-polarity is generally code for regional hegemony. That's great if you're the regional hegemon. Not so much if you're the hegemon's neighbor.
America is a maritime power. These (think: Carthage, Venice, Portugal, the Dutch and Britain; counterfactual: Japan) have historically relied on trade, and trading outposts, to project power. As such, they're a natural friend of small countries resisting regional hegemony.
>natural friend of small countries resisting regional hegemony
Consider Cuba or Venezuela and their relationship to the USA.
Objectively, yes. In no small part because maritime powers tend to knit together alliances, not annex and colonise the way land powers do.
> Consider Cuba or Venezuela and their relationship to the USA
In both these cases, we are the regional hegemon.
There is no organization that can prevent one state from going to war with another, I believe a multi-polar world would inevitably lead to a global scale conflict.
Tangential to your comment, but in fact there was another path, spearheaded by, among others, India. It's where we get the term "third world", which became shorthand for "developing" because basically no developed countries joined this "third world" movement ("first world" being the so-called West, "second" being the Soviets).
And while it's true that U.S. cultural "force projection" hasn't weakened; they are being severely squeezed when it comes to trade dominance (https://merchantmachine.co.uk/china-vs-us/) and monetary dominance (see James Rickards' books).
America still has its hegemony, but the notion that it's declining is very much mainstream in academia (https://www.routledge.com/Americas-Allies-and-the-Decline-of...). Worse, its national security institutions have lost credibility among a significant portion of its electorate (MAGA people), and its military hegemony is now opposed by both populist left (pacifists) and populist right (non-interventionists). They're being squeezed both abroad and at home.
Pretty standard definition of an empire.
> The U.S. base at the Bishkek airport had become a regular source of criticism from various Kyrgyz politicians and, with heavy Russian influence, it also closed in 2014.
https://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-military-bases-in-central-asia-p...
Again, doesn't sound like any Empire i've read about in a history book.
That's not what empires do.
Hollywood is the main exporter of American culture and values and that seems to have been compromised quite effectively in this last decade.
"foot-in-the-door" American culture maybe. I'd say it's a different projection of our culture at home.
GPT-3:
我覺得電影腳本被中國人牽制了
(Transition according to Google: "I think the movie script is being held back by the Chinese")
The biggest advocate for the fairness of a prison cell often is the prisoner.
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/09/how-holl...
What I can say though is that money appears to be the primary driving factor here whether that is pushing an agenda or censoring ideas.
Also, it's not like nuclear proliferation is solved. It's still breathing down our necks, we just don't talk about it anymore