Who will be the next world power?

Your question is flawed on one account.Excepting Wallerstein's hegemonic cycles (I may have him and his cycles confused with another world-systems analyst), the existence of a super-power in the mold of the US immediately after the collapse of the soviet union is an aberration.The reason I except the hegemonic cycles is because they find a single dominant power whose reign lasts approximately a century, if not less, before its collapse (although if I recall correctly, Britain has had two such cycles, and the US has as well). Of course, while hegemons are quite powerful, they never approached the power of the US in the post-world war II or post-USSR period. Or rather, their rivals were much, much closer in terms of military and economic power than was the case with the US after WWII.Britain, for example, had to contend with a powerful France (our revolutionary war and then the Napoleonic wars are examples of France's power) and then Germany (post-unification until WWI, when Britain lost its hegemonic status).The US, in the cold war, quite obviously had the USSR to contend with. What was unique was that there were two super-powers instead of a constellation of great powers, as by this time the usual great powers were quite exhausted. WWI is a great example of this constellation of great powers, with the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria, and Italy) against the Triple Entente (Britain, France, and Russia).With the collapse of the soviet union there was only one super-power left. This is something that the system doesn't really like. One-power systems seem to be unstable, they revert to bi-polar or multi-polar systems.So the question isn't really who is the next world power, but who are the next great powers going to be, or who are the next two super-powers going to be?By the way, the problem with China isn't so much the ballooning population (it has a birth rate of ~13.71 per 1,000, we have a birth rate of ~14.18 according to the 2008 CIA world factbook). It's the shear environmental degradation. They have to keep economic growth at high levels right now in order to provide jobs for everybody. Once their economy is big enough such a high growth rate won't be quite necessary. However, in the process of growing their economy at such a rapid clip they are destroying the environment, which, if they do nothing about, will shut down economic growth. Key example of this is the water issues inland, such as with the yellow river and yangtze river. The first is nearly used beyond capacity for irrigation. The second is extremley polluted (beyond use, really). When you destroy your resources, you destroy your engine of growth. Less or no growth, no ability to be a serious great power.abe: of course, Italy left the Triple Alliance during WWI, and was never that much of a great power to begin withEdited by kuresu, : No reason given.

And you don't think Spain had that when it's empire fell apart? When it lost its dominance?Might spain's fall have more to do with external threats? The rise of the ottoman empire, the protestant reformation (and the wars fought between protestants and catholics, the biggie being the 30 years war), the general overexpansion?Might I remind you that even as spain lost its dominant role in europe it expanded the size of its empire?Work ethic and stable government are needed simply for the state to survive. To say they, among others, are needed for dominance is at once an insult to every state in existence and incredibly redudant. Money absolutely makes a superpower. Tell me, how are you going to buy all those shiny new weapons without money? That's one of the problems spain faced when it lost its dominance in europe: it ran out of money. It couldn't afford to fight all its wars in europe. The more money you have, the more powerful you are. How else do you think the Netherlands, after the wars of succession, became a great power? They certainly didn't have the resources available them like France, Britain, or Spain. It was through their control of money and trade.

Really? Mind actually detailing these similarities? And explaining how they are significant? There are very few significant similarities between the USSR in the late 1980s and the US in the 2000s, if any. I don't think anyone in or outside of the USSR really expected it to stay together by the time Gorbachev instituted glasnost and perestroika, among other reforms. They were merely hoping that the reforms would actually help hold the USSR together. They didn't expect the reforms to actually accelerate the process, though, of dissolution.

