For a long time (pretty much post-WWII), America and Europe have always been the ones to make decisions on a global scale. With the emergance of post-Soviet collapse Russia, a hardworking China, and the rapidly growing countries of India and Brazil, America, and her European allies, can’t be seen as the largest superpowers for much longer. How do you think America will react if they are somehow actually challenged on the world scale, or, godforbid, passed?
quick edit: what do you think it means for democratization and war abroad? Do you think as a larger number of nations are accepting democracy, then we will have to view war and conflict differently from now on?
I doubt very much that we’ll see wars on the scale of WWI and WWII. Advances in modern weaponry have come such a long way that under most scenarios an all out global conflict would assure mutual annihilation and there are no winners if that were to come to pass. Most powerful nations know this. Even irrational actors like North Korea and Iran are aware of it. They may posture and bluster but they know they are far from posing a real threat in the face of more dominant nations. So world power is established through other means now. Largely democratic and economic. So while regional conflicts will continue to flare up, they will remain regional, though often protracted, and require nations to work in a co-operative manner against the aggressor. Which is not a new approach but a much more intuitive one, per Mali.
As for America’s reaction, it will continue to influence and build ties with friendly and emerging democracies so viewing America a single force to be reconned with will no longer be valid. In other words, a threat on America will not be seen as a threat to America alone.
China has a long way to go before they can match the per capita GDP of a wealthy country like Mexico. China has huge problems that can’t be solved by merely doing the same thing they’re doing now, only harder. China has developed rapidly in the last three decades, but their growth has been largely because they stopped doing the incredibly destructive things they used to do. It feels really good when you stop hitting yourself in the face with a hammer. So just joining the ranks of “normal” countries has been a huge improvement. But there’s a limit to how far you can go just by not sabotaging yourself.
India at least has the backbone of a liberal government, but India has it’s own set of incredibly difficult problems. Brazil may be a large country, but it sure isn’t poised to take on superpower status, let alone power status.
You’ve got to understand what “superpower” means. Back in the old days, countries were “powers”. So you had the UK, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and so on. And then you had a tier of smaller countries like Belgium or the Netherlands or Sweden that had to negotiate the world of power politics between the larger powers. Then along comes WWI, and then along comes WWII. At the end of WWII, you had two countries that were each as militarily and/or economically powerful as the next two or three powers combined. That’s how you define “superpower”. Instead of a balance of powers with a bunch of countries that are all within the same ballpark, you have one or two countries that are extreme outliers.
The Soviet Union never was an economic superpower, it was only a military superpower. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia isn’t even that. And Russia doesn’t look anywhere close to sorting out it’s problems, and even if it did it wouldn’t be a superpower, it would be a normal country because it wouldn’t have the ability or the will to divert a huge fraction of its economy to the military.
The only country besides the US that has a plausible future as a superpower in the next few decades is China. China already has the world’s second largest economy. China has a large population, but it has 1/10th the per capita GDP of the US. And if China’s economy continues to grow over the next few decades to equal or pass the US economy, it will still have 1/4th the per capita GDP of the US. That means China will continue to struggle just to meet the basic needs of its citizens even when it has the largest economy in the world. How much extra can China divert to superpower style political and military adventures around the globe without destabilizing itself?
I think that’s the crux of the argument- what is a superpower, and what does that imply?
Economically, the US is the #1 economic power by GDP, and that GDP (15.7 trillion) is not quite twice that of China (8.3 trillion), which is not quite twice that of the 3rd highest GDP, which is Japan at 5.9 trillion.
That’s what being a superpower means economically.
Militarily, it’s not so much the total number of troops that the US has, but rather that we have a large military that’s professional, extremely well trained, and rather lavishly equipped (in world military terms) with very good to excellent equipment. Plus, we have the world wide naval and logistical chops to put a huge army on the ground almost anywhere in relatively short order, and supply it effectively. Nobody else comes close to this capability on the scale that the US does.
