Friends of the United States looking in – at the handling of Covid-19 and at the conduct of the current President – are justified in asking if it can maintain its superpower status ahead of its main rivals. A situation of near-parity between America and China would be more of a threat than a guarantee of global security. When a communist dictatorship is breathing down Uncle Sam’s neck, in terms of both hard and soft power, then freedom is endangered all around the world.

On the face of it, little has changed. The United States remains the world’s leading economic and military power. Fuelled by the third largest population of any nation, it contributes one quarter of global wealth – $21.4 trillion in GDP last year. Although the United States does not spend the highest proportion of GDP on defence among world nations, it spends the largest sum: 36 per cent of global defence expenditure is by America. Militarily the United States is still the sole superpower.

But that snapshot does not show the whole picture. While America’s GDP of $21.4 trillion outpaces its nearest rival China, with $14.1 trillion, if the measurement is switched from nominal GDP to GDP (PPP), the situation is reversed, with America’s identical figure of $21.4 trillion exceeded by China’s $27.3 trillion. The issue is not the respective merits of the two assessment criteria, but the more basic question: how did a backward agrarian communist dictatorship come to rival the richest and most powerful nation in world history?

America has boasted the world’s largest economy since 1871. China’s modern economy was initially a disaster predicated on such grisly fiascos as the Great Leap Forward. Since the adoption in 1978 of a synthetic form of capitalism encased within a command economy, the country has made great advances, though official figures are suspect. Nonetheless, the claim that between 1978 and 2005 Chinese per capita GDP rose from $153 to $1,284 appears broadly accurate. And despite claims of a dramatic post-pandemic economic crash, the signs are that China is already recovering.

There is nothing inflated about the military threat it poses. China has the most concentrated missile development programme in the world: its DF-5B ICBM has a range of 13,000 kilometres. Nuclear capabilities are usually designed as deterrence, to neutralise an opponent’s similar capacity. China is more likely to deploy more sophisticated electronic weaponry. Forbes magazine has revealed that China now has a first-strike capability to melt the US power grid with Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons.

The immediate problem is not the likelihood of America being defeated on the battlefield, but of an alarming erosion of its “soft” power and global influence. Foreign policy blunders – in Iraq, Syria and Libya – have left another rival, the economic pygmy Russia, somehow increasingly influential in the Middle East. Around the world, hostility towards America has increased: a Pew Research Center survey has shown a median of 45 per cent of respondents across 22 nations regard US power and influence as a major threat, up from 25 per cent in 2013.

History demonstrates that military hardware alone, or economic prosperity, will not preserve the ascendancy of any power if its political will has atrophied. The Soviet Union was still a formidable superpower when the Berlin Wall came down; the United States remained the world’s largest economy while an implosion of national confidence caused its humiliation in Vietnam. Today, domestic news footage of riots and the trashing of America’s heritage viewed around the world, often with a media gloss favourable to the forces of subversion, is doing irreparable damage to US prestige.

The bottom line is, if a nation of brilliant technologists, scientists, doctors, wealth creators and innumerable other talents can offer no better candidates for the position of most powerful man in the world than Donald Trump and Joe Biden, then its political system is not producing the goods. Where is the new generation leader – or older figure of the calibre of Ronald Reagan – to heal domestic discord and defend freedom around the globe?

If the US system had been working properly, then by now someone impressive would surely have emerged from among the ranks of those who served in the military in the wars that began almost two decades ago. Or a truly serious figure from the technology industry or business would have chosen public service and been well-organised enough to run for the White House in 2020 and win.  

The troubling leadership deficit cuts across party lines in the US. In the wake of whatever transpires at the general election in November, we can only hope that public-spirited Americans set about regenerating their political system,  looking to identify a new generation of leaders capable of restoring a great nation’s battered reputation. America’s friends need it to get back on track.