Member Since: 5/18/2012
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The 7 Great Powers: Is Your country there?
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7) Saudi Arabia
2014 was the second year running in which Saudi Arabia shook the world. In 2013 the Saudis helped the Egyptian military overthrow the Morsi government in a move that threw the Obama administration’s Middle East policy into thorough disarray. In 2014 the Saudis engineered an oil price collapse that upended international politics. Great power reveals itself in the accomplishment of big things; many countries with larger populations, more powerful military forces and more sophisticated technological foundations than Saudi Arabia lack the desert kingdom’s ability to revolutionize the geopolitical balance and reset the global economy.
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6) India
But what makes India a great power today has less to do with its future potential than with its strategic position in the evolving Asian balance of power. Four great powers (the United States, China, Japan and India) seek to play a major role in the region, and India – the most flexible of the four in terms of its options – has been able to cast itself as a kind of swing voter. The United States and Japan both want to build strategic, long term relations with India as part of a new Asian architecture that would balance a rising China. India is similarly concerned about China, but understands that it benefits more by keeping a little distance between itself and its suitors in Tokyo and Washington. With China, Japan and the United States all competing for India’s friendship (and with EU nations and Russia desperate to increase trade), India has been able to enjoy the benefits of many friendships without having to make any commitments.
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5) Russia
Russia is a nation in decline, but it has not yet finished declining and it by no means reconciled to the prospect. This makes it extremely dangerous. It may be failing at some of the most important tasks of a great power, but it still has nukes; plentiful natural resources; effective (and often underrated) intel, infowar and cyber capacities; and is currently led by a tactically canny president who punches above his weight. Were these ratings a ranking of willingness to use power, Russia would come in much higher on the list; the invasion of Ukraine this year left no one under any illusions as to what Vladimir Putin will do to bolster Russia’s place in the world, and to reverse, as best he can, what he sees as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century: the collapse of the Soviet Union.
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4) Japan
Japan remains a great power and thanks to a newly assertive and clever foreign policy, its weight in world affairs is actually growing. It has the world’s third largest economy, and while it just entered a recession, Japan’s level of technological sophistication and its global trade and production networks make it an extremely formidable force. In the 21st century, it will be technology rather than grunts on the ground that counts most in military competition; Japan’s ability to produce and deploy sophisticated military technology and to hold its own in the high tech arms competition of our time means that Japan has the potential to remain a major military power for a long time to come.
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3) China
There are three basic reasons for the shortfall. The first is China’s regional environment. Unlike the United States, surrounded by friendly states and wide oceans, or Germany (bordered by weak states), China is in a region of strong and in many cases growing and ambitious powers. While China sees itself as a world power, regional rivals like Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia and Indonesia are intent on blocking its emergence as a regional hegemon and enjoy U.S. backing in this effort. As long as China is embroiled in controversy over its boundaries and as long as a network of neighboring states work to limit its influence, China simply cannot emerge as the global superpower it would like to become. Certainly Germany today enjoys more influence in its home region than China has in East Asia.
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2) Germany
Not since the 1940s has Germany played such an important role in world politics. The rift between Russia and the West gave Germany the ability to determine the West’s response and gave it the decisive voice in the shaping of a new European security order. At the same time, Germany continued to benefit from its pivotal position within the European Union. It holds the balance between north and south and east and west in Europe, giving it a place in the European order that no other country can challenge.
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1) USA
The United States has been the most powerful country in the world for close to a century; not surprisingly, 2014 saw no change. If anything, despite renewed geopolitical challenges from countries like Russia and Iran, and the continuing economic development of China, America’s place at the top of the global pecking order seems more secure at the end of 2014 than at the beginning.
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France and the UK seem to be missing from the list. But if Germany is the one calling the shots, then their absence is warranted.
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