The word "superpower" is quite fungible and misleading, but suffice to say that, any country that has the capability to wipe out another country and the rest of the world, qualifies as a world power, which is a more apt term in the growing multipolar world. The American Empire's arrogance assumes a superpower is based on how many aircraft carriers you have, and how fast you can deploy in different parts of the world. While that is surely a
factor, it is by no means dispositive, in the gradually amorphous world order. In fact, as far as US military performance goes, it has quite a dismal record since World War II, with it's only real victorious "war" being against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in Gulf War I. So
even with it's ability to project itself globally, it has quite a piss poor performance record, which makes one question what is the use of power projection if you can't utilize it to your advantage?
As far as growth rates are concerned, apparently U.S. economic growth "
expanded at a 0.1 percent annual rate, the slowest since the fourth quarter of 2012." On that note, it is not very far off of Russia and can be compared to a banana republic.
The significance of the Sino-Russian gas deal is underestimated by the Western world. The West presents it as somehow a losing deal for Putin, but in reality it is not. Regardless, the EU will be dependent on Russian gas, despite the threat of "sanctions" as the EU has no real alternative (the US capability at funneling natural gas to EU is non-existent despite verbiage to the contrary). The geopolitical ramifications are huge in that it subverts the Brzezinski plan outlined in "
The Grand Chessboard" to control the Eurasian landmass because it provides a politico-economic union of two of the most important countries on the Eurasian landmass, and thereby sows the seeds of the gradual emergence of a multipolar world in which the center of gravity is not in Washington, but diffuse and mostly centered in Beijing, and to a lesser extent in Moscow.