How America became super power?
372246
(m)\n\nThe historical view: By Allan Little\n\n \n\nGet ready to be shocked. Prepare yourself to be awestruck. For shock and awe are what the United States military say they hope to achieve in the opening minutes of the coming campaign against Iraq.\n\nIt will – if it goes to plan – be a war like none the world has ever seen. Washington is about to test drive the early prototype model of a military juggernaut that will be so powerful that it will eventually make any talk of ‘military balance’ redundant, even laughable.\n\n\nIn Washington, where the talk is all of “power projection”, a new ideological conviction is taking shape. It is being driven by technological advance. Technology, increasingly, is shaping what America can do, how America defines itself, and how it engages with the rest of us by providing the means to impose its will through sheer force of arms anywhere in the world where it feels US interests are threatened. \n\n\nThe sheer scale of American supremacy is written in the numbers: the US military is larger than the next ten national forces combined. Its annual budget is 400 billion dollars. It has five hundred bases. And still this is not enough. The Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is planning such sweeping changes in the military that they amount not to radical reform, not even to a revolution – but to transformation. \n\n\n“What we’ve got now is a kind of third age of the American military,” says Michael Clark, “a globalised military that can now do pretty much anything it wants. And we’re also seeing the development of a political ideology which backs up that military dominance. And that’s a pretty uncomfortable situation for the rest of us to be in. For the rest of the world it’s rather like being in a bath with an elephant – no matter how sensitive the elephant tries to be, the rest of us in the bathtub are going to feel pretty uncomfortable.”\n\n\nWashington’s current impatience with its reluctant allies emerged first in the seventy-eight day air campaign NATO fought in Kosovo four years ago. Many of the allies were squeamish to begin with about going to war at all. France intervened to impose political restrictions on what the military could do, to declare some targets – not matter how militarily legitimate – politically unacceptable. Many senior US generals came away from that experience feeling bruised. General Mike Short, who commanded the air campaign from Italy, told me “I never fought a war by committee before – I don’t want to have to do it ever again’. \n\n\nThe talk now shifted from formal coalitions of partners bound by Treaty, towards informal short lived partnerships of expediency – so-called ‘coalitions of the willing’. \n\n\nThat impulse toward unilateralism only reflects what is happening technologically. America is entering a new age of hi tech weaponry – of precision bombing, of lazar guided missiles, of aircraft dropping bombs in the Gulf, while the pilot sits a thousand miles away or more – possibly even in the Pentagon and going home to his wife and kids in a Washington suburb at the end of his day’s remote controlled combat. \n\n\nI asked a US Air Force General about the transforming power of pilot-less aircraft. And it brought me a swift ticking off. “They won’t be pilot-less. They’ll have a pilot. He just won’t be in the plane”.\n\n\n“The accuracy with which modern aircraft can attack their targets is astonishing”, says the military historian John Keegan. “They can at last do what they always said they could do. They always said they could hit a target from 10,000 feet and it actually wasn’t true – they were always missing. There was a very high inaccuracy factor – there isn’t any longer. Weapons are so accurate – nowadays when an aircraft wishes to hit a target it does hit it.”\n\n\nThere is a battlefield National Park on the outskirts of Washington DC at a place called Manassas. It was here,
297419
The best superpower would definitely have to be the ability to read people's minds. That could defintely come in handy on a date or when you're fighting crime, it's a multipurpose power to have.
332349
It was an arc shaped road in the skies staring from Washington ending in Kremlin in USA terms, or starting from Kremlin ending in Washington in old USSR terms (actually they both could never agree with each other where it started). The road - superpowerhighway - was frequently used by both powers to pay each other a visits and plan strategies to scare the rest of the world.\nUntil the time USA side became heavy and water logged so like a seesaw the Moscow side got lifted up and disappeared in clouds. This was the very road America used later on to send her astronauts into space.
695066
America was basically the same, the superpower that controls world economy and nuclear arms development.
825707
I think it's the beginning of the end of America as the only super power. We are now doing the exact same things that Rome did before the Fall; becoming a service oriented country, outsourcing our manufacturing businesses, spreading our military out in a major way, etc. etc. . There's other things I'm not listing- I would hope that Americans are curious enough to look and learn. Remember the phrase " Those who don't renenber history are bound to repeat it."
