By Mireya Amaya Barreiro - Student of the School of General Studies
A superpower country is defined as a country with the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the globe, also, in more than one region of the globe at the time (Milley, 2010). By this definition, many countries come to mind, but nowadays power and influence tend to be defined by other factors. In the past ten years, superpower countries were defined by their conquered territory, World Wars, political community, and non-dependence on international intercourse (Nossal, 1999). Nowadays, superpower countries are also defined as hyperpower countries. According to Sellen Wu (2019), many superpower countries are competing in growth and globalization terms. The superpower title is variable as new global challenges may occur, for example, due the pandemic crisis and natural disasters many countries were really affected delaying development rates, and entitling countries like United States, European Union, China, Russia and India as superpower countries (Liébana, 2020).
Why is technology a characteristic factor of a superpower country?
As previous mentioned, development in countries is not measured like ten years ago when other factors played the important roles. Nevertheless, the GPD is still a factor that considers a superpower country. By mentioning this, is important to rethink what moves the GPD in different countries, but also how fast. Technology is developed to innovate and provide fast, efficient, and successful solutions. As technology keeps innovating, many countries take advantage of it thanks to their resources.
The growth in technologies develop many areas, like education, nation building, transportation, disaster threat, etc. When some countries have more access to technology, they can assure advantage, while countries with less access keep functioning in those areas like years ago. Also, technology works as a common factor between the recognized superpower countries, like China with their disaster threat technologies; and Russia and United States with advanced technology in weapons and space education.
The path of technology
The integrated technologies in every field of development and life lead us to question why countries keep investing in more technology. Certainly, technology is associated with the phenomena of globalization. The integration of technology in every field of society helps countries to keep being productive, and to position anywhere thanks to technology. For example, education as we knew it ten years ago, now can be replaced by virtual courses and virtual work. The real path of technology is to keep unifying countries through it, but also giving advantage in terms of power to the countries with well-developed technologies in sociopolitical areas.
In conclusion, technology is a common denominator to how well developed a country is, but the development of technology depends in factors like education, infrastructure, economic capacity, and a growth in GPD. Superpower countries are known as countries with advantage in power, and what gives power is the capacity to innovate. Innovation is the way to make things in a different way expecting the best results of it, and technology is a tool to improve innovation. Due to global crisis, many superpowers could prove that science and technology are powerful tools and help to held crisis and their economy, like the example of China facing the pandemic crisis in a considered way, thanks to the implemented technologies in their health and emergency systems.
