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If you recall your World War II history, the United States and the Soviet Union were allies during the war. Together, these nations and others brought about the downfall of Hitler's Third Reich. When the war ended in 1945, these two countries emerged as world super powers. Herein lies the roots of the Cold War. A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers.
The term was first applied post World War II to the United States and the Soviet Union. For the duration of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union dominated world affairs. At the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, only the United States appeared to be a superpower. Alice Lyman Miller defines a superpower as "a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemony". Few countries have the potential to become superpowers; China is now considered an economic superpower, but it arguably lacks several factors including military and soft power to be widely recognized as a global superpower.
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