This is also true of Great Britain, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and practically every other European country. The majority of power has been held in Washington since at least the conclusion of the civil war. This, of course, is quite false. Do you know why we only have two parties? Because our electoral system is first-past-the-post (whoever wins the plurality of votes wins) and a geographical representation system. In order to win a district, the person has to capture the political center of that district or else the person will not get a plurality. In a proportional representation system, you do not vote for a specific person (generally speaking), but the party you want in power. They get the number of seats roughly equal to their percentage of the national vote. There is a minimum percentage required (varies by state, but around 2-4% of the national vote in order to be represented).The irony is that the founders of our electoral system weren't planning on the creation of political parties.Why are the parties so similar? Well, it's because of having to capture the center. The political spectrum is:
Left-------------------Center-------------------Right
For the left to win, it needs to capture the left and center vote, so it has to moderate itself in order to appeal to the center. The same is true of the right. Of course, the center is determined by where the majority of people place themselves on the scale, so in the US it's been:
Left----------------------------Center---------Right
for a long time. The left has to be even more conservative in order to win the right. This is what we see happen in the south. In New England, where the center is closer to the left, the left can afford to be more leftist. Aside from this, there are actual differences between the parties, and quite significant differences. If there aren't, then the party will lose its core support. It's why Specter just switched to being a democrat (although he's the most conservative democrat in the senate now). He was losing the support of the right, and would need it to beat Toomey in the primary.It's not the political dominance of the democrats and republicans that make it so hard for third parties to be established. It's the electoral system which was established at our founding. In Sweden, the Social Democratic Party has ruled for extensive periods of time, more than any other party or coalition. If anything, they qualify for one-party rule. And yet, even given the dominance of the SDP, there are currently seven parties in parliament. SDP (130 seats), Moderate Party (97 seats, the largest conservative party), Center Party (29 seats, more conservative), Liberal People's Party (28 seats, moderates), Christian Democrats (24 seats, conservative), Left Party (22 seats, to the left of the SDP!), and the Green Party (19 seats, left). The governing coalition is led by the Moderates, partnered with Center Party, the People's Party, and the Christian Democrats.Sweden has a completely different electoral system that allows for the proliferation of political parties (we even have a pirate party!), but the result is for one to actually govern coalitions must be made, which ultimately tempers the desires of one or more parties. So seven parties, two blocks. Not all that different from the US, except the different wings are already formally a part of the democrats or republicans. And when there are independents or third party members in the US, they caucus with one of the parties anyhow.So now that we know that this complaint about one party rule is silly, perhaps we should compare the electoral system of the USSR to the US? Well, for starters, the communist party picked who would run, and the voters had no choice. The US at least has primaries and caucuses. And before you go off about how they don't really matter, look at Barack Obama. He was not the establishment choice, Hillary Clinton was. The people of Iowa disagreed. Further, there was only one person you could vote for in the USSR elections, as the communist party was the only one legally allowed. I had the choice of voting between something like 15 candidates for president in CO. Which brings up the next point: the head of the USSR was in fact the General Secretary of the Communist Party and was not elected by the people. Yes, and we still had Iraq war protests. And in the USSR, voicing criticism could actually get you disappeared. It's not for nothing that authors critical of the USSR did not publish their works until either after their deaths or when dissent was more openly allowed. Yes, the US government under Bush had a knack for punishing people who criticized the government, from wiretapping to blowing CIA cover. Not our brightest moment, but nothing like the USSR. This is the case in virtually every government around the world. It goes hand in hand with the centralization of power, and has little to do with whether a country will collapse or not. Really? Did you know we had even greater debt, as a percentage of GDP, right after WWII? Did you know that our debt isn't even the largest in the world as a percentage of GDP?. Look at Japan. Their debt is equal to anywhere from 170-198% of their GDP. Are they anywhere near collapsing? Russia, today, on the other hand, has virtually no debt. How is their economy doing again? The Ukraine is virtually collapsing, and again, they have almost no debt (only 11.7% of GDP).So far, I've only found that the USSR had an external debt of 60 or 144 billion USD when it collapsed. I'm not sure if 144 billion is accounting for inflation. At anyrate, either number is extremely small when compared to the USSR GDP. US external debt today is over 13.6 trillion. In other words, our debt is a lot larger than anything the USSR had, and our debt has been larger for a long time. This is actually a real similarity. Problem is, crumbling infrastructure alone doesn't lead to collapse. And different pieces of infrastructure are in different conditions. We have a pretty decent internet infrastructure in the states. Our roads aren't terrible either. The justice system seems to generally work. Our trains aren't really deteriorating, they're just not prevalent enough, nor have they actually been improved in ages. On the other hand, our bridges, our levees, and our health care are in precarious situations. Why we have elections. Of course, since you think we only have one party, I can see why elections aren't important. And I'll point you to Specter again. He's very in tune with what the people of Pennsylvania think, and he knows his power is predicated on winning an election. So he switched party because most of the people who support him are no longer republicans, but democrats or independents. Yeah, and the USSR had no freedom (actually, legally they did). Russia today still has very little freedom, if you look at the Freedom House reports. We'll have to see what happens with the Patriot Act in the end, but it was partially limited in 2006 (not going far enough thanks to the House). Some of the extended sunsets happen this year, and some, if I understand correctly, have already occurred. But to compare the limits of freedom between the USSR and the US is facile at best. Wait, this is a similarity with the USSR? Do you know we've been suing each other since before the revolution? I don't remember which Brit said it, but it goes something like this "do you really believe that litigious lot can actually band together against us in revolution?". Even then we had a reputation of being extremely litigious to the point of inanity. Seems we've made it for about 300 years while suing the pants of each other. So even if the similarity is true, it's meaningless.Now then, to make this an actual similarity, do you know how many lawsuits were processed per capita in the USSR as compared to the US?

