superpower

In Shenyang, I found a once proud government stronghold now convulsed by free-market commerce, high unemployment, anxiety about the future and a certain longing for days past." According to Glain, China is no single entity that can be easily categorized as an emerging superpower or stumbling giant.

No wonder Latin American nations are eagerly wooing the world's newest superpower, both as a parking spot for some of China's staggering $600 billion in foreign reserves and as a welcome counterweight to Western nations.

The Series SD is available in three varieties: Superpower, Maxipower and Rare Earth.

For years, our national leaders and the media have told us that the United States is the last global superpower. Understandably, this has been a source of security and pride for many Americans.

On its own, the idea of the European Union as a rising superpower is an easy sell.

September 2003--an extensive print campaign featuring "The New Superpower in Harvesting" was initiated with an eight-page insert placed in national publications such as Successful Farming, Farm Industry News, and The Furrow.

Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World By Robert Jay Lifton Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books.

Even if its urges to power and domination seem historically recognizable, it nonetheless represents a new constellation of forces bound up with what I've come to think of as "superpower syndrome." By that term I mean a national mindset--put forward strongly by a tight-knit leadership group--that takes on a sense of omnipotence, of unique standing in the world that grants it the right to hold sway over all other nations.

And we know that America at the Cold War's end found itself in much the same situation as Rome encountered upon its destruction of Carthage--a lone superpower capable of imposing hegemonic order upon a potentially chaotic world of vastly lesser states; a power with far-flung client states and military outposts supporting multitudinous commercial and diplomatic interests around the world; a naval force without peer anywhere upon the sea; a power proud of its democratic institutions and distinctive heritage as a republic in which the idea of the state superseded the importance of any governing individual or faction; and a budding imperial entity that wrapped its muscular body of self-interest in a finely embroidered cloak of idealism and self-perceived virtue.

The carnage on September 11, 2001, significantly changed the Bush administration's foreign policy and agenda, as the world's only true superpower now had to deal with attacks on its homeland.

One, I believe, is concern--or might it be a little envy?--over the US being seen as the world's sole superpower. The US economy is equal to the second, third and fourth national economies combined.

The unilateralist approach sends the wrong message, especially when it comes from the world's only superpower. The arguments for such an approach are egregious and don't really hold up to closer inspection.