The U.S. is no longer a superpower

Jennifer Welsh is the director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy and the Canada 150 Research Chair in Global Governance and Security at McGill University. When the United States and Soviet Union emerged from the Second World War as the world's dominant states, the field of international relations required a new designation to capture their status: superpowers. Whereas the 19th and early 20th centuries had been shaped by great powers, the two countries destined to shape the post-1945 global order were heads and shoulders above the rest. These superpowers took the task of creating and consolidating their global…