United States
See also: American CenturySome political scientists believe that when one superpower collapses, another must take its place so as to maintain a balance of power. During the Cold War, the U.S. fought many proxy wars against USSR-supported communist regimes, but after the Soviet collapse found itself as the world's sole superpower, even sometimes termed hyperpower. Members of the American right, such as some neoconservatives self-styled as the Blue Team, increasingly viewed the People's Republic of China as a military threat, despite strong economic ties. Blue Team members favor containment and confrontation with the PRC, and strong US support of Taiwan. While in the past international power might have been achieved through military might, it has increasingly shifted to relations through trade. The Chinese Government views the United States as "a superpower in decline."
Read more about this topic: Superpower Collapse
Famous quotes related to united states:
“When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing to the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (19161962)
“The rising power of the United States in world affairs ... requires, not a more compliant press, but a relentless barrage of facts and criticism.... Our job in this age, as I see it, is not to serve as cheerleaders for our side in the present world struggle but to help the largest possible number of people to see the realities of the changing and convulsive world in which American policy must operate.”
—James Reston (b. 1909)
“The United States is the only great nation whose government is operated without a budget. The fact is to be the more striking when it is considered that budgets and budget procedures are the outgrowth of democratic doctrines and have an important part in developing the modern constitutional rights.... The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological controlindoctrination we might sayexercised through the mass media.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)