Less Super Power?

There has long been universal agreement that the United States of America is the last one standing in the ring of global power as the single remaining global powerhouse. The Cold War lapsed into history leaving the Soviet Union dissolved and one super power only. Cause for celebration since the United States is and always has been, despite its blighted errors, been on the side of the angels.

That would be the angels of Freedom and Human Rights and Justice.

While there may be many other countries and nations whose track record and whose support of those inalienable virtues in a restive and volatile world are undeniable, they lack the military, social, political and diplomatic clout that the United States has honed over the years.

China and India have larger populations by far, but they haven't the additional indispensable ingredients: advanced technologies, an omnivorous economy, diplomatic outreach, political stability, an large and educated population and historical antecedents.

Most other advanced countries of the world are endowed with some, if not many of the requisite virtues, social-political traits, stability and financial clout, but they are runners-up to the throne that the U.S. occupies.

China, India, Brazil and Russia may continue to grow their bona fides and their entitlements and no one can read the future, but there is no real reason to believe that the U.S. is really when all is said and experienced, prepared to surrender itself to second-string status.

France has demonstrated a newly-realized aptitude to take the place of the United States in initiating military solutions to seemingly intractable political-social situations abroad, as has done Britain, and to a lesser, more restrained degree, Germany. They all have rather insalubrious past histories demonstrative of a serious fall from grace.

Japan too abandoned its reach toward a world power status and became instead an economic power.

The ebb and flow of history, the interconnectedness of world powers, of politics and finances with global corporate interests have resulted in a softening of former antipathies and a general consensus toward social and political union.

And up the centre aisle has marched the backwater nations of the Muslim world; Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, led by the Arab nations and taunted by Iran.

The coalition of disaster-nations like North Korea, Burma, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan in destabilizing the world order and the orderly world that would prefer to live and let live, innovate and entrench, enjoy resource and build financial empires march us toward future uncertainty.

The pretenders to the throne of super-powerdom will remain pretenders - or willing assistants.

In the final analysis it seems clear that the United States, once again institutionally allergic to global power, and prepared to sit back and allow working coalitions to lead, will be given little choice but to take up the reins and direction of the world order.

It will become, increasingly, an imperative its leaders may not be capable of avoiding.