The Great Powers Of The World Analysis

The Great Powers of the world changed throughout the history. Great Britain was the great power in the nineteenth century then during the cold war Soviet Union and United States became the great powers. After the war United States stood as the only great power but it started the comparison between United States and Great Britain and brought theories that suggests the decline of America which Nye finds misleading. To be able to understand why it is misleading we must look what power is and how it changes in world politics. The dictionary meaning of power is an ability to do things and control others, to get others to do what they otherwise would not. States need resources such as territory, population, natural resources, economic capacity and military forces to have power for controlling other states. These resources help states in the case of war but today even though military force is important, it is not the core condition for being a powerful state. Education, technology, economic growth are more significant for an international power. Nye finds the theories of American decline misleading because from potential challengers; The Soviet Union has economical problems, Japan is inadequate in military and global ideological appeal, China is less developed and
ability to cope with issues created by international interdependency. While The United States maintains more hard power any other country, it also has more soft power and Nye believes this makes America different than Great Britain. Also that is why American decline theory is misleading according to Nye but these power resources do not make The United States free of new challenges of transnational