by M.K.Sudarshan August 15, 2026 : Chennai, India This Op-Ed is dedicated to India on its Independence Day, 15 August 2026. America and India possess immense “soft power”, but they deploy it toward different ends. America has often used cultural attraction, political ideals, and diplomacy to legitimise global leadership and sustain a hegemonic order. India,Continue reading “INDIA INDEPENDENCE DAY SPECIAL: The Dynamic Use of “Soft Power”: How America and India, in Their Own Ways, Have Enlarged Joseph Nye’s Theory”
Tag Archives: American Exceptionalism
The Semantics of Slaughter: Why Our Threats Are “Statecraft” and Theirs Are “Terror”
An unvarnished analysis of global double standards: why American military ultimatums are sanitized as statecraft while Iranian slogans are branded as terror.
One nation chants slogans. The other systematically bombs sovereign states back to the “Stone Age.” Why does the global community brand symbolic rhetoric as terrorism while treating actual destruction as statecraft?My latest Op-Ed pulls back the curtain on semantic imperialism: [Link]
What’s the American war habit? Turn tragedy into memory, memory into regret, and regret into another round of exceptional self-justification
America often enters war in the language of necessity and emerges in the language of regret. This op-ed traces that familiar pattern from past conflicts to Ukraine and Iran, asking who pays the real price when American exceptionalism meets the realities of war.