You know, you were aiming to describe a similarity between the US and USSR on the brink of collapse. Yeah, both have centralized power. So does practically every other European nation, so the similarity (especially in terms of whether we're going to collapse) is facile at best. And that was my point.Increasing centralization does not point us toward collapse. You know, tell that to the republicans. Tell that to ross perot. Tell that to joe lieberman, or bernie sanders (a socialist!). And did you not really read anything I wrote about why we only have two parties? It's not some nefarious scheme by the big two, but the electoral laws set up by our founders. Winner-take-all means you get the whole district, and first-past-the-post means you have to capture the plurality of votes in order to win. So you have to capture the political center, and more than three parties make this really quite difficult.And look at your examples of third parties in Canada. One is definitely regional. The reform party also started as a regional party, and no longer exists (in its Alliance form). In fact, it replaced one of the major party blocks (by forming it's own block), much like the republicans replaced the whigs in the 1850s and 1860s. No, Canada has three main parties, a conservative, a leftist, a liberal. And then there are the separatists. So the system in canada doesn't seem to be favorable to third parties either, but there's a stronger tradition of third party success, perhaps, than in the states.Further, our third parties tend to be absorbed by the big two when they are on the extremes. When they exist somewhere around the middle (like the libertarians) they simply can't effectively compete because while you do have to capture the middle, they only represent about 20% of the total vote. So a moderate third party is never going to win an election unless it can capture the left or right.So the US has a stable two-party system, and we basically have had that since our inception (the first two being the Federalists and Anti-Federalists). Here's the thing: a two party system does not necessarily point down the road of collapse, or else we would have fallen apart a long time ago.And if you really think that one party that supports civil rights is the same as one that doesn't support civil rights, well, not much I can say about that. That's not really true either. The USSR was experiencing the complete and total failure of the planned economy. We're not experiencing the death of capitalism (just how many recessions and depressions has capitalism survived? quite a few). We're experiencing the death (hopefully) of reagonomics, which was bastardized economics to begin with.Anyhow, do you know when the economy really hit the fan in the USSR? When it became the Russian Federation and applied so-called "shock therapy" to its economic system in 1991. And that collapse is far, far worse than anything we're likely to see in the states.Here, the similarity is non-existent between the US and USSR. In our last presidential election, 63% of eligible voters voted. That's the highest it's been since 1960, and the presidential election always draws a higher vote. However, only ~70% of eligible voters are actually registered in the states, and voter turnout generally averages 50-55% of eligible voters. That is not a small percentage of voters.What's the voter turnout like in Canada? Well, from 1960-1995, it averaged 76% when voting for the lower house. Compare this to Sweden's 86% or Austria's 92%. Do you all have a small percentage, then?Another kicker: the voter turnout has been decreasing markedly in the "west" since the 1960s.Do elections matter? Yes. Again, I point you to Obama and Clinton. The establishment had picked Clinton. Yet Obama won the nomination. Funny that. Not an overstatement in the least. You are apparently unfamiliar with the rule of Stalin (certainly the lowest point) or the nearly complete suppression of dissent (although you did allude to this earlier). Here's part of the hypocrisy: the USSR formally had freedom of religion, but they actively persecuted religious belief. So yeah, legally they had quite a few freedoms. In practice, most of those freedoms were non-existent.

