Ok so I'm no expert, so don't shoot me down on anything, just wanting a few opinions.
To my mind it seems like what was a gradual decline in the short lived superpower/empire of the USA is being sped up due to world opinion, the global recession and the wars it insisted on fighting in iraq and the afghan territories.
The egyptian empire fell largely due to the romans and disease.
The roman fell because it didn't have a good administrative infrastructure and various invasion attempts across its empire.
The english empire fell largely due to the first world war and the cost on the monetary and human resources it had, finally being killed off with the second world war.
I would of expected the chinese to step into the fold and become the next superpower but signs recently that it's economy is being falsely held up and will eventually suffer like the rest of the world along with it's impending problems with it's future generations of to few females means it could be a non starter or at best only be around for a short time like the american superpower/empire.
So my question is, in your humble opinions who do you think will have the next empire/superpower or will there be one at all? Could it be that the conflicts in africa and the middle east and eastern europe are signs that we'll become a world where strong nations will exist, but none that could impose it's will on the majority of the world?
I'll look forward to your replies.
If they really wanted to push the issue, particularly since so much of our manufacturing has already left our shores, I don't think a BILLION chinamen would need to forgive anything. The'll just come over here and take it.
The Next super-power will be divided one. USA will remain important, Europe is trying to be one and will be at least an economic power, India, China, Russia and Brazil.. Each one will have it's own "power space" USA could remain military, but not economic.. China will have the number strengh, and india could have the brain power... All engineer come from that place.
Drop India from your model.....and possibly Brazil.
India is COMPLETELY a third world country that cannot supply infrastructure to it's citizens. Which should be it's focus. Unfortunately the Indian governent is so obsessed with how far they have fallen behind China miliarily ( and they probably should) that unlike China, they cannot do both at the same time.
And if you put the cat fight with Pakistan ( a client country of China....smart those fellows) into the picture....India is no threat. India need focus
Re: the larger question,it is difficult to say. The model for superpowerdom has changed. You need a vast military for sure , but the real winner will be those who can mess with another country's infrastructure ( forexample) with perfect political deniability.
[Deleted] 12 years ago
Not sure about the who's next but at the end of the day when the world runs out of natural resources whoever can hold their own with sticks and rocks will take the title imo.
Water. Think water.....the real big issue of the future.
The Avengers. Look at at the world as a whole. It's a pretty messed up place.
[Deleted] 12 years ago
when all things are said and done, i can't see the USA as a viable super power. we are slowly slipping into socialism ie france & greece. tons of our jobs have gone overseas with no way to get them back. No politition in the USA will take a stand & stop handing out free money to those who refuse to work... Its a huge base for Democratic Votes in our elections. if we try & stop these benifits there will be a huge revolt by those that recieve them. a super power needs to be fully self supporting.
on the other hand i cant see china as a viable prospect as a super power... all they do is steal secrets & reverse engineer stuff... they are incapable of thinking outside the box. by the way with the amount of air polution, water polution, land polution etc in the name of progress & with the amount of times officials get bought there to overlook sfety in food and what not... they are slowly killing themselves off.
as far as who will be the next superpower & a genuine leader of the world.. i have no idea & and don't want to see it for my own reasons.
Would it be a Superpower still if the EU, China, and US formed a single governing body? This is something I can see happening more so then a new single superpower, due to the globalization of the markets and resources.
I am not aware of any reason to think - despite popular naysaying - that the U.S. will not continue as the world's major military power in the 21st century. As for economic power, the U.S. already has been increasingly losing its global dominance for nearly 40 years as economic power is now tri-polar with Europe and East Asia. This will continue to mean more diverse global power centers and I don't think that's a bad thing at all. A lot is said about the increasing dominance of China but it has a lot of internal problems as mentioned above and has a long way to go. A lot of people in both political parties often speak of the U.S. deficit as if it were a big problem before the Great Recession hit. I don't agree with that. Even with G.W. Bush's giant tax cuts and military spending, repealing the Bush tax cuts would have returned us to a budget surplus again before too long. It's only because the government has been unable to deal with the current high levels of unemployment that the deficit has become so large. In the long-term the U.S. *will* have a serious deficit problem but that will be only because of two issues - Medicare and military spending. Both of those problems could easily be solved, I think, except that too many businesses make a lot of money by maintaining the status quo on those two issues.
The major economic problem in the U.S. over the past 40 years has been the attack on living standards that began in the '70s. During the post-WWII "golden age" of American capitalism growth was distributed pretty equitable. In the early-70s there were major changes in the world economy. One was the decline in the rate of profits in manufacturing, possibly caused by the increase in global competition. Another was the giant oil price boom. The result was that the business community and political establishment moved sharply to the right by attacking workers, the safety net and moving production overseas. Businesses (including oil and gas) that once fully supported the more liberal of the two political parties decided they could no longer do so, so both parties moved to the right (even though public opinion remained constant on most economic issues) in an attempt to better woo rich investors. That's why the U.S. hasn't had a liberal president since Nixon. In light of these facts, A.B.D.'s statement that the U.S. has been "handing out free money to those who refuse to work" is pretty bizarre. If under capitalism the state is simply another commodity available to the highest bidder one would expect most government programs to transfer wealth from working people to the rich, so the defense budget is largely made up of subsidies to high-tech industry (the Internet, most famously, came out of that and was then privatized when it could begin to turn a profit), to which we can add other corporate subsidies, bail-outs, patent-protection laws, a very large chunk of the countries research and development, pro-banker monetary policy, etc. The major differences between the two parties since the 1930s has simply been which part of the business community they support, with the Democrats being the party of capital-intensive and the GOP the part of labor-intensive big business. Incidentally, this is why the Democrats and organized labor can sit in the same party. You tell an investment banker you want to raise the minimum wage, he won't really care. You tell a labor-intensive business owner you want stricter worker safety regulation and there will be a revolt. Another difference is party position over budget deficits. Since the 1980s the GOP has been the party of large deficits. They happened under Reagan and Bush while Romney was talking about tax cuts and military spending which would have driven the deficit to astronomical heights. This has to do with where the GOP gets its money from. Its investors want as much worker insecurity as possible, so you drive up the deficit and then convince the public the only way we can solve it is by cutting medicare and privatizing social security. The Democrats, on the other hand, became the party of balanced budgets because their money comes from those parts of the business community most likely to be bond-holders, who thus fear a large deficit will lead to the printing of a lot of money and thus to inflation, causing their assets to devalue. Recall Mondale's call for raising taxes when running against Reagan in order to balance the budget, Clinton's mixture of spending cuts and higher taxes ,and Obama's talk about a Clintonesque "balanced approach" of high taxes and more spending cuts.
As for the question of if manufacturing jobs that have gone overseas can come back, I suspect some will once the value of the U.S. dollar declines. Both Clinton and G.W. Bush pursued a high dollar policy which have to be reversed eventually. So, briefly, I would agree that the U.S. is slowly declining in economic power 'relative' to the rest of the world but I don't see another U.S.-like superpower rising to take its place anytime soon. Perhaps multi-polarism will be the new thing or a system based on alliances between new multi-polar powers. How long-term problems like the decline in the rate of profits in manufacturing (which seems to be a global phenomenon) can be resolved, I don't know.
