2. China: China is a land power that can project nuclear missiles; it is not a naval power. A superpower must be, in the end, a naval power if it is to project military force on a sub-nuclear level. This lack of effective power projection kept the Soviet Union from becoming a full superpower. It limits China's global influence as well. Clearly, China wishes to build a navy, but it will take a generation, if all goes well, before it begins to deploy meaningful naval forces. And things rarely go well in such matters.
3. Russia: Russia has the nuclear capacity but lacks the economic, political or military reach to become a superpower. It is still struggling to define its regional power.
Therefore, while some powers have global reach in one dimension and many powers have multi-modal reach on a regional level, only the United States has multi-modal reach on a global level. The United States is therefore the defining power of this era, and its concerns define the behavior of the international system.
The purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. Germany, whose border with East Germany represented the most likely avenue of Soviet attack, was the geographic center of gravity of the alliance. The United States was the politico-military center of gravity. Therefore, the U.S.-German relationship was the axis on which NATO turned. Other nations, like France, might shift their positions on NATO, but as long as Berlin and Washington were in sync, the rest was manageable.
3. Russia: Russia has the nuclear capacity but lacks the economic, political or military reach to become a superpower. It is still struggling to define its regional power.
Therefore, while some powers have global reach in one dimension and many powers have multi-modal reach on a regional level, only the United States has multi-modal reach on a global level. The United States is therefore the defining power of this era, and its concerns define the behavior of the international system.
The purpose of NATO was to defend Western Europe from a Soviet invasion. Germany, whose border with East Germany represented the most likely avenue of Soviet attack, was the geographic center of gravity of the alliance. The United States was the politico-military center of gravity. Therefore, the U.S.-German relationship was the axis on which NATO turned. Other nations, like France, might shift their positions on NATO, but as long as Berlin and Washington were in sync, the rest was manageable.