No more Superpowers

 The failure to achieve victory in their respective wars of choice demonstrates that the US and Russia no longer qualify as 'superpowers'.

As the term “middle powers” has gained currency this year, it has forced us to ask which countries actually belong to this grouping. After all, shouldn’t most states be described that way?

With his much-cited speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney revived a debate about shifting power structures in today’s world.

He believes we are seeing a “rupture” in the global order, one that will require middle powers to cooperate to resist economic coercion and political domination by others.

Although he did not mention the US, President Donald Trump immediately sensed, correctly, that some of Carney’s remarks were directed against him.

But, again, how should the middle powers that Carney had in mind be distinguished from the other powers of our time, if at all? Perhaps one should start by discussing those other powers.

It was some time ago that “superpower” was applied to nation-states that wielded powers well beyond any others on the global stage. After World War II, this term was used to describe not only the US and the Soviet Union, but also, for a very short period, the British Empire.

In the decades that followed, the two unquestioned superpowers were defined by their massive nuclear arsenals—with each commanding tens of thousands of warheads—and their ability to deliver them anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes, with no possibility to defend against an attack. Each had the power to annihilate the other within a half-hour.

Over time, other states acquired nuclear weapons, but none had the capacity or the will to develop arsenals that would put them on the same level as the two superpowers. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, after which the term superpower started to fall out of use.

The US was occasionally still described as such, but during this brief “unipolar era,” it was also bestowed with a new term: Hubert Védrine, France’s foreign minister between 1997 and 2002, called it a hyperpuissance.

Today, the US remains very powerful, and Russia still commands huge military resources, including the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Yet both countries’ powers have increasingly come to be defined by their obvious limitations.

Despite having mobilised its vast conventional arsenal, Russia has not been able to subjugate its substantially smaller neighbour, Ukraine. And despite Trump constantly boasting about his country’s military might, his war on Iran has so far yielded little more than higher oil prices and a destabilising stalemate.

The failure to achieve victory in their respective wars of choice demonstrates that the US and Russia no longer qualify as “superpowers”. Are they even great powers, or do they ultimately belong to the same, broad category of middle powers?

Whatever the case, the age of superpowers is over. Even the most nominally powerful countries are highly constrained. The limits of their powers have been laid bare, regardless of whether they realise it yet.

Though middle powers come in many different shapes and sizes, most are at least aware of their status. Neither India nor Brazil nor Canada can use military power to shape its political environment to its liking.

Instead, each must rely on economic engagement and political relationship-building to exert influence. But the same applies to the US, Russia, and other larger, more powerful players like the European Union.

The late Joseph Nye still has much to teach today’s middle powers. He famously introduced the concept of “soft power” to draw a distinction between persuasion and coercion in international relations.

While military capability confers “hard power,” soft power—what Nye termed “the power of attraction”—comes from cultural exports, economic ties, diplomacy, goodwill, and trust built up over many years. Perhaps the world’s middle powers can be defined along these lines, namely as those who must rely primarily on soft power.

Of course, some countries will still harbour visions of grandeur, having convinced themselves that hard power is enough to bend others to their will. It might take some time for recognition of their reduced status to sink in. But whatever those in Moscow or Washington tell themselves, the fact is that the world has changed. There are no superpowers any longer. - FMT

Carl Bildt is a former prime minister and foreign minister of Sweden.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT