What do American comedy shows, such as South Park, an animated cartoon sitcom, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a parody of news broadcasts, have to do with public diplomacy? Well, more than you think.

The steepest decline in American prestige took place during the Bush years, and President Obama doesn't look like he has the wherewithal to reverse the trend. Overleveraging of credit led to a housing bubble in the US and then to a full-blown financial crisis that enveloped the world in 2008.

While Ankara has political influence in Syria, soft power has little sway when Bashir al-Assad’s survival is at stake. Yet as long as Turkey remains committed to a noninterventionist approach, it can offer little more than diplomatic efforts and attempts at persuasion.

The first Taiwan Education Center in India was inaugurated on Monday to promote learning the Chinese language, the latest step in the government’s campaign to project Taiwan’s soft power overseas.

Britain's soft power which was becoming more perceptible with the migration of more than 20 million Britons from the years 1650 to 1950 to outside of Europe would continuously spread the English language, teaching administration, customs and Christianity. The term “Anglicization” was used exactly like the more recent “Americanization” to describe the process of dissemination of the English culture. The passage of time proved that neither hard nor soft power guaranteed the sustenance of the Empire.

The American image now faces several new and worrisome challenges: doubts about its superpower status, a decline in favorability among some of the closest allies, and giving more and more consideration to the People’s Republic of China as superpower.

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