Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Changing patterns of power
- Superpower status is not fixed
- In the USA, there is concern that the country's superpower status is threatened
- The economic and population centres of gravity of the world is shifting towards Asia
- In some ways it is inevitable that the USA will fall from its 'perch', if only because history suggests superpowers do not last forever
- The nineteenth century superpower was the British Empire, which has emerged as the dominant global power during the eighteenth century
- At its height, in 1921, the British empire help sway over 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population
- It covered about 36.7 million km squared, roughly a quarter of Earth's total land area
- The rise and fall of the
British Empire
- The British Empire was founded on expiration and sea power
- The Royal Navy dominated the high seas from around 1700 until the 1930s
- The Navy provided a link between the home country and overseas colonies, and at the same time was a powerful 'keep off' symbol of military power
- Three distinct phases of empire can be identified
- The mercantilist phase (1600-1850)
- Small colonies set up on coastal fringes and islands, e.g. New England, Jamaica, Accra, Bombay, defended by forts
- Focus on trade, including slaves and raw materials such as sugar
- Private trading companies such as the Royal African Company, Hudson's Bay
- Company and East India Company, defended by British forces
- The imperial phase (1850-1945)
- Coastal colonies extended inland; wholesale conquest of territories
- Government and institutions set up to rule the colonial population
- Religion and British culture and language introduced to colonies
- Development of more complex trade networks
- Use of technology such as railways and telegraph to connect distant parts of the empire
- The decolonialisation phase (1945-)
- After the Second World War the UK is effectively
bankrupt and cannot support the empire as before
- Anti-colonial movements grow, e.g. in India, increasing
tensions; some colonies are granted independence
- The focus on postwar reconstruction at home sees the majority of colonies independent by 1970
- Britain does have a superpower legacy
- It retains control of
14 overseas
territories and fought
a war to keep one of
these, the Falkland
islands, in 1982
- The commonwealth is an association of 53 independent states which consult and cooperate in the common interests of their peoples and in the promotion of international understanding
- The association does not have a
written constitution, but it does have a
series of agreements setting out its
beliefs and objectives
- The collapse of communism
- The world changed dramatically following the collapse of communism
- The process was rapid and pivoted around the key 'public' event of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989
- The Berlin Wall had long symbolised the political separation of the Cold War superpowers
- The fall of communism in the eastern European Warsaw Pact countries took little more than 4 months
- The cultural and
economic hegemony of
the USSR disintegrated
overnight
- The causes of the collapse were reforms in the USSA begun in 1985 by President Mikhail Gorbachev
- These reforms were termed glasnost and perestroika
- Economic and social reform spread to the Warsaw Pact countries, where small freedoms quickly mushroomed into open revolt against the Communist system
- The USSR itself collapsed
in February 1990 when the
Communist Party gave up
its monopoly on power
- This led to the break-up of the entire country, as
nationalist tensions, kept in check by the Communist
system, split the country apart
- In rapid succession the republics of the USSR, such as Latvia,
Kazakhstan and Georgia, broke away to become independent nations
- In retrospect, glasnost and perestroika acted as cracked in the Communist system because of the collective benefits it brought
- The speed of collapse might suggest
force, rather than consent, was more
important in maintaining communism
- Emerging Superpowers
- While some superpowers have declined or collapsed, others are emerging to challenge the dominance of the USA
- These are the BRICs, the EU and the oil-rich nations of the middle east
- Strong economic growth
- Large populations
- Access to key resources
- Market economies
- Regional power and influence
- In the next 20 years some are expected to increase their global power and influence
- Global trends 2025: A transformed world, a report by the US National Intelligence Council in 2008, stated that:
- A global multi-polar system is emerging with the rise of China, India and others
- The unprecedented shift in relative wealth and economic power roughly from West to East now under way will continue
- The United States will remain the single most powerful country but will be less dominant
- Clearly the USA itself can feel its power
weakening, especially in relation to China
- There are many possible reasons for this that relate to both a weakening USA and a rising China