Great powers, superpowers and America

Is America a superpower, or just a great power? It certainly dominates other states in its naval might, as this image of the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier demonstrates. The UK, by contrast, has 0 aircraft carriers.

A great power is a political entity which exercises significant international influence and military strength. Within a given system of polities, great powers collectively possess a near monopoly of politico-military muscle. Traditionally, the great powers of the European states system set the rules by which international relations were to be managed. For instance, following the Thirty Years War a series of treaties signed by great powers in Westphalia set down the rules of the road for great and not-so-great powers alike. Similarly, the War of the Seventh Coalition concluded in 1815 with the Congress of Vienna, which arranged a new set of rules by which international society was to be organised. After 1919, the victorious great powers – France, Britain and the United States – drew up another set of rules. Therefore, great powers, as well as possessing a monopoly over hard power, which can be used militarily, also possess a substantial amount of soft power, or the economic, diplomatic and persuasive ability to influence the behaviour of other states. Soft power may be exercised through, amongst other things, drafting and signing important treaties.

A superpower, however, does not tend to share power so diversely. Whilst a given states system may have up to 20 great powers (as is the case with the G20 in the modern states system), there will only tend to be one or two superpowers. Generally, one superpower will tend to dominate a system – if, that is, superpowers exist at all. This single superpower may incorporate other states into its own imperium or, at the very least, ‘sphere of influence’. However, as was the case during the Cold War, there may be two superpowers. A superpower, therefore, is a transcendent power on the world stage.

Nevertheless, just as different great powers may have different areas of expertise, so may different superpowers have different areas in which they exercise hegemony, or dominance. For instance, it is arguable that China is currently just an economic – rather than a politico-military – superpower. It is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and has the second largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for a single-state entity, standing at $11.2. Although this lags behind the European Union’s GDP of $16.4T, the EU is a multistate entity, and thus does not have as much political clout as China, which has a permanent seat at the UN Security Council. Nevertheless, both China and the EU have small economies in comparison with the US, which has a GDP of $18.6T.

The US, moreover, is perhaps the only all-round superpower in 2017. Whilst the Cold War featured a clash between two superpowers  - the US and the USSR – today only the US controls its region of the world. Therefore, the US is, to use John Mearsheimer’s term, the only ‘regional hegemon’ on Earth. Whilst the Cold War was bipolar, to some extent America’s superpower status has shifted the world towards an era of unipolarity, where only one power is dominant. But America’s superpower status should not be exaggerated. Admittedly, in 2014 its economy amounted to nearly a quarter of global GDP and it spent $596B on defence on 2015, which was more than double China’s total of $215B. Nevertheless, even if it is a global superpower, the US is certainly not a global hegemon. To be a hegemon, as Mearsheimer and R. Harrison Wagner acknowledge, America would need to be able to defeat any combination of other powers in a given confrontation. But as its military spending in 2014 amounted to only 43% of the global total, this would not be enough to defeat all other states combined. Perhaps, therefore, the US remains a modest superpower, without the capacity to exercise total global dominance. Far from it: the US was unable to stop Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, as well as the seizure of Mosul by so-called Islamic State three months later.

Nevertheless, the global reach of the US, although not characteristic of a global hegemon, is certainly characteristic of a superpower. Whilst America’s soft power has declined – particularly following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate accord on 1 June 2017 – its hard power remains intact. After the Syrian government launched the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack on 4 April 2017, the US launched a Thomahawk cruise missile strike three days later. Syria has not dared to launch any chemical attacks since. Thus the US is capable of using targeted unilateral force with devastating effect.

On balance, therefore, the US remains a superpower to this day. But it nevertheless ‘has been in a state of almost continuous relative decline since the end of World War II’ (Antony Best et al, 2015). It is certainly a great power, and retains its superpower status thanks to its being ahead of any other state in crude economic, political and military terms. Nevertheless, in none of these areas does it exercise hegemony. Even America’s status as the world’s only regional hegemon may soon be cast away by a resurgent Middle Kingdom. America may be a superpower, but it is far from an unlimited one.