What will we do when we’re no longer the only superpower? I imagine that’ll come down to how we align with the other one/ones. If we’re opposed, a-la the Soviet Union, then you’ll probably end up with something akin to a Cold War again. If we’re on the same side, then I’d expect some kind of global hegemony to emerge.
Well, if by “superpower” you mean “has the ability to influence the policies of smaller nations”… well, is it likely that a revitalized Russia will want to recapture influence in Poland, Albania, the former Yugoslavia? Will China’s ambitions go beyond Tibet? Will India want to turn Pakistan into a satellite state? Will Brazil decide it has a manifest destiny to control South America?
If the bipolar world of the Cold War was any indication, the superpowers will try to form (through diplomacy or force) networks of allied states to allow economic and military power to be wielded indirectly.
At least that’s how I see it. If the OP has a different idea in mind about what a superpower is or does, I invite clarification.
Judging from history, America will be ruthlessly manipulative; and really, really clumsy about it. We’ll overthrow democracies to install puppet tyrants, and then blame our current enemy for the populace hating us as they are dragged off to the torture chambers and rape camps.
Just out of curiosity, Der, would that be your same response if the OP had asked the opposite question, i.e. “What will America do if it remains the only superpower?”
In a really weird way, it’s better we’re clumsy about it than that we were hellish effective at it. We do something insanely stupid, like Abu Ghraib, get caught, are embarrassed…and for a month or two, our focus is on a moral clean-up. Everybody gets ethics training. There are brief intermissions between our atrocities. If we were really good at it, it would be continual.
That said, as the U.S. military advantage narrows, I expect us to get a little better at diplomacy. We have a huge natural advantage in an alliance-of-interests with Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. The major industrialized democracies have far more in common than anything that separates us. And China seems more intent on economic growth than on conquest: this is a good thing; it makes them come to resemble us more and more, putting them inside that natural alliance rather than outside it!
Not quite; as the lone superpower it’s less afraid of using force directly, and in general tends even more towards threats instead of bribes to get its way. It also threatens and bullies and backstabs its own so-called allies more.
Militarily, there is still only one superpower, and that’s the USA. In economic terms, there are certainly a number of countries that could eventually pass us (and may be in the process of doing so).
Now, in spite of our military might, there are all kinds of limits to what we can accomplish with it. There are MANY countries we couldn’t hope to invade, conquer and occupy. What we CAN do is
Send 100-200,000 armed men anywhere in the world in a hurry (China can’t do that, Russia can’t do that, India and Brazil can’t do it…) That’s the good news- the bad news is, 100-200,000 men isn’t enough to conquer of effectively police many countries.
Send large numbers of bomber planes anywhere in the world in a hurry (China, Russia, India and Brazil can’t).
Notice that, despite their exponentially increasing wealth, China hasn’t even TRIED to invade or conquer Taiwan, an island she has long insisted is hers by right. Why not? Because their military might is significantly more limited than ours.
China IS increasing its military spending, but it will be a VERY long time before they have a navy than can begin to compete with ours (no other country is even trying to build such a navy). And despite widespread perceptions that the Chinese population is endlessly vast, they have all kinds of demographic problems that would make building a huge army very difficult.
Hence, China is relying on economic influence and pressure far more than on brute force, to get their way in the world.
America consumes about 40% of world military expenditures. China, the second largest military spender, consumes about 8%. Then a whole bunch of countries like Russia, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, India, Saudi Arabia, and so on with 2-4% each.
Militarily, the United States is a superpower because our military is larger than the next 10 countries combined. Of course military spending isn’t the only metric of military effectiveness. You have to consider the role a military force will be asked to play. Invading your next door neighbor? Invading a country on the other side of the world? Oppressing the peasants? Defending against the invasion of a neighboring country? And an expensive doesn’t always mean effective, plenty of US military spending is pure waste, even if you don’t count blowing stuff up and killing people as wasteful. Plus purchasing power parity, handing a Chinese peasant conscript an AK-47 is pretty cheap compared to paying a first world volunteer.
But still, the US military is clearly in an entirely separate class than other militaries. China may have more military spending than other countries, it may be way ahead, but it’s in the same ballpark.
