WASHINGTON — As President Bush's term comes to a close, the United States has the world's largest economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline.
The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on others. Now, America usually needs to build alliances -- and often finds that other powers aren't willing to go along.
In the 1990s, America exerted leadership in all the remote corners of the globe, from the southern cone of South America to Central Asia. Now, the United States has largely left the field in many regions, leaving others to step forward.
Bush has been blamed widely for the erosion of American prestige. And the decline in U.S. influence is partly the result of the reaction to his invasion of Iraq, his campaign against Islamic militants and his early disdain for treaties and international bodies.
But the shift is also a result of independent forces, though hastened by an aversion to Bush. These include the steady ascent of China, India and other developing countries that throughout the last decade have seen their economies grow, amassing wealth and quietly extending their reach.
As smaller countries have built economic and political ties to these rising powers, they have worked to free themselves from exclusive dependence on the United States.
"There is no return to the time when the United States was the 'indispensable power,' " said Stewart M. Patrick, a former State Department official at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The world has moved on."
Now there are multiple power centers. The institutions that buttressed Western power, such as the United Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, are under pressure to allow rising powers more influence.
A vivid illustration of the power shift came Nov. 15, when Bush convened world leaders in Washington to develop plans for dealing with the global economic crisis. In the old days, experts said, he would have limited the meeting to a few industrial powers. But Bush realized that the world economy now has a larger cast of influential players, and invited all members of the so-called Group of 20 developed and developing nations, which includes countries such as Argentina, Indonesia, Mexico and Turkey.
