Superpower World
A recent comment asked for my definition of a superpower, as they were claiming that Russia is one, a necessary condition for believing the mad rants of Jordan Peterson. In their line of thinking, only two or sometimes three nations exist, and those nations are the only ones calling the shots. It’s a simplistic view of the world, and no doubt very comforting, springing from the same psychological needs of man that created the concept of God and conspiracies — the need to believe that someone or something is in control and everything is part of someone’s plan. It isn’t. The world is chaotic, and the universe more so. That is an uncomfortable thought, but reassuringly or not, it is reality. Reality doesn’t bother much with corresponding to our psychological needs; just ask a quantum physicist, economist, or, in my experience, most people who engage in statecraft as a profession.
Superpowers have the following attributes….
Currency Stability: Superpowers have a powerful currency that is used by other countries as a method of trade because the currency is stable and trusted. It is used as a reserve currency by other nations to bolster the stability of their own currency. It is a major currency of international trade. Nearly every bank and financial institution in the world keeps dollar reserves, and 88% of currency transactions involve USD. The world converges upon one currency for the same reason that people switched from bartering to currency — it is convertible. It is very difficult to return to a barter system and even harder to get others to do so once a currency has been established.
Currency Control: Superpowers can force others to trade using their currency, like China and the USA do, and to a lesser extent, India. China and India are forcing Russia to sell them petroleum products using their own currencies. For China, this means that every Yuan that Russia gets for oil gets re-invested into Chinese industry as Russia is forced to buy nearly all consumer goods from China. For India, it has created an economic problem for Russia, as Russia has no use for so many rupees. Perhaps Russians should eat more bananas. The EU as a whole also enjoys this level of currency control, and I will treat it as a singular nation for some statistics and as individual countries for others.
High-tech Industry: Superpowers have a broad, high-tech industrial base. They can manufacture high-grade steel and other metals, usually from domestic ores. They can manufacture micron-precision parts and integrated circuits, and very few critical components are imported. If they must be imported, it is from an ally. The USA, Japan, and the EU possess this, as does China, to a slightly lesser extent. South Korea is also on the list, as are other nations that won’t get on the cut because I can’t include everyone.
Sanctions: Superpowers can enact sanctions that would actually create economic problems for the target of the sanctions. This includes not only imports and exports from the country in question but also the ability to get other countries on board with the sanctions. Nobody cares if Russia sanctions them — Russia offers nothing that it can afford to sanction — the sanctions would hurt Russia far more than they would hurt any of Russia’s targets. We saw this when Europe stubbornly refused to freeze in the winter of 2022 and again in 2023. Russia could sanction food exports, but that would not hurt any of Russia’s opponents, only the developing world that Russia so desires to bring to its side.
Allies: Superpowers have allies, like NATO, and, well, even China and India are more allied with the USA than with Russia. Note the lack of military support for Russia. Allies are not just countries that sign a trade agreement like BrICS but are genuinely aligned due to mutual interests and, more importantly, common principles. BrICS is a framework for conducting trade and little more than that, with no obligations for defense and no defining principles other than “we trade with China.”
Coalitions: Superpowers have competent diplomatic efforts, like forming the coalition to invade Iraq (no matter how poorly informed it was, it was a coalition). Coalitions are different than allies — allies are a known asset, but coalitions take convincing, bargaining, and consideration. Iran and Russia are not allies and are barely even in a coalition. There are few shared values between them aside from being under sanctions and wanting to strike out at the West. In private, Russians hold Muslims in disdain and would never welcome Iranians to come and live in Russia as a sizable minority. Neither country has significant diplomatic influence aside from Russia’s obstinacy at the UN, which is hardly an organization that bears consideration anymore. I give Japan a zero here, as it has a very quiet foreign policy but renders subtle support when and where it is needed. Japan is more likely to join a coalition than to form one.
Sea Power: Superpowers control large parts of the sea — Russia controls… uhh… the White Sea? And the Caspian? Even Ukraine no longer respects Russia in the Black Sea. The US is the supreme provider of freedom of navigation all over the globe, supported by the UK, EU, Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, and many other allies. There are multiple levels of naval power projection. First is the number of large, long-endurance ships in each fleet and the readiness levels of those ships. Second is allied bases, where those ships can refuel, take on stores of ammo, find rest for the crews, and conduct diplomacy. Third is the willpower to conduct sustained operations around the world and the trust not to ruffle too many feathers when doing so. If the sight of a given country’s warship creates a feeling of panic, then that’s bad — the sight of a massive friendly warship should bring a feeling of security. On the map below, the gray areas represent where BrICS can project serious sea power; Russia is in yellow, and NATO is in blue. NATO, and mostly the US and UK, keep the seas open for trade by all nations, which serves the interest of all nations until it doesn’t. Once that dominance is established, it is very hard to undo it. China has the best chance, but there are too many chokepoints that China relies on, and it would have to take control of all of them simultaneously.
