Why the U.S.A. is a super-power is a good question. It may be interpreted in several ways. Hollywood likes superlatives as does Madison Avenue. Super-sizing French fries was big for some time. It is a prestigious thing for some to be super. One has an ego, then one has a super-ego.
Economic and military power combined put the United States in a class of its own. Yet it is how one regards economic and military power that gives an amorphous character to the security or stability of super-power-hood. Weapons of mass destruction have numerous forms and methods of delivery. The world has become a small place in regard to modern transportation and the volatility of allocation of WMD vectors globally. Borders and distance no longer confer the natural security that they once did. Neither are economies of nations secure from disruptions form anomalous vectors.
The United States had an insular status free from European military invasions for some time. Natural oceanic borders were helpful. after the end of the Second World War the nations that were nuclear weapons super-powers were all on the allied side of victors over the Axis powers. After the end of the Soviet Union the economy of Russia was not able to attain the kind of growth needed to rival Japan or China as a challenger to world leadership. The Chinese economy is about equal to that of the United States in size, yet they have just 300 plus nuclear weapons versus 6300 of Russia and 6000 of the U.S.A. so they are not considered a super-power in combined economic and nuclear accounting. Neither have they the great military budget expense of the United States for conventional weapons. It should be recalled that larges numbers of nuclear weapons help assure being a target rather than to increase security in some ways.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-world-s-top-economy-the-us-vs-china-in-five-charts/
One might like a super-power to be necessarily beneficial to all nations and in some respects the United States tries to achieve that at least indirectly through the vehicle of capitalism and free markets that improve the lifestyles of all people. Modern capitalism unfortunately has numerous unreformed weaknesses in performance and unintended down-sides in development that tend to be uncorrected with philosophical and analytical laziness or even rationalization primarily accountable for that.
One of the implicit weaknesses of a super-power is its inability to change and upgrade its economic and social infrastructure because of the inertia of the establishment and its resistance to change and adapt successfully to new challenges. The historian Arnold Toynbee noted that challenge and response of civilizations as a critical element for their rise and fall with the decline being a failure to adapt as well as over-expansion of commercial or military success into a Universal phase (like a star nova before collapse).
History does not always repeat the past. So the United States may find a way to evolve an ecologically economic reform of capitalism limiting over-concentration of wealth and transform the social and environmental structure of the planet through positive leadership emulated. Super-power status is however like a time of the day where the sun shines brightly through broken clouds. The historical day moves on though.
Economic and military power combined put the United States in a class of its own. Yet it is how one regards economic and military power that gives an amorphous character to the security or stability of super-power-hood. Weapons of mass destruction have numerous forms and methods of delivery. The world has become a small place in regard to modern transportation and the volatility of allocation of WMD vectors globally. Borders and distance no longer confer the natural security that they once did. Neither are economies of nations secure from disruptions form anomalous vectors.
The United States had an insular status free from European military invasions for some time. Natural oceanic borders were helpful. after the end of the Second World War the nations that were nuclear weapons super-powers were all on the allied side of victors over the Axis powers. After the end of the Soviet Union the economy of Russia was not able to attain the kind of growth needed to rival Japan or China as a challenger to world leadership. The Chinese economy is about equal to that of the United States in size, yet they have just 300 plus nuclear weapons versus 6300 of Russia and 6000 of the U.S.A. so they are not considered a super-power in combined economic and nuclear accounting. Neither have they the great military budget expense of the United States for conventional weapons. It should be recalled that larges numbers of nuclear weapons help assure being a target rather than to increase security in some ways.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/the-world-s-top-economy-the-us-vs-china-in-five-charts/
One might like a super-power to be necessarily beneficial to all nations and in some respects the United States tries to achieve that at least indirectly through the vehicle of capitalism and free markets that improve the lifestyles of all people. Modern capitalism unfortunately has numerous unreformed weaknesses in performance and unintended down-sides in development that tend to be uncorrected with philosophical and analytical laziness or even rationalization primarily accountable for that.
One of the implicit weaknesses of a super-power is its inability to change and upgrade its economic and social infrastructure because of the inertia of the establishment and its resistance to change and adapt successfully to new challenges. The historian Arnold Toynbee noted that challenge and response of civilizations as a critical element for their rise and fall with the decline being a failure to adapt as well as over-expansion of commercial or military success into a Universal phase (like a star nova before collapse).
History does not always repeat the past. So the United States may find a way to evolve an ecologically economic reform of capitalism limiting over-concentration of wealth and transform the social and environmental structure of the planet through positive leadership emulated. Super-power status is however like a time of the day where the sun shines brightly through broken clouds. The historical day moves on though.
No comments:
Post a Comment