The Case for America's Continued Superpower Status

Is America really in decline as a global superpower? We examine current arguments for America’s economic decline and argue that a purely economic analysis is insufficient for evaluating a country’s status as a global superpower. Our comprehensive definition of superpower incorporates military strength, internal stability, and the global attractiveness of a state’s culture and ideology that it presents to the rest of the world. America is the only state fitting of this comprehensive definition of a superpower in the 21st century, while all other states frequently cited as emerging global powers fail to meet the criteria we lay out in this paper.