Right now the United States is classified as a world superpower and probably the premier Nation in existence. I am not sure just how long we will hold onto this position. We will always hold the technological edge and this is good but there are times when it may not be enough.

America is suffering from a shrinking population which erodes the amount of manpower which we would be able to field to serve a military conflict. A major conflict such as WW1 would not be sustained for very long. When we look at the current war on terror and the costs associated with it in the terms of strain on our manpower it is a cause of wonder. Our troops have been severely stressed and many of them have been deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan several times.

Due to manpower constraints I dont believe that we will ever engage in a future war without much additional allied support. When we look at the situation with China we see an aggressive nation which is expanding militarily and economically.

The size of our country and our relatively strong economy has kept us in the mix for quite a while and will keep us there for many years to come. The Chinese and other countries seem bent on holding the keys to our military collapse. They are holding large amounts of US currency which will definitely put a hurt on our economy if it is dumped. The aim would be to inflate our currency and depress our economy. This would be a formidable weapon when used at the right time and in combination with other factors.

We have the right technology to project force anywhere in the world which is good, but we wont be able to do much other than put on a show. When the situation requires massive sustained force I dont know just how much we can deliver.

The current war on terror has taken a serious toll on our economy but it has been a boon to technology. We have developed many weapons which are tailor made for this type of war but they wouldnt work in a different type war. There would be a time lag between the start of the war and the time that we could successfully adapt to it. During that time many of our troops would pay the price of our not being prepared with their own blood.

The drug trade is sapping a lot of the economic strength of this country. There doesnt seem to be a solution to fixing this problem. We will have to have resources committed to this problem for the foreseeable future. As a matter of fact we will certainly have to commit more resources because we are not having much success. We are utilizing many more troops this year to assist in monitoring our borders and we have also began to use military drones to help us to conduct surveillance on the border.

Our economic situation is not as strong as it should be at this time which I attribute largely to the current war on terror. It will take quite a bit of time to recover from this war once we have finally figured out a way to extricate ourselves from it. There are also the negative repercussions from every war which follow the military. The public sentiment towards the military is always low following a war. The military will have to decrease its numbers and cut its budget after the war which will certainly serve to alienate potential recruits and even some of its veterans.

If we are able to hold onto our superpower status the reason will be the superior technology that we posses. This is the only constant which has kept us ahead of the game until now and I dont see how we will ever lose this edge, but technology in and of itself is not enough. This technology has to be seen in conjunction with other factors which work together in synergy. Military Ring Express