Excellent article by Neil Reynolds of the Globe and Mail. His piece talks about supercomputers but he may as well have written about the American superiority in other fields. (see attached below). There's a lot of talk about the decline of the American Empire, about the ascendance of China, the rise of India, and the emergence of such middle powers such as Brazil.
As a goodfella would say, "foget about it".
China will never be a world power; as a matter of fact, it will have a difficult time maintaining its status as a regional power. A one party state will exhaust its energy looking over its shoulder and engaging in rear guard action (watching its ass?) with brush fires set off by the restless natives. Besides, China's economy has to be turbocharged and revved to the red line constantly; any let-up and the whole mahjong-tiled house comes tumbling down.
India doesn't have the infrastructure (in literacy, transportation, democratic tradition amongst the masses, equitable wealth distribution) to maintain a hold on the label: emerging superpower. India as a superpower is a state of mind amongst the Indian middle class: a tiny percentage of the Indian population.
Brazil is much like India. It is an emerging economic superpower, for now...but that's about it.
And as for the European Community, with its aspirations to match the USA, superpower status was always just a dream. The individual European countries, with the possible exception of Germany, were only as powerful as their hold on their colonies were. Wealth that financed socialist experiments flowed in from the colonies; half a century after the last African colony became free, these socialist experiments are unraveling... the ill-begotten money is gone. Mind you, multi-nationals have taken over governments in plundering the former colonies... it is in the interests of these groups to maintain corrupt regimes in Nigeria and the Middle East, wars in equatorial Africa, etc.
The United States of America is the only genuine world power that exists right now. Sure, it has its share of wackos: the ayatollahs of the extreme right such as the Palins and the Becks. It is also currently going through a painful economic restructuring. But this is the price of democracy; an imperfect experiment maybe but still the best game in town. The USS DEMOCRACY is the best ship to be on to ride out any storm, economic or whatever. It is the only country in the world that balances (or at least tries to) self-interest with altruism. It has rock-solid foundation in science and technology, in the arts, and in education. It believes in the equality of all people and in the equality of the sexes. Most importantly, Americans are culturally conditioned to be optimistic in the future. America needs to heed Barack Obama's call to once again believe in themselves!
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