94732
Yes. It is how America became a country
412119
one day if the US gets a little more power over the rest of the world and some technological advances the US could actually become and empire and use its influence to in effect rule the world.....or.....maybe one day the superpowers of the world will decide to band together and make the entire world and all its people into an unbreakable empire...hey you may laugh now but one day it could happen.
150505
There are probably more than 2 ways. It depends on what time frame we are talking about. Here are some potential ways the US expanded its Pacific influence:\n\n1. Admiral Perry opened up Japanese Ports 1853.\n2. The US defeated Japan in WWII.\n3. The US took over Hawaii. \n4. The US took over Spanish possessions in the Phillipines etc. \n5. The US completed the Panama Canal. \n6. US merchants supplied opium to China\n7. The US supported South Korea in its war with North Korea\n8. The US purchased Alaska\n9. The US acquired California\n\nand so on.
1092822
What makes a nation a superpower is more than just military ability. Generally, a superpower nation is one that can project its influence in nearly all parts of the world, and is looked upon as a leader.\n\nThe term "superpower" developed during the Cold War, where the United States was seen as the superpower for the democratic capitalist countries, and the Soviet Union was seen as the superpower for the communist countries. Both had the nuclear arsenal to pretty much destroy the world. Both also had many countries where their policy was followed - the Soviet Union pretty much controlled the governmentst of the communist nations of Eastern Europe, and supplied them with weapons, and the United States often gave assistance to anti-communist governments and forces around the world (even if they were brutal dictatorships, so long as they fought against communism).\nBoth countries could rely upon their allies in diplomacy and negotiations in the international arena (ie, like in the United Nations - if the US wanted something, all of the US allies would vote for it pretty much guaranteed).\n\nAfter the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1990, the United States was seen as the sole superpower. At the moment, it still appears to be the case, although many will point out that China is emerging as a new superpower - it has a sizable (although not as mobile military) and is gaining greater economic clout. However, it does not yet have many allies that can help carry out its agenda in diplomatic arenas, although it is trying very hard to bring many African nations into alliance with China, through Chinese investment and aid. Others point to the European Union (the organization that is slowly bringing the European nations into one common government) as an upcoming superpower. It too has the massive population, with the massive economic activity, and strong defense system.  However they also don't necessarily have the strong allies - many member states are allies of the US, but the UK and France do have strong relations with many of their former colonial states.
112688
I believe they were considered a superpower (at least by the end of the war).  Admiral Yamamoto referred to waking "a sleeping giant," after Pearl Harbor.  Winston Churchill fully relied on the industrial might and potential of the Yankee war effort.  Especially after Nagasaki and Hiroshima, i'll bet the eyes of the world regarding the US as a superpower.
1013972
Two strong super powers with equally strong economic power.  Competition is good for the world's markets....economically speaking.  I think the U.S. has done a very good job maintaining it's military and economic power.  Imagine what other countries would do with this power.  They would not be so giving, so sparing, nor friendly.
790657
well the way i see it america brought evil and destruction to a soverighn state, they were a peacefull state before the invasion, another war where america is responsible whether directly or indirectly for the deaths of houndreds of thousands of civillians.good will overcome evil and im not a muslim.
549775
Any country with such a large population (2nd in the world), nuclear ability, engineers, mathematicians, etc etc. and speak English sure has all the potential to become a Superpower.
451834
America. They're occupied by us. Making us in charge.
252886
It represented America's expansion to the entire world
203345
In the sense of superpowers of the cold war period, the United States is the only Superpower left.\n\nOf those countries with nuclear weapons few have the delivery capability to get something to our shores and fewer yet could actually hurt our country.  The fact is, the United States has the capability to eliminate all of those countries.  Most importantly the United States has demonstrated restraint in the use of its power.  Lastly, other than the lunatic fringe (such as the terrorists) it is not in the interest of any other country to attack the United States.
381291
The US isn't a Superpower now. 'Superpower' implies there's somebody who can fight you. The USA is in a league of its own.\n\nRight now the United States is so far ahead of everybody else, I doubt we'll have been matched even in 50 years.