The US and its rivals

The US has remained the world’s leading superpower for over a century. However, Pax America wasn’t without rivals even at its greatest peak. Here are the countries that challenged the US over the world hegemony.

○ The Axis powers (Nazi Germany, Italy, and the Empire of Japan)

The Axis powers were the military coalition that triggered World War II to overturn the world order that Western civilization had built over the 19th century. Despite the US opposing the Axis powers in ideology, it hesitated to enter the war until Japan provoked the US by attacking Pearl Harbor.

However, sooner or later, the US had no choice but to enter the war. The war was extending beyond Europe and the US couldn’t risk a hostile country to acquire control of oceans.

The US’s victory was inevitable. The US had a significantly larger economy and population than the Axis powers combined. It could produce enough resources to be self-reliant while the Axis powers had to rely on its colonies for critical resources such as oil and steel. Most of all, the world preferred the American way over totalitarianism which didn’t leave anything except for extreme racism and bloodbath.

○ Soviet Union (The Cold War)

Following the end of World War II, the hottest war in history, the world entered the Cold War, a period of intense rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union wielded significant military strength and ideological influence making it a near-peer competitor.

It had the world’s largest army and arsenal of nuclear weapons making it impossible to be threatened militarily. In the success of its centrally planned system, although it later proved to be not sustainable, the Soviet Union built the world’s 2nd largest economy and significant advancements in technology. Unlike the Axis powers, it had vast resources to run its economy and support its vessel states.

Last but not least, communist ideology was welcomed by various countries and movements globally, which granted the Soviet Union significant soft power as the world’s first Marxist country.

To many, the collapse of the Soviet Union seemed like out of nowhere. It turned out that the empire seemed invincible outside but it was actually struggling with a misguided obsession with bureaucracy and an expansive expansionism. Once praised as a miracle of social science, the Soviets ended as a failure case of central authority restricting creativity and productivity.

○ Germany & Japan (This time, it’s economy)

Germany and Japan grew into the global manufacturing powerhouses. The US’s strong military allies have become its toughest economic competitors. As business rivalry grew sharp, these two countries became less supportive of the US’s global strategies and started to pursue regional leadership.

But the conflict between allies didn’t last long.

The US pivoted away from conventional manufacturing towards high-value industries such as IT and finance. America proved once again that innovation is its economic superpower. Germany, Japan, and other major economies weren’t flexible or determined enough to fuel innovation in the way America did.

Besides, you cannot become a superpower without defense capability, a key factor in sovereignty. Both countries were highly dependent on the US’s army for security, which made it hard for them to pose serious threats to Washington’s initiatives.

○ China

China is the world’s largest manufacturing economy and the 2nd largest in GDP. Some could even argue that it has already surpassed the US if we measure at PPP. China’s population is 4 times of the US and it is producing MILLIONS of STEM graduates a year. It is rapidly closing the gap with the US and even surpassed in critical technologies such as 5G, automation, drones, and EVs.

Since the 2008 crisis, it’s been expanding global influence by making donations and investments across the world. The world’s reliance on China’s goods and capital granted them a far greater influence than the US’s previous rivals, even more than the Soviets.

In many ways, China could be the greatest rival that the US has ever faced. This is the first time that the US faced an equal with tangible economic strength, which is represented by population and manufacturing output.

China’s military is not capable of posing serious threats to the US and it doesn’t have an attractive ideology to back up its hegemony. But it is still a growing country and we are yet to see its full potential.

○ Will the US’s hegemony survive the rise of China?

No one would know for sure. The one thing that we can learn from history, especially the recent few years, is that history will never be fully predictable.

But there’s one thing I know for sure. The US’s true power comes from its flexibility, often its rivals misjudge it as fragility. From the Axis powers to Japan in the 90s, the rivals called the US a corrupted, polarized, and shortsighted country destined to fall. The truth is that the US disclosed the pressing problems so it could solve them, while the rivals were painting fake colors to hide their imperfections.