And everything out there points to this being false. If you haven't noticed a substantive difference between the way Obama governs compared to Bush, or Bush compared to Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi compared to Trent Lott, or Harry Reid compared to Bill Frist, then you haven't been paying attention. You guys have a senate, right? That's the upper house. You guys have a house of commons, right? That's the lower house. Um, okay?By World War I, the US had already eclipsed the economies of France, Great Britain, or Germany (then the largest european economy). And yes, we entered late, but that had little to do with strengthening our financial situation. More accurately, everyone else was worse off than in the beginning.In WWII, the bulk of the fighting was not finished before the US entered. Unless you think someone else carried out the pacific front against Japan, or carried out the successful amphibious invasions of Africa and Europe? At any rate, the only reason we came out in such good shape was because we had bombed everything in France and Germany under German control.We didn't make great amounts of money selling weapons and supplies to the Entente and Allied forces in WWI and WWII, and that's certainly not what put us at the top.So we were at the top, economically, by the Great Depression. We proceeded to lose 1/4 of our economic size. But the thing about the great depression (and this recession) is that it wasn't just the US, but everybody who declined (or grew more slowly, such as China in 2008). We lost 1/4 of our economy and managed to rebound. And the problems then were much more severe than they are now.As to our coming economic decline, you do realize the US economy makes up roughly 1/5-1/4 of the world economy? The only economic unit that has reached parity is the EU. The next one? Japan or China (Japan by GDP, China by PPP) contribute ~8% to the world economy. China has to at least triple its current economy to reach parity with the US and EU as of now. And since the US and EU economies won't stop growing in the long run, it's going to be a while before there is an economic power our size. A lot longer than 20-30 years.Assuming a constant growth of 2% over 25 years, the US economy will be 23.3 trillion dollars.Assuming a constant growth of 8% over 25 years, the Chinese economy will be 30 trillion dollars.Of course, the caveats here are whether US economic growth will be so anemic, and whether China can actually sustain such a blistering pace. So I personally don't think that the US is going to experience any kind of absolute economic decline, and given that China maintaining it's current growth rate is unrealistic, it's going to be longer than 20-30 years before we see parity reached.Do you honestly see the Iraq or Afghanistan wars moving to the US? How? I think that kind of says everything. Try again. 2004 had a very high turnout. By one measure (which is actually inaccurate), 2008 had a voter turnout of 56.8%, 2004 had 55.3%, 2000 had 51.3%, 1996 had 49.1%, and 1992 had 55.1%. So voter turnout has actually been increasing since 1996, and the turnout is high when the elections are decidedly important. The US has an average voter turnout, not a low voter turnout.What's a low voter turnout? Try when only 37% of the voting age population turns out to elect representative and senators. But we always have less people vote in off-year elections.At any rate, Putin was elected with something like 95% of eligible voters casting a ballot. What's more important is not how many people turn out, but whether they are free and fair, and in the US, excepting a few cases, they are.Elections matter. Just because people don't vote doesn't mean that's not the case.

I wonder is Onifire subscribes to the conspiracy of the illuminati?Personally, I think Onifire is advocating the same kind of conspiracy that creationists like to advocate (except for them, it's all of the scientific world that's in on the secret and is keeping dissent quiet). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and they just don't have it.

It's not speculation when you have polls. And when you have a lot of polls, you can plot trendlines.During the last election, a generic democrat beat a generic republican. In fact, for a while, a generic democrat was polling better than Obama, who was polling better than a generic republican.During the last election, Obama was beating a generic republican.So yeah, straggler's comment isn't all that speculative.

Not to mention some border disputes.India is not comfortable when it comes to China at all.

A little too simplistic, I think. The US and China seem to have a fairly stable and beneficial relationship. The USSR and China were both communist nations. They did not have the coziest of relations. Both were of the relatively same ideology.Ideology is a helpful determinative factor in state relations, but in the total picture, it's not quite so important.China is extremely pragmatic, in that it will do what it sees is in its best interests. That interest is quite frankly power, and increasing their power (I realize this is going back to the realist school of international relations, but I highly doubt China sees the world through the lens of internationalism, and uses marxism--core vs. periphery--as a rallying call).In the 1970s, that was opening up to the US.
In the 1980s, that was beginning to implement modest capitalistic reforms.
In the 2000s, that was cultivating friendly relationships with African nations, among others.Should they think that improving their relations with India would be of benefit, they will attempt to. India is not so much concerned about China as a communist nation but as a regional power with which it has border disputes and concerns over the nuclear arsenal, among other issues.

