America Won the World by Being Admirable. It Is Losing It by Becoming Contemptible

OPINION | America Won the World by Being Admirable. It Is Losing It by Becoming Contemptible


10 Jan 2026 • 10:00 AM MYT



TheRealNehruism
An award-winning Newswav creator, Bebas News columnist & ex-FMT columnist

Image generated by TheRealNehruism via ChatGPT


If you were to ask who was most responsible for defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II, the honest answer would likely be the communists.


It was the Soviet Union that suffered the most and delivered the decisive blow against Hitler and the Nazis in Europe. In Asia, it was China—where the Chinese Communists played a major role—that significantly weakened and bled the Imperial Japanese Army, long before the Americans delivered the final blow.


And yet, if you were to ask people of my generation who defeated fascism in World War II, many of us would probably answer: the Americans.


That answer, while historically incomplete, is revealing.


Part of the reason we believe America defeated “evil” and liberated the world is not because it did most of the fighting, but because we admired America far more than we ever admired the communists.


In the post-war era, communism was a force to be reckoned with. At various points, the Soviet-led bloc was equal to—or even stronger than—the American-led capitalist West. It was the Soviets who first put a man into outer space. Communism expanded across Eastern Europe, entrenched itself in Indochina, and defeated capitalist forces in multiple parts of the world.


For a time, it genuinely looked like communism might win.


But in the end, it was the Americans and the capitalist West who triumphed. The Soviet Union—the greatest communist experiment the world had ever seen—collapsed. China, a communist behemoth in its own right, effectively sued for peace with capitalism in the 1990s by agreeing to run much of its economy along capitalist lines.


Why?


There are many reasons, of course. History is always multivariate. But one reason is consistently underappreciated: most of the world admired the Americans far more than they admired the communists.


To much of the world, America appeared like a warrior in a garden—immensely powerful, fully capable of inflicting harm, yet seemingly content to be left alone to tend to its own affairs.


Unlike the colonial powers before them, Americans looked as though they would rather mind their own business than interfere in the affairs of others. Their own affairs appeared more satisfying, more joyful, and more meaningful to them, than what the rest of us had to offer them.


And that mattered.


America, in other words, looked happy.


It looked like a society surrounded by freedom, talent, abundance, pleasure, and admirable men and women. So much so that it wasn’t America that wanted to join the rest of the world—it was the rest of the world that wanted to join America.


We wanted to be like be just like the Americans.


To wear jeans and T-shirts like them.


To listen to blues, jazz, and rock like them.


To watch American movies, drive American cars, smoke American cigarettes, talk like them, look like them, and live like them.


We admired them because they genuinely looked admirable.


Yes, America had deep flaws—racism, segregation, injustice—but it also appeared to be a country ruled by conscience. It was a society that had the moral rectitude to correct its own wrongs, not because it was forced to from the outside, but because something within it demanded that it do better.


If communism failed to compete with the American-led West during the Cold War, it is likely because people wanted to be Americans—but nobody really wanted to be communists.


That was then.


Today, America — with its invasion of Venezuela, the forceful abduction of its leader Nicolás Maduro under what critics describe as trumped-up charges, and its almost casual declaration that Venezuela’s natural resources are fair game — appears to have come full circle. What is more alarming is the frankness with which this is now articulated: not only Venezuela, but other parts of the world too, from Latin America to Greenland, are spoken of as objects of acquisition rather than sovereign lands. In shedding even the pretence of restraint, the United States seems to be returning openly to an older imperial logic — one it once claimed to have outgrown.


With its constant interventions abroad—even when the world would rather be left alone—America now resembles the very thing it once opposed. Its movies are no longer admired. Its music is no longer defines the world’s imagination. People no longer aspire to look like Americans, drive their cars, or live their lives.


The America of the past, confident and self-assured, has been replaced by an America that looks obese, insecure, drug-addled, deeply divided, and perpetually offended—arguing over everything, even when nothing is at stake, while still demanding to be treated as the centre of the world.


When I think about how admired America was just 20 or 30 years ago, and compare it to how it is viewed today, I cannot help but suspect that America may eventually be defeated by China—just as America once defeated the Soviet Union.


Why?


Because the power of virtue and admiration is not being sufficiently appreciated in today’s political and military calculations.


When all else is equal, it is admiration that decides outcomes. And admiration only comes from perceived virtue.


If China reaches economic, technological, and military parity with the United States—and there is a strong chance it already has, or soon will—then the ultimate winner will be determined not by weapons, but by who the world admires more.


At this point, China appears to win that contest hands down.


China has lifted hundreds of millions—arguably over a billion—people out of poverty. It generally does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries without consent. To much of the world today, China resembles what America once was.


America, on the other hand, increasingly resembles what the communists once were.


Domineering.


Insecure.


Forceful.


Unattractive.


Repulsive.


Greedy.


Violent.


Moralising without virtue.


Evil.


I realised just how far America has fallen in my own estimation when I recently came across a TikTok video featuring former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein condemning the United States as a threat to the world.



Twenty years ago, I would have dismissed them as delusional tyrants—men who thought they were the cure when they were clearly the disease. Back then, America was the hero, and they were the villains.


Today, I find myself wondering whether Gaddafi and Saddam were simply ahead of their time.


In other words, America now looks like the villain—while those once dismissed as lunatics are being reinterpreted as prophets who were eliminated for saying what was not yet acceptable to hear.


There is a line from Batman:


“You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”


Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson of power - it corrupts.


No matter how great a hero you are, if you stay on top for too long, it will corrupt you, until you eventually become the very villain you defeated once when you were the hero.