Originally Posted by Sukio

Super power, sometimes, it sucks having the monopoly on it. You can see what I mean, when you look at all the U.S. military personnel scattered around the world for various reasons.

You hardly have to worry about the USA maintaining a "monopoly" on the role of Superpower.

The position of the United States as the most powerful nation on Earth by the substantial margin that it now is ... simply is not sustainable if China and/or India play their cards right in their development. Americans should have no illusions about his matter.

China has more than four times the population of the United States. India is rapidly approaching having four times our population. It should be no surprise to anyone that, unless India and China completely screw up in their development, they will find themselves in competition with each other for the #1 and #2 "most powerful nation" spots in this world.

The primary reason that the USSR and USA grew into "Superpowers" was simply because they each had such an enormous store of resources and population. All that was necessary was for their industrial and military development to occur.

So where does Russia fit into all of this? They have the military technological capabilities of a Superpower, but they do not have the population and nor a strong enough industry to outproduce the USA, China or India. The best that can be hoped for, barring some unforeseen cataclysm, is for Russia to move into a "4th Best" role for awhile. Considering they are the 9th largest population in the world (instead of their former position of 3rd), they will have a difficult time sustaining even 4th place. But we'll see, of course.

The one way for Russia to come out on top? For the USA, China and India to dump their militaries in favor of other priorities. Or for mass disaster to strike all three.

Russia appears to be desperately trying to regain something that is probably lost forever ... and we have to be complete idiots to not watch them VERY closely in their attempt.

Like I said before, we are screwed.