Quote:
Originally posted by myfiles3000@30 July 2003 - 18:22
power is not a new game, it just gets played in different forms. the CIA is practicing an ancient art, and is despised more than the intelligence agencies of other countries not because their actions are intrinsically more reprehensible -- its that the scale of the repurcussions are so enormous.
Having said that, there are long-term trends at play that shouldn't be ignored, after all the nation-state is a relatively new development, and has changed the way the game is played.
What I'd like to know is this: is the USA today any more powerful compared to its contemporaries than previous superpowers (portugal, spain, france, england), were to theirs? is this just more of the same, or is the USA in control of an unprecedented amount of dominance/power/influence relative their peers?
We could argue all day about the nasty things that CIA has done, there are any number of examples, but if it just happens to be the US's turn at the head of the table, why not accept the fate of nations, and be thankful we don't live in a power vacuum? There's a lot to be said about the stability that arises from a dominant ideology, as far as I'm concerned
now there's something i never would have considered, let alone conceded, as a younger man....;)
I believe the answer is yes. The current United States has been compared to those four entities at the height of their power and i believe that the power/influence was indeed higher. I'm not sure about the Roman empire though. If you consider GDP as a measure of power, then think about this: At one time within the past 50 years the GDP of the USA was higher than all the other countries' totals combined.