It’s pretty much accepted that the US is the most powerful country in the world right now. When did this become the case? Who was the most powerful country before us? Has someone made a timeline? Something that says something like “200BC - 300 AD: Rome. ??? 1600-1800, Great Britain” etc.?
(I guess my definition of “most powerful” here is a military one, along with the technology and industry to back it up. So imagine an absolute all-out war being fought in a region halfway between the two countries, with each country having the same issues of transport/supply/whatever. Which country would win that war?)
Before world war 2, the world was pretty much multi-polar. I don’t think that since the Romans any country could be undeniably granted the “most powerful” title, up until the USA after ww2. Certainly not for any significant length of time, at least. During the time that you’re attributing to British Dominance, Napoleon became emperor of France, and the Spanish controlled much more wealth and territory the the British did.
How about the Mongol Empire in the 1300s? Central and western Asia, plus China! The main reason they never made a go at conquering western Europe is because internal politics caused them to turn around when they hit eastern Europe!
And no country remains at the top of the heap for more than a couple of centuries. How long before the US is weakened by something (be it imperial overstretch, corruption, economic collapse, or even a really bad flu pandemic)?
Even during Rome’s height, China was probably about even, though likely for different reasons. The two empires never came into confirmed and direct military confrontation, but Roman victory would not have been a foregone conclusion should that have been the case.
There wasn’t at any other time in the past a super-power equivalent to the USA now. Either because the most powerful states weren’t in contact and would be difficult to compare or because there wasn’t such a big gap between the most powerful country and its rivals, or both. For instance you’re mentionning Rome, but not only Rome wasn’t in direct contact with China hence can’t really be compared to it, but also Rome never managed to vanquish its arch-rival the Persian empire.
There might be a brief exception for the Mongols, who crushed all nations they felt like attacking, but the Mongol empire didn’t stay united for long.
You could say that after the renaissance, the most powerful nation on earth was the most powerful european nation, given the technological advantage, in which case the list would something like 1500-1650 : Spain, 1650-1815 : France, after 1815 : UK, but, for instance, even at Spain’s peak, the Ottoman empire was on the overall more powerful than Spain, an even at France’s peak, it would have been unable to be a significant threat for, say, Japan. And at no time was any of these nations powerful enough to be overwhelmingly dominant even in Europe (maybe with the exception of Napoeon’s France, but even then, not only was it brief, but also it it was due to extraordinary circumstances, and couldn’t last, in any case)
This would really not be a good definition. Britain was a dominant power during the 19th century not because it had a powerful army (the UK never had a particulary impressive army, and never even tried to, it was obviously not in the same position as continental powers) but because of its advantage in trade and finances (hence in part because of its colonial empire), of its technological advance at least during the first half of the 19th century, and of course of its fleet. But in the hypothetical situation you’re proposing, a number of other powers would have beaten the crap out of the UK. It didn’t make Britain any less powerful.
Surprisingly they were, and they did. Diplomatic contact between Rome and the Chinese (called the “Seres,” perhaps sometimes “Indi” by Romans) was periodic, though the long travel delays probably limtied exchanges to “hello please have this present from other great emperor of the western/eastern ocean” kind of thing. And Trajan undisputably conquered most of Persia, though the better part of it was returned to Parthian rule after his death.
But it’s true that Persia and South Asia between them made meaningful contact difficult, at least by official channels.
No. WW1 effectively ended the dominance of the UK. The US was the wealthiest country in the world by about 1920 if not before. After 1918 the UK was in a desperate balancing act trying to remain competetive with the rising powers of the US and Japan, shortly to be rejoined by Germany. Britain only stayed a player power in the east by virtue of its 1902 alliance with Japan, which it then jilted in favour of hitching itself to the coat-tails of the US in 1922.
In fact you could make a strong argument that the rise of Germany had reduced the UK to a first among equals status by the time the Naval Race was in full swing in 1906.
However, I’d also agree with clairobscur that even at the height of their powers none of the European powers were strong enough to dominate all their rivals in the way that the US did in the immediate cold-war period when the whole ‘Imperial’ meme started infecting various people who spent too much time inside the Beltway. The caveat I would make is that even nowadays the US wouldn’t find it easy to inflict a decisive defeat on a hypothetical combination of any two out of China/Russia/Europe/India, so the era of ‘hyperpower’ domiance may already be drawing towards a close. Not necessarily because of a lack of capability, but because the cost and disruption of the war would be so staggeringly high.
Nuclear dimension is ignored. The US would be finished in a war against that alliance, so would they, but not something they could do. Also the days of them accepting a subservient role to the US (at leats Russia) are fast receeding. China is in a position like the US was in 1918, has the worlds most powerful nation in its debt.
If we’re looking at cultural and technological accomplishments, I’d argue that China was ahead from Roman times up through the Song and maybe the Tang dynasty. However, China was militarily weaker than you’d expect from economic and technological statistics - having a bunch of Mongols always on the border tends to do that for you.