Another key item is the relative lack of a challenger.Again, the bi-polarity of the Cold War is unusual in that there was a somewhat credible challenger to the US.If we look at Napoleonic France, the only challenger they had was an entire alliance.If we look at Britain around the time of the revolution, the only challenger they had was a French-based alliance.If we look at Spain, the only challenger they had was an alliance.If we look at Sweden, the only challenger they had was an alliance.Europe mastered the game of making sure no one got too powerful, that no one could be a singularly global world power. They did this by allying against whoever was the most powerful, as the most powerful had a tendency to threaten their interests.The US got to be a superpower because no one was left to challenge us immediately after WWII, and most of Europe allied with us against the USSR (that is, all of Europe that did not become part of the Soviet Union). So when the USSR did become a credible threat, it wasn't just us it had to deal with.If the US wants to stay a global power, even a superpower, we need to co-opt our challengers, bring them into the fold as it were. We've actually somewhat done this with China. Yes, they hold a lot of our T-bills. But their not going to cash them in unless they want to destroy the US economy. They do that, they lose their second largest trading partner (only more trade with the EU), and they suffer a severe blow to their own economy, as their growth is nearly entirely export-dependent.They are still a challenger, but the T-bills for now are a method of co-opting them, of blunting their ability to credibly challenge. On the other hand, our dependence on their trade also blunts our ability to call them out on their human rights abuses. But in the game of power, human rights isn't too much of a concern; power is the end all be all (yes, this is ignoring any conception of soft power, as advocating for human rights would strengthen soft power, increasing our ability to influence other nations who do care about human rights; for nations who do not care about human rights, all advocating for an improvement can do is hopefully get them to do so because otherwise trade, aid, or relations will be cut down, but China is too big for such tactics to actually work).Another item to add, although it's touched upon by aggressiveness and "destiny" culture, is a desire to meddle in world affairs. Before 1898, the US was a largely isolationist country. We had the makings of a great power, but we weren't all that interested in overseas imperialism (just imperialism on the plains). After WWI, when we were a true great power, the populace retreated back into isolationist mode and stayed there even into WWII. If after WWII we had been able to be isolationist again, the history of the last 60 years would be quite different.

If you look closely at the story I told, challengers brought down the great powers.I even said as much:

quote:

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Europe mastered the game of making sure no one got too powerful, that no one could be a singularly global world power. They did this by allying against whoever was the most powerful, as the most powerful had a tendency to threaten their interests.
  —kuresu

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If you don't have a challenger, there is obviously no one to threaten your dominance. The whole point of gaining power is to keep other threats at bay or to even minimalize or eliminate threats.So in order to be a great power or a super power there has to be a lack of a credible threat. Otherwise you'll expend yourself to the dust pile of history as a great power. A great example of this is the UK vs. Germany prior to WWI. Germany wanted a naval fleet that could challenge Britain's. Britain had a policy of having a navy too large to be challenged. So it spent tremendous sums of money on guns to its ruin as an imperial power. If Germany had not tried to challenge British oceanic supremacy, the British Empire certainly could have lasted a touch longer.The challengers/threats you mention weren't credible (though this can largely only be seen clearly by most people after the supposed threat has passed). Credible threats are not necessary to "stay sharp".The US became a super power because there was no challenger. The USSR tried to be one, and certainly flexed its muscles, but who set up the rules of the game? The US did. When did we set them up? Immediately after WWII. The UN, the Bretton Woods agreement (including the IMF and the World Bank) were all established when we had not even a potential challenger.Do you seriously think the US could have set them up if the USSR was a real challenger at the time? That they would have looked anything like they did/do?

Sounds pretty conspiratorial to me.

Hey, you asked the question.It's not a response that requires a lot of words.If you want a lot of words, don't ask a yes/no either/or question.

Congrats. You found a liberal progressive organization that finds a conservative bias in the mass media.That holds about as much water as citing the Heritage Foundation finding that the mass media has a liberal bias.And isn't it ironic that the paper you deride for being conservative/fascist biased is the very paper reporting on the links between the military analysts and the pentagon? Was it really in the interest of big business to expose that link, as doing so would likely even further undermine confidence and trust in mass media, and thus diminish their ability to persuade us, which means less money for them as people no longer think a military solution is perhaps quite so good?Really, try again. Google Scholar has a whole load of articles, produced by universities, published in journals such as the journal of political economy or the journal of communication.What Media Matters is doing is important, but they do have an agenda and a bias, two things that can be eliminated or at least ameliorated by moving to actual research published in real academic journals.