Why USA is so powerful?

Oil, Drone Invasion and Silicon Valley; These are the three key terms that defines the United States of America. Since time immemorial, USA had world’s one of the most progressive civilization, economy and military power despite having an under-performing nation according to some historian. Specially their dominant appearance after the second world war has upheld their flag among the list of global leaders!

But how they have done it?

Let’s check the following statistics:

1. USA is the third largest country in land size right after Russia and Canada. China and Brazil stands right after USA. China is only 250,000 square kilometers smaller than USA!

2. USA is the third largest country regarding population as well, right after China and India. However, China and India have nearly five times more population than USA! (USAx5=China)

3. USA ranked 9th in the global oil reserve ranking with approximate 69 billion barrels right after UAE and Kuwait. Venezuela and Saudi tops the list.

4. 7th in the GDP per capita ranking with $64,906, right after Qatar and Iceland.

However, large population, large land and massive natural resources alone cannot make a country as strong as USA. If, they were the key factors, countries like Venezuela, Saudi or India would have topped the enemies

Based on my little experience from history books, marketing books and documentaries from Curiosity Stream, I’ve learnt some key factors that has paved the way for USA. I’ve cherry-picked some factors and described their effect in different time frame.

So, what actually made USA so powerful?

1. Geography.

The first thing that matters in a country’s growth is, an uninterrupted growth in economy, which has a lot to do with geography. If you see the attached picture, USA is actually one ocean away from all of it’s biggest enemies. Russia/ Soviet, China, Middle East and specially the North Korean block if we talk about the recent times. The north and south American countries such as Canada, Brazil or Mexico were never a big threat for USA. Where Europe or Middle East have been invaded, liberated and again invaded by multiple regimes in different periods of history, USA has remained untouched in their own soil.

2. Currency.

After constant economic growth, USA witnessed violence on it’s land soil in WWII. However, upon a summit of 44 allied countries at 1944, the USD became the world’s reserve currency instead of gold, to ease the foreign exchange. The globalization of USD bought USA some trading advantages which are beyond imagination.

3. English Language & Technology

USA bought itself a lot of Christmas gift when the entire world became bound to use it! The advantage in fact, already took them

ahead of the herd. But the global politics is all about constant changes. The British empire once ruled the half of the world and now, they are somewhat unwanted in their community. This could happen to USA too unless they looked forward to adopt new strategies. According to the CTA, consumer technology sector contributes 12% of USA’s entire GDP. However, the effect of tech is more far reaching. Facebook, What’s App, Instagram and Snap-chat being one of the mostly used social media platforms, have successfully feed the market with more American products. Their questionably customized algorithms lifted USA originated products to the front. Amazon, AWS, Oracle and Microsoft were sued for this type of data manipulation activities.

Secondly, Cars from USA such as Ford, Chevrolet, GMC had huge acceptance. The giant social media, apple products and consumer goods has been sailed around the world because of their one unique factor, which is I assume is English! Specially in the modern times, only US based tech companies could grow this large because the engineers did not had to translate their interface. Where Chinese tech giant Tencent took one decade extra to come under light, US tech companies were already cashing their crops. Because of the language advantage from both producer and customer end, many US products become sky rocketedly acceptable in all across the world.

The analysis is based on my individual practice and understanding on global economics, politics and marketing. The factors are not statistically proven.

Information sources:

1) United States Census Bureau web

2) CTA Blogs

3) Consumer Technology Association press release

4) The Balance .com, world economy

5) NSEnergy Business report

6) Investopedia

7) Focus Economics .com

8) Cars .com (American made index)