Hyperpower
The term hyperpower has been used by political scientists and historians to describe an uncontested superpower, altough the use of the concept is inconsistent. French foreign minister Hubert Védrine coined the term in 1999 to describe what he saw as the historically-unparalleled influence and might that were held by the United States at the turn of the century.
Currently, the United States is no longer an uncontested superpower, partly due to not dominating in every single domain in every part of the world. Although it is still the most powerful military and has the largest economy by nominal GDP, China has made significant gains in cultural influence and technology. The United States became the world's hyperpower at the end of the Second World War, as the Soviet Union was a power of comparable influence, but lagged far behind the United States in economy and wealth. The United States remained the world's hyperpower until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, at which point it became the world's sole superpower. Opinions differ on when China's rise changed the United States' position from an uncontested sole superpower to a contested one. However, most agree that this happened sometime in the late 2000s or early 2010s post-Great Recession. While China's rise decreases the power gap between them and the United States, the United States is forecasted to remain the world's hyperpower for the next couple of decades.
According to the Asia Power Index 2023, the United States still takes the lead on the military capacity, cultural influence, resilience, ''defense networks, economic resources, and future resources but lags behind China in the two parameters of economic relationships and diplomatic influence'' across eight measures in Asia. However, the United States remains ahead of China in each of these categories on a global scale. The term "potential superpowers" describes polities that could rival American primacy in the future.
History
There is a general lack of consensus between the various authors and scholars in reference to the nations and empires that allegedly had hyperpower status or were the world's most powerful at various points in history; the label of hyperpower has been occasionally given to multiple powers of the past such as the Persian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Papacy, the Portuguese Empire, the Spanish Empire, their Iberian Union, the Habsburg empire, the Ottoman empire, Mughal India, Safavid Iran, the Ming dynasty the Dutch colonial empire, the British Empire, and several others.During the Cold War, the term superpower has been applied to both the United States and the Soviet Union and the British Empire. This concept is more common than that of hyperpower largely because it is not possible to identify a single hegemonic force in global affairs.