United States as a World Power | History & Significance - Lesson | Study.com (2024)

Today, the United States of America is a world power: a country that holds significant influence over a large part of the planet. This influence comes in many forms; the United States holds economic, political, military, and cultural influence across the planet. Because of this influence, many have called the United States a superpower, a country with a dominant position over most other countries.

The United States is a world power and a superpower for many reasons. For one, the United States has the best-equipped and best-funded military on Earth. Unlike other countries, the U.S. can project its military power across the world through its large air force and navy. The U.S. spends more money on this than a few countries with the next best militaries combined, and the U.S. operates nearly half of the world's aircraft carriers. Economically, the United States has the greatest GDP (gross domestic product), and the U.S. dollar is the world's reserve currency. American culture is consumed worldwide, and English today is the world's lingua franca, largely due to American influence.

One vector of U.S. power is its military.

The United States was first referred to as a superpower in 1944. After the destruction caused by the Second World War, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union were the world's strongest remaining countries. While the British Empire collapsed shortly after World War Two, the United States and USSR were locked in decades of competition across the planet known as the Cold War. In 1991, the USSR collapsed, leaving the U.S. the sole superpower.

However, it took the United States a long time to rise to this status. While the U.S. gained independence from Britain in 1783 following its Revolutionary War, it took the U.S. decades of expansion and economic development before it became a world power in 1898. That year, the U.S. fought the Spanish-American War and seized control of Spain's far-flung colonial empire. As a result, the Age of American Imperialism and the American Century began in the 20th century.