Reply #17: We are a Potemkin superpower.

[Spider Jerusalem]

All front and no substance. If not for our military, and the fact that the rest of the world continues to prop us up and aid our ability to maintain that military by purchasing US Treasury debt instruments, we'd be no superpower at all. Take away our fourteen aircraft carriers, our strategic arsenal, our nuclear submarine fleet, and our armoured divisions, and what do you have? A nation with an economy slowly rotting from the inside, with a decimated manufacturing sector, with most major industries posting operating losses, a crumbling infrastructure, massive indebtedness, and an increasingly disaffected population who are themselves largely hugely in debt and at serious risk of facing near-term financial crises including loss of the credit that makes their way of life possible and foreclosures on homes they may not be able to continue paying for...does any of that sound much like a 'superpower' to you?