World power

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World power , in contrast to the more comprehensive term great power , describes a state that exercises significant influence on the global political level. In contrast to the world empire , the term therefore presupposes the existence of a global political level and is therefore not appropriate for the time before the Age of Discovery .

History of the term

In the course of the 19th century, the political status of state power underwent a substantive change. The doctrine of the great powers broke away from the European meaning of great power. The European powers ( pentarchy of the great powers) developed under the influence of imperialism from the previous political goal of stabilizing European power relations to a conflicting and sometimes mutually opposing world politics. Thus, great power was no longer defined only in terms of land power, but also taking into account sea ​​power . Decisive for this process were the evolving national consciousness of the powers and the economic constraints of the industrial revolution. There was a synthesis of the terms great power and the term world power , which had been mentioned in Brockhaus Volume 10 since 1820 . The terms world power and great power had become identical. A world state system was created. The development from a policy approach focused on Europe to a global policy approach led to global power politics under imperialism and colonialism.

Development of the world power system

A system of world powers emerged in the age of imperialism , when some great powers , particularly Russia , the Ottoman Empire , the United States and the German Empire, tried to achieve or even surpass the supremacy of Great Britain and France. Under Napoleon Bonaparte , the French Empire had already succeeded in gaining power in Great Britain. The First World War and even more the Second World War can be interpreted in this sense as a struggle for a world power position.

During the Second World War , Japan , the German Empire and Italy aspired to a world power position. The result of the war was that the USA and the Soviet Union gained world power status. Their position as the leading powers of the Eastern and Western blocs , even more prominent than the world powers of the imperialist age, was expressed in the word superpower . After the collapse of the Soviet Union , the USA remained the only world power. For this new position of power, the former French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine coined the term hyperpower .

Use of the term

On the one hand, world power describes an established power that maintains the existing order, as it was first Spain and then France or Great Britain at the time of the colonial empires, the USA and the Soviet Union at the time of the East-West conflict and the USA as the only world order power since 1991 are. On the other hand, one speaks of the rise to world power when a great power tries to advance into the circle of world powers, as did the Wilhelmine German Reich in the age of imperialism and China is currently ready to undertake.

See also

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: World power  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ↑ Even if it has been used not infrequently in German for earlier epochs since the end of the 19th century, e.g. B. von Hans von Zwiedineck-Südhorst in Venice as a world power and metropolis , Bielefeld 1899/1906.
  2. ↑ See Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht. The war policy of imperial Germany 1914/1918 (see bibliography ) and the subsequent discussion .
  3. ↑ In public opinion, of course, powers that would previously have been counted among the great powers are also referred to as world powers, e.g. B. Brazil (cf. The new world power wobbles in: Spiegel online from October 30, 2010).