Force Projection: Superpowers have a high-tech, well-disciplined military capable of projecting power anywhere in the world. Aside from the Naval side of things, this involves actually putting boots on the ground and conducting combat or peacekeeping operations within hours or days of the event arising. It is again a two-part problem. First, the country has to maintain a force and the vehicles, usually aircraft, necessary to deploy the force. Second, they need friendly bases in the area from which to operate for refueling, staging supplies, and acting as hubs. Only the US and its allies have the ability to deploy absolutely anywhere with very little warning, in part because no matter where a conflict is, it is probably within strike range of a US base, like it or not. Many will decry this as a waste of money or ‘imperialism,’ but it also keeps the peace, and tinpot dictators are less likely to wage conflict if they know Tomahawks, Predators, and F-35s are not far away. Russia can harass its neighbors and create chaos elsewhere but has very limited power projection. China is on the rise.
Standard of Living: Superpowers have a high average standard of living, like Japan, the US, Canada, and most of Europe. Part of the need for this is economic strength, but a deeper need is the flexibility that a middle class brings to any nation. Middle-class entrepreneurs are a pool of educated and talented people who can rapidly adapt to change and are much more productive and innovative than masses of poor people. Perhaps there is a theme here — the US and EU have it, Russia doesn’t, and China is on the rise.
Innovative Companies: Superpowers have world-recognized brands, like Paramount, Nike, CocaCola, IBM, Pepsi, Intel, Google, Apple, Ford, GM, and many others. This gives psychological as well as economic power. People associate the brands above with America, and they are recognized as marks of quality and desire. American movies, music, clothing, food, electronics, and even the entire internet are dominated by American culture in the background, even when it isn’t immediately obvious. Russia and China clone American technologies; they don’t create their own. Everyone runs Microsoft Windows, and every search engine is a rebranding of Google. These companies set the standards that others mimic.
Can you name a single Russian company? If you did, was it Lada? What about Chinese car companies? I know several from South Korea and Japan, why can’t I name a single Chinese car company without searching for it? And I actually studied Chinese for two years back in high school. According to TopMarkets.Com, the most recognizable twenty brands in the world are 16 American, 2 Chinese (Tencent and Alibaba), Samsung (SK), and Toyota (JP). VisualCapitalist.Com has another take in the image below.
Innovative companies come with soft power projection. When people use these products, they connect in some small way to the country of origin. This is one of the reasons that Putin has told his oligarchs and government officials to switch to Russian-made cars — in Russia, anything Western is a sign of affluence and taste. Blue jeans, iPhones, and Mercedes are the symbols of a life well lived, not a Lada. China gets a score on this because its companies are widely known in the developing world, just not in wealthy Western nations.
Cultural Influence: Superpowers have cultural influence through the distribution and translation of their culture. One can watch a Hollywood film or American sitcom in any language anywhere in the world. ‘Friends’ might be dated and sexist, but it has also been translated into hundreds of languages. Everyone recognizes American superstars like Tom Cruise, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Branjolina. Superstars from other countries know they have hit the jackpot when they get a Hollywood contract. It’s not just movies, though. Western rock music, and to some extent South Korean K-pop and Japanese pop music, are worldwide phenomena.
Self-Sustainability: Superpowers are not beholden to any other country or group of allies for their own existence. Russia thought that the EU was dependent upon it, but it turned out that the dependence was mutual. Many say that the US is dependent upon China, but I would say it is Taiwan more than China, and the goods that are imported from China are not critical economic needs. I can do without almost everything in Walmart. Besides that, China is even more dependent on the US for its own economy — without the bottomless pit of American super-consumerism, two hundred million Chinese would find themselves unemployed. Roughly 25–30% of the trade of both countries depends on the other, but the goods China supplies to the USA are not mission-critical, while the jobs that the USA supplies to China are. Russia exports nothing other than commodities and is reliant on imports for nearly every critical system, from the internet and mobile phones to aircraft and the petroleum infrastructure.
Goodwill: Superpowers exert a net positive influence over the world, even in the countries that they go to war with. This is what builds power in the long run. There is a joke that the best thing that can happen to a country is to lose a war with America. This was obviously true in World War II — look at Germany and Japan today and their standard of living. Russia, on the other hand, exploits its neighbors and has a net negative effect on those with whom it interacts. For example, see the former Russian colonies that broke free of the USSR in 1991 — all of them experienced rapid economic and cultural growth after Russia was kicked out. Even after 2014, when Ukraine removed the Russian puppet president through an act of parliament, Ukraine experienced rapid economic growth that had not been occurring under Russia’s control of its political system. The jury is out on China, but the Belt and Road initiative is not yet bearing fruit. Instead, the countries that borrowed money from China to hire Chinese workers to build infrastructure are mired in debt and unable to repay the ‘loans.’
So, those are my rough summaries. Tell me what I missed, or tell me why I’m wrong. Perhaps I should have weighted the opinions of the developing world more, or perhaps I shouldn’t have. I’m basing these numbers on statistics and numbers, not public opinion polls, as those are easily shifted and manipulated by media and even the poll-takers themselves to craft the desired result.