The U.S. was a developing country for *maybe* only 100-150 years. After that, the U.S. became arguably the largest economic, military, academic, manufacturing powerhouse the world has ever seen.
Yet, countries that have been around since ancient times are still struggling to even feed or house their population.
How is that possible?
In: 17182
The US is basically everything you could ask for geographically to make a superpower.
Secure borders (sea two sides’ a friendly and far weaker neighbour to the north and a neighbour to the south they quickly established dominance over.) All other nearby countries are economically and militarily weak. Any time a country can focus on its navy it’s in a good position to exert power abroad.
Lots of fairly flat and fertile land to farm. The easily navigated Mississippi river providing cheap transport both throughout the land and to the sea. Loads of various natural resources making them dependent on noone.
Add into that the initial advantages of being a european settlement – technology and good trade opportunities – and you have a nation that got rich quick. Wealth and security = power.
Edit: Please stop with all the ‘but slavery’ comments. Yes slavery was exploited by the US to help it grow. No it was not a deciding factor in the country becoming a superpower. Most countries in the world have exploited slave labour at some time or another. Very few had some let alone all the above advantages (and miles of coastline full of natural harbours as another pointed out) to become the dominant global power. There is a reason the middle east – which has a far longer history of African slavery – has no country with the power of the US.
Progress over time isn’t guaranteed. A devastating war, plague or simply bad leadership can set a country back decades, and these things can happen over and over again.
The US has incredible potential for building a superpower – the geography is nothing short of amazing. It has lots of natural harbors in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, enough arable land to feed itself many times over, vast resources of all kinds – oil, minerals, gas, you name it. It was too remote to be in any real danger of the other great powers of the time, and its only two real neighbors are weaker states that pose no threat.
It had all the resources and living space it needed to grow into a superpower and all it really needed was good leadership, good institutions and enough time to grow, and that’s what it did, with relatively few setbacks while other countries have been perpetually ravaged by wars, famines, disease and tyrants.
The US didn’t really become a *global* **super** power until after World War 2. So basically it had all the natural resources and infrastructure completely intact to provide for everything.
Being strategically far away from everyone else also helps.
It barely got bombed at all in WW2 and while the entire world was rebuilding and unable to produce enough, business was booming in the USA on the global scale.
Something I don’t see in the comments here is that the 1000 year old civs have already boomed in their time. Ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq: first of their kind), ancient Egypt: medicine, language, sea navigation, mathematics and architecture, ancient Persia: literal near global domination, Greece, Rome, ottoman, Mongols. Messing with any of those civs in their time was a guaranteed loss.
When you’re around that long it becomes exceptionally hard to stay. The USA is younger than all of these places, so they had the advantage of applying learnings, newer government models, hiring proficient engineers from abroad, etc.
Think if you were to suddenly receive a new plot of farmable land and had near infinite resources to develop it, you’d probably be able to do a lot of research on the best way to set up. Ancient civs never had that, they had to learn and fail by trial.
But to put it into some perspective: this is why countries that suddenly came into real money (gulf, Qatar, etc) are building things like underwater taxi highways, fully air conditioned stadiums, solar cities they power themselves… They’re not starting from scratch, they’re standing on the shoulders of giants.
The type of land it has, and not really being subjected to two world wars on its own territory.
Wars in a country’s territory really screws up the development, as rebuilding has to commence after the war is done. There is also funding the war.
Also some of those 1000 year old countries were super powers at a time. Spain, UK, china, ect. Thing is stuff happens that shifts the balance one way or another to make it fall from grace.
If you want a deeper dive, go to your local library and check out The Accidental Superpower by Peter Zeihan. It’s a few years old now but pretty concisely answers this question, with lots of data and examples to back it up. It’s pretty astonishing how much of an advantage the U.S. has from a purely economic standpoint.
I mean, it’s not like the US started from the caveman era. They had the same tech as Britain (you know, the “sun never sets” empire) when they started, so it’s kind of unfair to compare them to under-developed nations when their starting line was completely different.
UsA has only had a couple hundred years to fight amongst ourselves while other countries have had thousands of years to self destruct..
Be patient, it’s a process.
1. Geographical Advantages – Lots of land, lots of resources, relatively secure.
2. Colonial start – Starting as a European colony was undoubtedly an advantage for the US. Being a colony of the superpower of the time meant colonial US accessed the technology, skills, and education it needed to develop quickly.
3. European migration – Like the other developed ex-colony countries, the US has had waves of migration from developed (at the time) countries. Meaning a near constant supply of skilled, educated workers who could relatively easily set of the economic and administrative base for a developed country.
4. Slavery – The economic advantage slavery gave the US at a crucial point in it’s growth cannot be understated.
5. Europe destroying itself – In the early part of the 20th century, Europe was tearing itself apart. The UK, France, Germany were absolutely ravaged by the two world wars. Economically and militarily, they were significantly weakened and this also hastened the demise of the British Empire, meaning there was space for a new superpower.
6. Politics / Economics – The US has always pursued a much more capitalistic, free market economic policy than other developed countries. It has it’s downsides but it’s undoubtedly helped propel it’s economy into an incredibly strong position relative to other countries.
7. Size – Most of the points above could apply well to Canada or Australia. The main reason the US is a superpower and Canada is not is population. The US is by a huge distance, the most populous developed country. This gives it huge economies of scale and means that in absolute terms it can outspend the next richest developed country many times over. Norway is richer, per person, than the US but it has a population similar to South Carolina.
8. Misc – that’s not to say it was inevitable that the US would always have become an economic and military superpower. It’s a country that has more or less been governed extremely well compared to most other countries for the last few centuries. In particular, the threat that it would split up into multiple smaller countries that would eventually become rivals and essentially become a “North American Europe” and go through similar problems regarding wars, etc, was a real one. But the civil war was dealt with relatively quickly and decisively and the US managed to expand whilst still retaining a large degree of political and cultural unity.
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