Economically the US is still about twice as productive as China, for economic superpower status China is closer. But China has 4 times the population of the US, which means per capita the Chinese are much much poorer than Americans, or Mexicans.
Of course military spending and being a military superpower doesn’t actually produce anything useful. What’s the point of spending all that money if you aren’t fighting? And so we get adventures like Iraq, where the mere fact that the invasion was logistically possible made it thinkable, and so we wasted hundreds of billions of dollars, and for what?
Still, it’s clear that there is only one superpower, and that’s the United States. There are other powers, but even China is a far distant second.
Thing is, if a power approaches or exceeds America in wealth & political influence but never bothers to build up their military to anything approaching ours, are they a superpower or not? In the present era of history, a really powerful military isn’t much use. You’ll notice that despite our far more powerful military, China and other major nations are not particularly intimidated by us. We can beat the hell out of any Third World hellhole, but against anything else we’re pretty much a paper tiger - we’re not interested in the kind of Pyrrhic victory a real fight would be, and everyone knows it. And our military adventures gain us little advantage.
Actually, no it’s really not, if measured by manpower.
We’re 2nd behind China, if only active duty personnel are counted, and we’re not in the top 5 if measured by active, reserve and paramilitary forces.
At active duty personnel per 1000 people, we’re WAY down the list (53rd if I counted right), and even further down if you count reserves and paramilitary.
But you’re right, it’s the spending AND the training, equipment and selection that the spending buys that make our forces so formidable.
I don’t know that I’d go this far, at least to say about serious politicians, but there are certainly plenty of voters who cannot conceive of a world where the US can not dominate and believe any expenditure is worth it to maintain that (un)balance of power.
Jesus will have come back by then so it doesn’t matter. Sadly that is the strategy to a reasonable degree.
As far as China, who is to say their per capita GDP won’t stagnate at 20k a head the way it did in Taiwan and South Korea? If that happens their economy will stabilize at about 26 trillion, which won’t be much higher than the US at that time which should be pushing 20 trillion or so by then.
Global democracy seems largely inevitable. Granted, I could be totally wrong about all that but generally people seem to want (at least to some degree) human/civil/political freedom and an economic system that works for everyone.
How will the rise of nations like China affect the global balance? I really don’t know. I don’t think it’ll be hostile like with the capitalist/communist detente of the cold war. Will nations expect China to help them solve their problems the way they seem to with the US? I personally don’t think so, China seems more insular.
I am looking forward to the fact that the rise of nations like China, Brazil, India, Mexico, etc will speed up global advances in science, energy, technology and medicine which will benefit all of us.
There just isn’t a chance that any other country in the reasonably foreseeable future will be a superpower. If things change, it will be that the US slides back into the “great power” category.
I think a superpower is a country that extends multiple aspects of national power in a global manner. Both the US and the Soviet Union were capable of using military, political, AND economic power to influence countries virtually anywhere in the world. (Some may say that the USSR wasn’t as economically strong as the US, which is doubtlessly true, but their economic ties were vital to countries as far-flung as North Korea and Cuba.) I just can’t see China, Russia, India, or anyone else being able to claim the same amount of influence.
If anything, the rise of those countries will challenge the US position in different regions of the world – perhaps China’s growing power will challenge US “hegemony” in the Asia-Pacific, but China simply isn’t going to have as much influence on places like Europe or the Americas.
So, if I had to guess, the US will probably remain the predominant power in the world for quite some time, but some regions will see that power comparatively decreased/challenged. I’d call that the US moving into “great power” status rather than “superpower” status, and maybe other countries will rise to more of a regional “great power” status as well.
Why should America “do” anything? Its nice that power and responsibility is spread around to other countries and cultures, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them on many issues. I welcome a multi-polar globe with power concentrated in more than one country
We were doing that when we were one of two superpowers. Moreover, I defy you to name a great power in history that hasn’t done evil crap. America has is many flaws, but none of them are unique to us; they’re a result of human nature.
Also, I don’t believe we’ve ever had DEDICATED rape camps, where rape was a policy.