The USA became a Superpower. Which country is the biggest superpower in the world? If you have a problem finding the answer to this question, then think about it. Which country’s economy is the largest? Which country has a GDP of more than 20 trillion dollars? Which country’s companies are the most famous in the world? Which country’s films have made the most impact on the world? Which country has won the most Nobel Prizes and which country has won the most Olympic medals? Which country has the strongest military power in the world? The answer to all these questions is America, America, and America.
How did the USA become the world’s biggest superpower?
what did they do that such a powerful country has become theirs? Let’s try to answer this question in today’s blog. Friends, this chart shows the percentage contribution of which country in the world’s GDP in the history of the last two thousand years.
You will see that before 1800 India and China were the two biggest superpowers of the world. Most of the trade and economic activity in the world used to revolve around India and China, it continued like this for 1800 years. But after 1900, only in the last 100 years suddenly the USA showed dominance and took such a big share in the GDP of the world.
How was this possible?
For this, we have to go into a little history. It was in the year 1492 that Italian explorer Christopher Columbus discovered some Carbian islands near North America. It was only after this that Europeans came to know about America and the colonization of America started, during this time Red Indians lived in America by Europeans, also known as Native Americans.
There were many different tribes. Spain colonized mostly South America, as today it is called Latin America, this is the reason that Spanish is spoken in most of the South American countries. Britain settled its first colony in America around 1600 and France also started colonization. In the beginning, these were the three main powers.
Britain, France, and Spain colonized North America. After this, in the coming years, 80 to 90 percent of the population of Native Americans living in America was destroyed and there are many reasons behind this, but the biggest reason is the diseases that European colonizers brought with them.
There are diseases like smallpox and influence for which there was no immunity inside Native Americans. Even after many years, on 4th July 1776, American revolutionaries declared their independence from the British. So America became a new country.
The United States of America was born here. All this is a big story in itself but we come after 1850 because if you see the chart, the graph of America started rising only after 1850. This was the era when British, French, and Spanish colonization were occupying many territories in many countries around the world.
India was also a colony of the British Raj, in such a situation, the country which was the USA had already become a democratic country. So if any new country thinks that it should join with the USA or it should come under British, French, or Spanish rule. So any country would prefer to join the USA because they would get the same freedom and the same democracy that many states were getting in the USA.
This was the reason that states like Florida, Oyo, and Elon Musk preferred that they join the United States of America instead of remaining a colony under any Spanish rule or British rule. In 1836, Texas was a state that got independence from Mexico, but Mexico was still troubling them so much that they said that they also wanted to join the USA, and slowly one by one the states joined the USA.
And the United States of America kept getting bigger. Every state had its reason behind joining the USA but it is not that America was a very gullible country. Means America was definitely a democratic country, but they also had intentions that the more they could expand their territory, the better it would be. For this reason, in 1867, the territory of Alaska was bought by America from Russia for 7.2 million dollars. One such is the state of Hawaii, there is a beach in the middle of the passive question.
You will think that today a territory that is so far away from the USA how can it be a part of the USA because the USA occupied it? In 1898, the USA overthrew the kingdom of Hawaii and occupied this territory as well.
Now say that there was no colonization from the US like Britain, France, and Spain but its behavior was also similar to theirs. If you look at it from the perspective of some places. The areas of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were also annexed by the US in 1898 by US President William McKinley.
The USA gave 20 million dollars to Spain to take the Philippines inside it. But today Philippines is an independent country because in 1946 Philippines gained independence from the USA. So all the money was wasted.
When did America become a superpower?
So by 1900, a country much bigger than the US had become one. Many territories were part of the USA and it is obvious that the bigger the country, the bigger the economy, the bigger the GDP. This is the reason that you will see in the graph that the USA has already occupied a huge share of the world’s GDP.
But this is only the beginning. The real magic happened between 1900 and 1950. Do you remember what happened in these 50 years, there were two world wars in the world, but where did both these world wars take place? Happened in Europe. France, Germany, the UK, Spain, and Italy were all fighting with each other in both these world wars and the USA was sitting separately on its side.
Although the USA had also participated in these world wars but had supplied weapons to these countries. The battle did not take place on US soil. Many American soldiers were certainly martyred in both these world wars, but economically the USA was not affected much.
The USA was the only country that earned profit from these world wars. He sold so many weapons to Germany, France, and other European countries that overall he remained in profit, and countries like the UK, Germany, and France were completely devastated.
It is not that the USA tried to take some extra illegal advantage from all this devastation, it was just a matter of chance that the USA was economically profitable during the world war. What was the matter when war broke out in European countries, European people felt that our currency was going to be destroyed now, and our economy was going to sink.
So what we do is buy US dollars to save our money because the US dollar is a stable currency and America is a very stable country during World wars time. So many people went and bought the US dollar so the value of the US dollar increased.
