Originally posted by: Atheus
The amount of time a nation can remain the world's only superpower seems to be inveresly proportional to how big they are and how modern they are. The Romans controled Eaurope for many centuries, the British empire controled about a quarter of the world for about a century, and the USA (which does not control the world but projects it's power aggressively to much of it) will decline after about 60 or 70 years if you count the start of it's power to be 1945. China will be the greatest power of the 21st century and will last until someone forcibly knocks them off their pedistal after 30 or 40 years.
Disclainer: 'IMO' is implied in all sentances of this post.
No offense, but I think your post shows how badly fallacious such theories can be.
Each of those examples has significant issues affecting it that hav nothing to do with the theory you express.
Most importantly, if the Chinese were to become far more powerful, there is nothing to say they need to fall.
That's one thing that has me worried about the human race now: the world has never seen such situations where a governmental power in whatever form can be as controlling and secure from overthrow as now, with means from the modern military to modern sociological understanding of controlling populations to the mass media, and therefore the opportunities for tyranny are unprecedented. China could be the wave of the future as foolish Americans fail to protect our unique system (IMO by voting for Republicans).
This is why I have said I think our important political challenge today is to find a way to create a stable global system of distributed power and prevent any 'one world government'.
That one world government need not be one 'nation', it could simply be an alliance of whatever combination of governments and corporations, making the rules.
Think about it: the history of the human race is one long slow movement towards consolidated power. Currently we're entering the 'regional' distribution, where the EU is consolidating Europe, there is a lot of interest in the American nations forming unity like never before, and China is poised to consolidate power in Asia; the long-time dream of African leaders for a 'pan-African' consolidation has not yet happened, but there is a long-time interest.
The level of cooperation between the US and China - in violation of the 'principles' of each - is some indication of how these mutual interests can be powerful. The US uses its valuing of self-determination, liberty, democracy as a justification for aggression in various regions of the world - where is its pressure on China? The selective use of those principles turns them into a mockery and even a fraud, used as cover, as justification, for aggression for other agendas, corrupting them.
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