"Will the United States emerge victorious against COVID-19 in the end?"
"Will the United States emerge victorious against COVID-19 in the end?"
World War II involved virtually all of the countries of the world and was the costliest, in terms of blood and treasure, that the world had ever seen. The great Powers – the US, Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia, France, Italy and China – fought one another bitterly for six years, and when the guns fell silent, the US was left with the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the world, a powerful military establishment, a revved-up economy and a foreign-assets ledger full of receipts for loans made to Allies during the war. By contrast, the other major Powers were either devastated or exhausted.
Thus began the US’ history as a superpower. With the signing of the Instruments of Surrender by Germany and Japan, the US now stood at the pinnacle of power. Its might – military, economic and financial – had become awesome. Pax Americana had descended upon the world.
The US’ superpower status was placed beyond any doubt by its successful development of atomic-bomb-making technology and by the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Any country that considered posing a challenge to America’s geopolitical pre-eminence would have to reckon with America’s growing atomic arsenal. The only country that was in a position to pose such a challenge was dictator Josef Stalin’s Russia, formerly known as the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic), in 1949. Russia successfully tested its first atomic bomb.
Russia’s acquisition of the atomic bomb made it a much stronger rival of the US, for world supremacy, but it did not make it a superpower. That title still belonged to the US only.
The US’s overall military capability – large, well-equipped land forces, a string of land and naval bases around the world hosted by America’s allies, atomic-powered subsidiaries patrolling the world’s oceans, the Strategic Air Command’s global reach – was greater than Russia’s. The US economy, the world’s No. 1, is far stronger than Russia’s narrowly-based and inefficient communistic economy. The US is the financial powerhouse of the world, with New York as its epicenter. And there is the unquantifiable incremental strength that is provided by an environment of freedom, democracy and the rule of law.
The contest between the US and Russia for geopolitical preeminence, and Russia’s quest for superpower status, became more intense when, in the mid-1950s, Russia followed the US into the world of nuclear-powered weaponry. The first orbiting of the moon by the manned vehicle Sputnik appeared to have placed Russia on the same geopolitical level as the US.
But it hadn’t. The US remained the world’s sole superpower. America continued to rule the roost. Apart from the mutual threat of nuclear annihilation – a threat that Russia took to heart during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis – Mother Russia, for all her vastness, remained a superpower wannabe.
The US’ superpower status has remained unchallenged for 75 years. Not since the halcyon days of the Holy Roman Empire has one political entity dominated the world for that long a period. No country, event or ideology – communism, the threat of nuclear power, missile crisis or Great Recession – has ever come close to overpowering the world’s sole superpower.
Not until now, that is.
One of Nature’s tiniest organisms, named novel coronavirus – COVID-19 for short – is threatening to overpower the superpower. Virtually the whole US economy is on lockdown, almost all Americans are under stay-at-home orders, the nation’s health system is being overwhelmed by COVID-19 victims. 1.2 million Americans have tested positive for the novel virus, close to 80,000 people have died and the government has spent an unprecedented amount of money – around $4 trillion to date – to try and keep businesses going and jobless workers fed. Never have so many Americans died in so short a time under peacetime conditions.
The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening to overpower the superpower. In the other crises that the US has faced in its history, the government knew, or more or less knew, what the problem was, what resources were needed to solve the problem and the timeline for the problem’s solution. But in the present COVID-19 situation there are numerous uncertainties of a very serious nature. What are the prospects for the early discovery of a vaccine? Is an early reopening of the economy a safe idea? How much longer should Americans be made to stay at home? And is a return to positive economic growth in the near future a realistic expectation?
What Soviet Russia, AlQaeda, ISIS and the Great Recession did – try to overpower the US – the novel coronavirus has been trying to do. The superpower has always stood up to the challenge of the moment and has always emerged victorious. Will it emerge victorious against COVID-19 in the end? Assuredly, yes.
