Why do people talk about the decline of American power? Where is the evidence?

[Badassbab]

Kasz216 said:
I think it's based more on influence being on a decline wise.

I mean when you think about it... when the USSR was around it was a huge game of back and forth chess with both countries basically manipulating half the world.

Then the USSR collapsed, and the US still had plenty of that cold war influence.

Now a days, the US is still influential, but not cold war level influential because there is no USSR to freak people out, and the US isn't the USSR.

When the US started doing a few unpopular things, it actually hurt influence a bit, where as back in the past the US could do almost anything with token disagreement at best.

The maximum territorial influence of the USSR was in 1960. 1961 was the official Sino-Soviet split. The USSR had Eastern Europe and (disastrously) Afghanistan. Cuba and Vietnam stationed some elements of the Soviet military. And that's it. Now compare that with US influence during the Cold War. Always far more substantial, far more wealthy and with far more powerful allies.