China might be competitive in terms of massive, productive landmass, but it simply will never be as secure in its borders as the US with strong and less friendly neighbors all around it. That will hold it back from surpassing the US as the dominant superpower. Ditto India, Russia, Brazil, and any potential rising powers in Africa.
By far, the biggest threat to US dominance is balkanization. Fracturing the union and creating deeper geographic divides in American culture would create enough internal strife to hamstring its power. Maybe that's inevitable over time for such a large landmass and the unique conditions of American colonization were never going to last more than a couple hundred years before it started falling apart.
Both arguments seem far-fetched. War with one’s neighbors is never guaranteed, even though there’s a risk of it. And they’d have to spend an unrealistically huge portion of their gdp on border defense for that to make development impossible.
Russia and China, or India and China, will never outright invade each other ever again, because of mutually assured destruction. Only countries without nukes have to worry about their sovereignty being violated, e.g. Ukraine. This also means that the geopolitical Schelling point, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory), is that every nation state must either 1) have nukes or 2) vassal themselves to a nuclear power, e.g. non nuclear powers in NATO. Again we see an instructive example in Ukraine. They surrendered their nukes after the Soviet Union collapsed for the promise of sovereignty. But promises don't mean anything on the question of sovereignty. Only real world power matters. Might makes right.
But large borders with populous and powerful neighbors still matter, because you still have to commit resources to control those borders to prevent unchecked migration from disrupting your internal economies. The US experiences that problem with Mexico. I imagine a future where India starts experiencing wet bulb temperature events where hundreds of thousands or millions die overnight, which triggers mass migration north. Or perhaps a future where Siberia becomes more temperate and hospitable draws Chinese people try to move north as well.
The latter isn't just a rephrasing of the former but an expression of assent to it, and most people probably don't mean that.
In my view, "might makes right" is simply an observation of harsh reality. Ignoring that reality is folly.
Hard disagree there. Trade has only taken priority because we've had such a long period of peace. Logistics fuel military power, but it turns out trade only happens when the more powerful party assents to it, if they do not then the weaker state may decide to inflict it's own trade relations on the weaker nation.
Many people in 1913 that trade was the most important factor in determining politics, that the global trade networks would prevent a truly large and terrible war, and that money was mightier than the musket.
It turns out that when the lights start to go out, when things start to go bad, and it becomes a matter of survival the power that matters is not trade but your ability to feed the pitiless war machine, and at that point your trade agreements mean squat if you don't have the ability to enforce those trade agreements with the barrel of gun.
It's not polite, it's not civilized, it's not fair, but just like the people raised in the Victorian era were given a rude awakening in the trenches of the Somme and the fields of Verdun about how circumstantial civilized behaviors are; so to will we be find our own base natures soon brought to the fore if we continue to pray to the false god of economic progress, and give offerings upon the altar of money in hopes of forestalling the looming crises we face.
U.S. already had multiple wars where their geography kept their infrastructure and citizens safe. Other countries got obliterated and lost their superpower trait.
UK got invaded on several occasions historically speaking.
USA/Canada are relatively new countries and had not enough time to diversivy in order to create competing ethnicities.
The remaining countries have too many neighbors and, accordingly, potential opponents. Look at the Balkans or part of Africa.
I live in Sofia, Bulgaria and it has always seemed silly to me that the reason our city was chosen as the capital was the fact that it is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Now with this war in Ukraine, this idea seems genius to me.