Superpowers in the modern world are those few nation states with huge economic resources far transcending the next division in such a league table. The exact number varies with different analyses. The most common view until the beginning of the 1990s allowed only two superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, with the possible addition of the People’s Republic of China. Since the near collapse of the Soviet/Russian economy, the accompanying enforced military retrenchment and the ending of the Soviet Union’s imperial rule in Eastern Europe, many analysts insist that the USA is now the sole superpower. However, this definition combines a series of variables together—actual economic wealth, population size and, above all, the extent to which these qualities have been used to produce military strength, especially in the possession of sophisticated nuclear armaments.
Ignoring the nuclear aspect might more easily allow China into the club, although its actual economic strength is much less. Alternatively, taking merely economic capacity and wealth would certainly entitle Japan, with no nuclear capacity and very limited conventional forces, a position as a superpower. (Although even this judgment requires a certain blindness to possible fragility in the Japanese economy which does not rest on population size or domestic raw-material possession.) Perhaps more than anything else superpower status depends on a desire actually to use the power resources available. Thus the European Union has all the ingredients, including nuclear forces, to be a superpower, but clearly lacks the political will to be one. What has often been noted by historians is that being a superpower (or in the older language, an imperial power) is on the whole expensive and unrewarding.
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