A request for better world superpowers
Thinking through alternatives to the US/China hegemony.
Why is the US spending so much more than the EU on defense?
After all, Europe is much closer to everything that is going on between Russia and Ukraine, and everything that is going on between Israel and Palestine. They are more directly impacted by moves made in Asia and the Middle East and, combined, they have a much larger population than the US does.
Yet the US is spending $2,617 per capita on military defense while Europe is only spending $584 per capita.1 And the US is spending 3.3 percent of our GDP on military while the EU is spending only 1.5 percent.
It doesn’t make sense: Why is the US spending so much money to fight wars on behalf of everyone else?
The reason is that the US is the largest country with the biggest military, and as the only democratic superpower in the mix the US is often forced to play world police, stepping in against nearly every totalitarian threat worldwide.
But the US and China aren’t the world’s best countries, they are merely the strongest militarily, and I don’t think having the biggest stick qualifies either as the most moral decision-maker for the rest of the world.
That’s why I think we could benefit from adding a few more superpowers to the mix.
What if, for example, protecting democracy didn’t fall just to the US, but also to Europe and ASEAN? What if power was more evenly shared by several world superpowers rather than concentrated in the hands of two?
What if they could even provide a check on some of the things these two countries do?
Shouldn’t everyone else want this too?