I'm not too sure about that to be honest. Their political weight has been subdued a lot lately, especially with the "last minute" agreement on raising their debt ceiling.
Honestly, I don't think that matters that much. The reality of it is that US debt yields
fell during that crisis, not rose. And even as Europe begins to try to get its house in order, US debt yields remain low. Simply put, all the US' political gridlock is still assessed as more functional, according to almost any measure, than most of Europe. And pretty soon China will join that club. I've been arguing that China will start to face serious problems soon for a while; what is funny is that Paul Krugman, with whom I usually disagree, recently wrote a piece about China being about to face a major negative economic shock as well.
That made a lot of countries a little annoyed as it seemed like America was just a big child stamping its foot.
See "European Union."
Their involvement in Libya wasn't as great as it could have been, they took much more of a back seat in that.
This is laughable. I'll tell you whose involvement wasn't what it could have been: Europe. Panzified half-arsed European pseudo-military wannabes couldn't get the job done in their own back yard. Spain and Italy both have brand-new (2008 and 2010 commissioning) aircraft carriers that they didn't deploy. Italy deployed their small one from the 80's, briefly. France deployed theirs, and practically had to decommission it from wear and tear.
The US shouldn't have needed to do
anything in Libya. But Europe is a lackluster washed out power unable to manage its own affairs, so Uncle Sam had to come in and supply the drones, carrier support, in-flight refueling, technical coordination, etc. Europe did better than in the past, but still hilariously poorly. That British SAS unit getting captured by the Libyan rebels was funny too. Frankly, the US did more in Libya than it should have had to, and hopefully European nations will get the signal soon that they need to approximately double their military expenditures and start coordinating better. Libya wasn't a sign of American weakness; overall we performed very well in Libya. Libya will be held up for years in the US as the poster child for successful foreign intervention, compared very positively to Iraq.
Now you're pulling out of Iraq whilst other allies are still there.
That I did not know. Who's still there, and how many of them?
America's power is failing and, to be honest, I would say China is the world's most powerful at the moment.
Perception does not create reality. China is perceived to be strong. They are not in reality as strong as the US. They have 0 carriers. The US has 11. They have a few hundred nukes. The US has a few thousand (and Russia has even more, but they're outdated and poorly maintained). China has no serious deployments of cruisers (actually, I checked wikipedia, they have no cruisers or battleships; their largest ships are destroyers). What stealth technology they have is the product of learning from second-hand salvage of downed American craft. Their economy remains, what, just over 1/3 the size of the US?
In the long run, China could be stronger than the US, if they play their cards right. But if we hypothesize foreign nations' strength being demographically predicated, India is the winner. Younger, faster growth, less of a "baby boom" issue, will ultimately be more populous than China, and a better strategic position in terms of access to resources and markets. India is a natural hegemon without serious competitors in the Indian Ocean besides the US, with whom it has fairly good relations now, Australia, who are US allies, and Indonesia, whose competitition consists of trying not to be subsumed into an Indian sphere of influence.
Just look at their stance on Libya, a lot of countries decided not to get involved because China was the first to say "no, we don't want to".
Yes, China leads a meaningful power bloc or sphere of influence. As I said, the world is no longer unipolar; there are multiple powers. But arguing that China's support among a serious of mostly weak nations whose economies are dependency-driven makes it a world power is funny. How many nations that backed out would have sent meaningful military aid if China hadn't backed out?
China also holds a darn lot of American debt (as you noted), as well as debt in many other countries.
To parphrase Keynes, "If you owe China one dollar, China owns you. But if you own China $2.3 trillion, you own China." Sovereign debt holdings are hilariously bad indicators of power. In fact, China holding lots of US debt would serve as incentive for the US
not to service its debt, if we presume a model wherein the US and China must be in competition. Debt from small countries is a very real power; I don't know what China's sovereign debt portfolio looks like. I imagine that information isn't publicly available, at least not all in one place. But for large nations, it's the opposite. Plus, China sits on a lot of USD... which is awesome. China sitting on USD gives the US more flexibility in economic policy, especially the monetary side, where it's like having a money-sink. China sitting on USD is literally like us paying them for goods, then them lighting the dollar bills on fire.
There's only one place China can meaningfully spend all their dollars they earn: the US. The US' status as a reserve currency slightly mitigates the economic weight of this currency effect, but increases the monetary effect. If China actually started using that money, the US might run a trade surplus... and China would run even more of a deficit.
They've also offered to put up money for the Euro crisis. So what they say has a lot of weight from intimidation in Europe and a lot of weight from admiration in Asia.
They have indeed, which was very interesting. Did they actually end up giving any money in the end? I didn't finish following that story.
However, their power to intimidate in Europe is not a product of China's absolute strength, but of Europe's absolute weakness, leading to relative strength for China. If Europe had a stronger military and less of a deserve to fight political civil wars every few years, it wouldn't be so weak.
Their military is probably just as well armed as the American military, except they have the funds to be able to deploy it if they wanted to.
The US has plenty of money to deploy whenever and wherever it is needed. Reports of America's demise are greatly exaggerated.
And being "just as well armed" is hilarious. I don't feel like looking up all the stats, but I'm reasonably confident that the US outguns China in every single category imagineable for military gear except absolute manpower.