In 1944 when World War 2 was at its end, the 44 allied countries came together and decided that they would link their currencies with the US dollar to keep our currencies stable and the US dollar would be linked with gold Allied countries won World War 2 and US dollar became the world’s international currency in the same way.
After this organizations like the International Monetary Fund and United Nations were established where America played a very important role. One such was GATT, the General Agreement of tariff and trade which was founded in 1947 by 23 countries. These countries have decided that we will reduce the trade barriers between us to boost economic growth.
This meant that instead of promoting indigenous nationalism, we would promote international trade and globalization. The same thing later went to WTO in 1995. After 1950, America and the Soviet Union emerged as the two biggest superpowers and the Cold War between the USA and the Soviet Union started here, which is called the Cold War.
It was an ideological war between communism and capitalism. But instead of fighting each other directly, both these countries played proxy wars. This means we will not go and fight with each other in our own country. They started fighting in other countries.
In the countries where the USA felt that communist ideology was starting to spread, it used to topple the governments in those countries. Sometimes by funding with the money of the opposition, sometimes by funding terrorist rebel groups, and sometimes by directly assassinating revolutionaries.
For example, in the Bolivian coup of 1964, Che Guevara was executed by CIA operatives. Funding of Taliban militants by going to Afghanistan in Operation Cyclone was done so that the influence of the soviet union could be stopped and because of that terrorist groups also started here.
Similar stories were heard from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Iran, Congo, Dominican Republic and there are many examples from such countries. Because of interfering in the internal politics of so many countries, many countries became directly dependent on the USA.
Because of this America became even more powerful. This is the reason that today there are more than 800 military bases in more than 70 different countries of America, and to achieve all this during the Cold War, America had to spend a lot of money on the military because of which today American military power is best in the world and it is not such a good thing.
Why is video can? In 1949, America formed a NATO alliance with European countries to stop the influence of the soviet union and this NATO alliance exists till today.
Because of this, America has always been cooperative with Western European countries and most of the Western European countries were very dependent on America for so many years because their economies had been destroyed and America had turned out to be very powerful.
It would not be right to blame the whole country for all these bad things here because many presidents came to the USA, some of whom were presidents who focused on military power. Such as Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George Bush, and Donald Trump.
On the other hand, some presidents focused on making peaceful alliances and did not have much interest in the military, due to which the country progressed peacefully Al Gore was a vice president of the USA, Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and To install Barack Obama.
Woodrow Wilson was the president of the USA who decided that America would be kept out of World War 1 and only interfered in 1917 when it was known that America’s interference could end this war. He also started the League of Nations, which was an international body just like the United Nations and was started before the United Nations. It was an attempt to bring peace to the whole world.
Which country was a superpower before the USA?
So the world map looked something like this during the Cold War. Almost every country was either with America or with the Soviet Union. So it was not a matter of surprise that when all the countries would either go this way or that way, both these countries became more powerful.
Both these countries became superpower and after 1990 when the Soviet Union disintegrated,, only one superpower country remained in the world: America. Now all these reasons were geopolitical, but apart from this, there were some internal reasons also because of which America became such a powerful superpower.
One such big internal reason is that America’s policies used to attract talent, it used to attract good immigrants to its country. There are so many examples of this and these reasons are valid till today. Think for yourself. Kalpana Chawla, Sunita Williams, and Satya Nadella are such Indians who became successful in America.
Albert Einstein a German who became very popular in America, and Elon Musk a South African who came to America became so successful. America’s policies and culture promote talent. Promotes innovation. But even after becoming such a powerful superpower.
What is the ground reality of a common man in America?
The homeownership rate in America was only 65.8 percent in 2020. That is, more than thirty percent of people do not have their own houses. America is 1 of the most unequal countries in the world, the top 1 percent of people have 42.5 percent of their wealth. The healthcare system of America is very expensive and bad. Obesity levels have reached an amazing level in America.
Many students are unable to afford their college tuition fees. It is so expensive to study in college in America that students there get drowned in crores of debt. Along with this, there are no gun laws in America.
More than 600 mass shootings took place in America in 2020 within just one year. Because of this more than 3000 people died. So perhaps instead of spending so much money on the military, if America had spent this money on the development of its people, then perhaps this superpower would have had some meaning.
Today, countries like Norway, Denmark, and Sweden have gone far ahead of America in terms of human development, but no one calls these countries a superpower, because perhaps these countries are not so powerful economically, their military is not so powerful, but For a common man, living in these north countries is better in comparison to America.
So if there is any lesson from this video, then it is that no country should run after becoming a superpower. Just focus on making your country better. Focus on improving the lives of your people. Let it be dreams of superpower. Hope you have liked this informative blog. If you like it, write in the comments and tell on which topics you would like to see videos. See you again in the next Blog. Thank you.
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