Hyperpowers & The Rise to Global Dominance

Every nation or society that has become dominant on a global scale throughout history, no matter what other great differences between them, have one thing in common: tolerance, to put it simply. Here I am not talking about the 'Great Powers' or even 'superpowers', but those few times in history when a state achieves global dominance.

With the collapse of communism and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new word came into being, hyperpower, to describe the preeminence of the United States in world affairs. Hubert Vedrine, France's foreign minister, coined the word. When Vedrine stated that France "cannot accept a politically unipolar world, nor a culturally uniform world, nor the unilateralism of a single hyperpower", he was being a very upfront critic of the United States. In the foreign minister's view, and that of many others, America had achieved not only military, economic, and also technological superiority, but also a "domination of attitude, concepts, language and modes of life."

In the world of 2009 America's being "dominant in all categories" is not as true as when these words were spoken by foreign minister Vedrine in 1999. The United States is still the predominant economic and military power on the planet. However, the great ship United States of America is starting to take on water on many fronts, not sinking-or maybe even flooding yet, but massive problems are starting to plague the U.S. The economy started to tank badly in the last half of 2008 and as of the date of this post things are only getting worse, with massive layoffs and joblessness adding to the already huge problems of the financial crisis. The United States is running huge deficits and pouring billions of dollars into a 'war' it may not win. American prestige and its reputation around the globe is badly damaged. As of the date I began to write this post, 5 Feb 2009, it seems each new day brings more bad news to the United States.

I think the question of whether America continues to try to dominate global affairs and can retain its 'hyperpower' status is one of huge importance, for not only Americans, but people the world over. Are some of the actions America is taking around the world threatening global peace and stability? I often wonder in a strange twist of fate or destiny, if America's hugely powerful role in the world as its only 'hyperpower' is going to be the cause of its bankruptcy-both moral and fiscal and the ultimate cause of its downfall. I also wonder about what a future global order will look like. While America struggles, other nations and power blocs are emerging-although these powers have massive problems of their own. Taken as a whole, the European Union has a gross domestic product almost equal to that of the United States and a larger population. After centuries of quiescence, China is booming economically (although with the current global financial crisis this may slow a bit) and starting to assert herself more in world affairs. The 2008 Beijing Olympics showcased the 'new' China to the world. China also has a fifth of the world's population. Perhaps China, the European Union, India and Russia in cooperation with other smaller nations and power blocs could begin to form the basis for a multi-polar world again. In the case of the EU or China, maybe one or both of them could become the new hyperpower on the planet.

I also think it would be helpful to have as exact a definition as possible of what s hyperpower is. For the purposes of this blog I largely if not completely agree with Professor Amy Chua, author of Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall. Mrs. Chua is the John Duff Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is also the author of World on Fire and an expert in the fields of international business, ethnic conflict and globalization. Later in this series I would like to say a few things about why Professor Chua is the 'perfect' author for a book like Day of Empire and also why she would have an excellent take on why 'tolerance' and the acceptance and even assimilation of other peoples, religions and philosophies is the critical ingredient for a state to become a hyperpower. When Amy Chua talks about 'tolerance' in the sense she does in her book, she does not mean tolerance in the modern human rights sense of the word. Tolerance in her view on the rise of a state to hyperpower status just means "letting very different kinds of people live, work and prosper in your society-even if only for instrumental or strategic reasons."

The three conditions Professor Chua proposes for a nation or empire to have hyperpower status are: 1) Its power clearly surpasses that of all its known or known to it, as of course in the world of the day Rome had almost no contact with another great empire of the time, Han dynasty China,contemporary rivals. 2) It is not clearly inferior in economic or military strength to any other power on the planet, known to it or not. 3) It projects its power over so great an area of the world and over such a large population that it breaks the bounds of local and even regional domination.
The image is of Professor Amy Chua. Thanks again for anyone reading this blog to stick with me! I have so many varied interests that I do not seem to be able to keep up with everything and everybody at once. I do hope to start using the extra time I have-as my other faster moving blog has a lot of future work done for it-to continue getting this blog caught up. I may seem to be going in several different directions with this blog-but I am keeping it all about Empires and Hyperpowers. I definitely want to come back to Rome very soon and would like to do more studies of Amy Chua's book-I think this book is just what I needed to get my thinking going with a lot of questions I had for this blog. Peace and be well to anyone stopping by!