The narrow US escape from default and its credit downgrade have added to a perception that the United States is in decline, a view that could weaken Washington's influence abroad.
A debate about whether US power is waning has smoldered since at least the 1970s, when the Vietnam War, the Watergate political crisis, two oil shocks and stagflation combined to raise deep questions about the United States' strength.
While such assessments are partly subjective, the spectacle of Washington waiting until the last moment last week to raise the debt ceiling and of Standard & Poors' then taking away its coveted AAA credit rating have buttressed the case of those who argue that US power, in relative terms, is declining.
"This, combined with other things, has definitely led to a diminution ... in the standing of the United States in the world and in respect for it," said Paul Kennedy, a Yale University historian whose 1988 analysis "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" suggested a relative erosion in US power.
"As long as it ... cannot get its fiscal house in order, it's going to be a crippled sort of giant," he added.
However, James Dobbins, a former American diplomat now at the Rand Corporation, said any tarnishing of the US reputation was likely to be transitory.
"It has some short-term effect," he said. "The longer term will depend more on fundamentals, whether the economy does go into some sort of nose-dive or not, rather than the more effervescent impact of a particular political confrontation."
"Anybody looking at the United States today would have to say, 'Well, compared to what?' Britain is burning. Europe is in the middle of a financial crisis that is considerably more serious than the American. Japan has been in a stagnant situation for considerably more than a decade," he added.
