Balloon madness

[Weltall]

No sir, the United States wrote the book about soft power. China is no slouch, but we are the undisputed masters. A great example is the Marshall Plan, and more in general, the post-war rebuilding of Western Europe and Japan serve as extremely successful applications of soft power, the effects of which have provided incredible economic and geopolitical advantages for going on a century. Soft power played a huge role in making the US and China major trading partners in the first place, and for sure why we have rock solid defensive alliances with most other democratic nations. American soft power has largely cut Russia off from the global economy, and that alone is a huge advantage for Ukraine. But that's just the obvious stuff. Our culture permeates the entire world, and influences everyone and everything (except the Sentinelese, I guess). People all over the world watch our movies, listen to our music, wear our clothes, read our books, eat our food, and benefit (or sometimes, not) from our technology and science. A lot of that is cultural osmosis, but a lot of it is deliberate, too. It is in our national interest to be a cultural powerhouse. It affects our perception around the world in all kinds of ways, and it means that people who've never even been to America are likely to know it as well as some people who live here. China is investing in Africa, largely because it's a market the US just hasn't ever been very interested in. Well, at least not in a couple of hundred years, anyway. 

For that matter, look at the Louisiana Purchase and Alaskan Purchase. By land area, two of the most significant instantaneous acquisitions of territory ever, and all we had to do was buy them. For pennies on the dollar!