Everyone says it so it must be true. U. S. President Donald Trump is the most powerful man in the world. He is either a catastrophe or a liberator, depending on your viewpoint, but the United States is the decisive superpower — it must be so because the Americans spend more on military force than the next eight major countries combined. Such is the conventional, prevailing, all-pervasive wisdom in almost every capital round the world — and it is wrong.
It is wrong because there are today much bigger forces at work and shaping our destinies than governments, however large. It is wrong because Trump is largely a prisoner of realities, restraints and events far outside his control. It is wrong because in a world of massive and growing networks no one state can be the superpower. It is wrong because in modern trading conditions national protection does not work. It is wrong because massive military spending, with more missiles, more tanks, ships, gadgets and manpower, does not bring victory the way it used to.
It is wrong because government hierarchies everywhere are seeing power flow away into the hyper-connected web of information flows and the world-wide web. And it is wrong because, anyway, decisive power and leadership, both economic and political, is moving away from the West and the North of the planet, to the East and the South and in particular to the dynamic societies and motivated billions of increasingly well-educated and skilled peoples of Asia. Indeed it has already done so.