I don't know if he threw that out there but some pundits were talking about it. It never happened because remember Japan wanted to be the only non-white member of the G-7 so they could think they were white. That's how the G-20 was born so it kept the G-7 looking more important.
What a time we are living in. So far we have "man wife and woman husband", "black mermaid", "black Cleopatra", "lawful drug". Anyone disagrees will be cancelled. This is a sign of the western world collapsing when every basic fact is being turned over.
German is not a hard power next to other countries but it ranked higher in one of metrics. I will even extend that most of Europe is not hard power but most countries will avoid antagonizing it beyond certain point due to its soft power. It has very extensive integration with so called global south. Its much more at people level. Ex-Soviet Union was not open to foreign influences thats why it was removed.
Its whole package of countries like Europe, Canada, Australia and US where most people of world want to be part of it including the people of leftist governments of Latin America. They vote one way according to populism but go another way with there feets.
What does "a hard power" mean? Countries are not described as hard or soft powers; the question is what apects of their powers are considered hard and which soft. As I can tell, building an attractive education system requires the funds and economic hard power to do so. Don't fall into some trap of thinking that going to war makes you a hard power and being civil with country-developing makes you a soft power. No such division exists. Here, you're using "soft power" and "hard power" in a wayyyy different way than anyone else.
Economic hard power used to develop your country to high living standard = hard power. Having a really shitty economy and a terrible standard of living but people still want to move to your country because of cultural appeal would be soft power, though I haven't seen such an example.
so your definition of soft power is having poor economics but still people moving to your country. than most of Europe and US is still a soft power. I don think the infrastructure is as modern as some of the countries in Mideast and Asia and cost of living with poor safety has certainly made it less attractive. Wealth is much easy to be made in developing world if good business skills. West is now attracting who already have certain level of wealth and Skills. focus on individual wealth and skills. It is not like 70s and 80s. major cities in the world have very identical products and services available. A recent Vietnamese emigre can easily be richer than 99% of Americans.
This is pretty far off from the correct discussion, which there is a thread for but it's not here. The US and Europe have higher standards of living than the vast majority of places in the world; there are some current woes but let's not pretend that they're totally crap and falling apart. Western countries still have the majority of hard power amongst them whether it be military or economy. But because of China's rise and their relative decline, their ability to attract and retain talent has in recent terms, waned.
