When President Donald Trump froze nearly all US foreign aid, Cambodia was forced to suspend workers removing dangerous mines from the country -- until China stepped in with the necessary funding.

In the Cook Islands, traditionally bound to New Zealand and friendly with the United States, the prime minister has announced plans to head to Beijing to sign a cooperation deal.

Successive US administrations have vowed to wage a global competition with China, described as the only potential rival for global leadership.

But as seen in Cambodia and the Cook Islands, two small but strategic countries, the United States has effectively ceded one of its main levers of influence.

The dramatic shift by Trump -- following the advice of billionaire advisor Elon Musk -- has put nearly the entire workforce on leave at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), marking the end of a key decades-old effort by the United States to exercise "soft power" -- the ability of a country to persuade others through its attractiveness.

Trump has unapologetically turned instead to hard power, wielding tariffs against friends and foes and threatening military force to get his way, even against NATO ally Denmark over Greenland.

When John F. Kennedy created USAID, he pointed to the........

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