[QUOTE=athelas]
If we’re looking at cultural and technological accomplishments, I’d argue that China was ahead from Roman times up through the Song and maybe the Tang dynasty. However, China was militarily weaker than you’d expect from economic and technological statistics - having a bunch of Mongols always on the border tends to do that for you.[/QUOTE
Unless we decided to occupy and then build up their infrastructure afterwards the west could mostly take out Russia and Chinas civilisation within a matter of hours.
They know that and we know that .
Dude, you’re hilarious. The US can’t even occupy and build up the infrastructure of a scrappy little country of less than 30 million people. Russia’s population is five times that, China’s nearly forty times. The US couldn’t occupy either in its wildest masturbatory fantasies, never mind both. As for the whole destroying civilization thing, AK84 is correct and you are not - a nuclear exchange would probably scrub mammalian life off this planet, leaving nothing but ectotherms and politicians to ‘rebuild’.
Nope. The Teutonic Knights may never engaged them at all ( a small force may have fought at Liegnitz, a nasty defeat for the Europeans regardless ).
The Poles at one time claimed some responsibility for deterring them and perhaps a few nationalist historians still do, but it’s patriotic nonsense. They got chewed up badly at virtually ever encounter. The only reason the Mongols entered and left Poland so rapidly, is that they were a diversionary force, designed by Subedei to keep Poles stirred up and out of the main fight, thus securing the northern flank of the main army entering Hungary to the south. Said diversionary force, still doing its job, then went on to smash a much larger European army at Liegnitz.
Nope it was purely internal politics. Which isn’t to say Europe was otherwise doomed to a century of oppression. I don’t buy the scenario in the first What If? book for several reasons ;).
I don’t think you’re reading Lust4Life’s post correctly. He specifically is not saying we could occupy and build up the infrastructure of China or Russia.
I also think people tend to drastically overestimate what a nuclear exchange would entail.
If it was between Russia and the United States, these are the two countries in the world which have multiple-thousands of active nuclear warheads. The United States genuinely has enough nuclear capacity to strike every single major Russian city, even many of the minor ones and other areas of interest. Likewise, Russia still has the capacity to do this to us.
However, I see no reason that in such an exchange Russia and the United States would necessarily destroy certain relatively civilized third-party countries.
I imagine Brazil would get out of it unscathed, India, probably even China, even Japan.
Most of Europe would probably go under with us though as the United States would probably in this doomsday scenario launch missiles from continental Europe earning a Russian response there.
It would be a greatly destabilized world, the United States and Russia would effectively no longer be great powers (or powers at all.) Probably 40-50% of the U.S. population would be gone and all of its major industrial and commercial centers (it’s actually IMO an overestimation that either the U.S. or Russia would be anywhere close to totally depopulated just by the missiles–mass starvation and lawlessness combined with lingering radiation sickness may lead to that after a few years, though.)
I imagine whatever damage Europe would suffer would be much less, as I imagine Russia would send most of its warheads into the U.S. mainland and regions of Europe and some of Europe’s major cities/industrial centers would come out of it okay.
Life would get worse for Brazil, India, Japan, et cetera in the short term because the entire world is so international, and so much trade is done with the United States, that wiping us out over night as a major economic power would be devastating for the world economy. But these countries would still be way better off than the U.S. and eventually would recover.
If the exchange was between China and the United States, unless Russia or another country decided to get involved, the damage would be even lessened. China actually does not have the capacity to reduce us to rubble like Russia does. They only have about 200 warheads and not all of those equipped to hit the mainland United States.
In an exchange between the United States and China, China would probably suffer a 70-80% population loss–primarily because of how many missiles we have and how much smaller China is geographically than Russia. To compound China’s problems a huge portion of its population is more or less “captured” in the very dense eastern part of the country. The United States would definitely lose its major cities, too–those would be targets China would definitely be going after (Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Chicago, definitely gone. But cities like Omaha and Pittsburgh for example might come out of it okay. I imagine both of those cities would be destroyed in an exchange with Russia.)
In this scenario the U.S. would still be seriously fucked as would China–but Europe would probably come away unscathed, as would much of the rest of the world. China might nuke Japan though, due to long standing differences–and China would be in “doomsday” mode anyway so why not.
Oh, so in this context you were using ‘we’ to be the UK/Europe, completely separate and unconnected from the US, but somehow related to ‘the west’, which may or may not include the US? I can’t think why that confused me.
Martin Hyde - so you reckon that in a MAD exchange that would certainly guarantee the total destruction of their nation and culture, the Russians would very kindly and generously restrict their attentions solely to the US? Despite having enough warheads available to overkill North America many times over and STILL have plenty of warheads to take down the other countries with which they have historic grudges or rivalries? Personally I think it’s much more likely that they would, at a minimum, blow the UK, France and China off the map as well, and most likely the rest of NATO. After all, if Mother Russia is doomed, why not minimise the number of gloating survivors who will dance on her corpse?
