That is correct. Businesses get scared away from places with unrest.

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Yes. It's gotten a great advantage from being a hyperpower. Being a hyperpower is good, and therefore it is good to be a hyperpower. If you don't like it, leave.

To be clear I'm actually hoping for people to bring forth good examples in this thread that I can use in discussions elsewhere. If you must know this is actually in relation to Ireland shooting down the EUs attempt at becoming something of a superpower in its own right.

Seriously, just list some stuff if its so obvious to you. What has the US gained by being a military hyperpower that other western countries have not as a result of not being superpowers.

I can't say for sure. Probably the fact that we haven't had any terrorist attacks, the size of our economy, we pay less for gasoline than anyone else in the world, we have a far better standard of living and when the world does become globalism, we will have the power because we will have the money. Plus, and this one is my favorite, other people are jealous of our success.

There is no reason to strive for dullness. The EU is already a super power. There's nothing wrong with that. There will be people who claim that there is, but there is no good arguments against it.

Direct benefits to the U.S.? Hard to say. But the more prosperous and peaceful the world is, the better everyone does, including the U.S.

You shouldn't look at it as superpower vs. hyperpower. Technically, to be a hyperpower means that there exist no other superpowers. Superpowers exist in a world where there exist more than one.

In that case, you should look into the differences between unipolarity, bipolarity, and multipolarity. For example, we currently live in a world of unipolarity, meaning one power, which is the U.S. From WWII until the end of the Cold War, the world experienced bipolarity, or two powers. In this case, the United States vs. The Soviet Union. Before WWII, there existed multipolarity, which means many powers. This included the U.K., the U.S., France, Russia, Germany, among others.

In multipolarity, there is the greatest risk of war, because there is no single power great enough to keep all others in check, so each power fights among themselves, until this leads to the creation of two alliances. This happened in WWII, in the form of the Axis powers versus the Allies.

Out of these alliances come bipolarity, as evidenced by the rise of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The world is typically more peaceful under bipolarity, as all other powers fall into line under one of the large powers. Generally, neither power can topple the other immediately, and war would be so large, that neither is likely to engage in it. Typically, this leads to arms races, as each power tries to one-up the other. The problem with bipolarity is that instead of direct wars, we tend to see proxy wars, where each power fights the other through other countries rather than directly. A good example of such a proxy war was the Vietnam War, where the U.S. backed one side, while the Soviet Union backed the other.

This system tends to become more and more stable, until one side eventually collapses, which leads to unipolarity. Typically, this is the most peaceful of the three. The problem with unipolarity is that it is very difficult for the hyperpower to maintain its power, as the world becomes more and more difficult to manage. This leads to resentment towards the hyperpower, and fracturing into regional conflicts. After the hyperpower collapses, these regional conflicts turn into the new powers, and we see the emergence of multipolarity. And thus, the cycle begins again.

This is an incredibly butchered synopsis on complex polarity international relations politics. You should look into it.

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A [person] has a property in [their] opinions and the free communication of them. -James Madison

So strong is this propensity of [humanity] to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts -James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 10

James Madison for President -White Fox

Don't know if I agree with your cyclical analysis of polarity, pfaff, but it's certainly interesting. You seem to acknowledge the existence of regional conflicts under conditions of unipolarity and bipolarity, but still argue that they are more peaceful than conditions of multi-polarity. I think this is up for debate, as barring the World Wars, the Cold War and the post-Cold War period have seen a huge amount of bloodshed, much of it often hidden by political or economic crises. This occurs especially in Africa and Southeast Asia. Just think of the Congo, Darfur, Somalia, or the genocide in Rwanda, or Burkina Faso. In southeast Asia there is the East Timor crisis, the Sri Lankan civil war, not to mention the Pakistani-Indian standoff. The world does not seem to tend towards peacefulness or stability during conditions of bipolarity and unipolarity. The superpower or hyperpower itself experiences more stability, and so I can understand that viewed from their perspective, the world is more stable, but this is not really the case, imho.

As for the collapse of the hyperpower and the rise of new powers to create a new multi-polar system, there is no real way to predict this causal chain. Apart from there existing no relevant precedents in history (any similar occurrences of a 'hyperpower' doubtless had a much more tenuous claim to being hegemonic in the US sense of the word), there is no reason to analytically assume that the current situation would turn multi-polar should the US collapse. It might very well become bi-polar, as the US wanes and China grows. Or if the US well and truly collapses, it might become a uni-polar system where the EU is the greatest power. There are simply not that many true global powers anymore, and it seems unlikely that future powers would arise from the 'regional conflicts' of today, as you state. The regional conflicts today are seen in the poorest and most fragmented areas of the world, not any countries with true aspirations to powerdom.

I think your analysis would be stronger if you took into account some world-system theory, as propounded by Arrighi and Wallerstein. They highlight the stratification of world politics into a core and periphery, with the periphery being theatre to the greatest number of conflicts as well as the greatest amount of poverty.

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it is a mistake to throw out the language of equal worth because of its contingent historical association with Western power.

I don't think so.
We actually get more disadvantages out of it.
It forces us to strain our economy on military far more than we'd otherwise need to. It forces us to take up more blame and responsibility for world events.
And the reverse- other countries save more on military and take less responsibility in world events.

There are arguments that US dominance is beneficial to the world as a whole, at least compared to the other models we've seen in the past... but as far as national advantage- it's really more a burden than a benefit.
Also if we want a better-than-current world, at the risk of reverting to a pre-WWII world order, we need for more countries to share responsibility or take responsibility over smaller parts of the globe.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

Really? You think that the cons out weigh the pros? Then why do it? We've had 90 years since world war one, and we continue to grow militarily. Why would every president be so stupid?

I think the pros out weigh the cons. We enjoy a life so rich that our poor are obese. Part of that comes from the piece of mind that we get from our military. Keep in mind, many MANY companies from other nations come here. We offer fairly low taxes and the piece of mind that we will not be taken over. I have no idea if this statistic is still true, but I've heard that there are 80 wars going on right now in the world. That makes the U.S. a sanctuary, and sanctuary is a valuable commodity. You say you want to take away the military, I say you never really know what you have until it's gone.

60 years for the two longest running conflicts actually. Burma being one and Israel/Palestine being the other. Other pretty long ones include one in Columbia and the Philippines has been unfortunate enough to have both a communist insurgency and an Islamic insurgency since 1969.

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"We consider this our duty - to defend humanity against the scourge of intolerance, violence, and fanaticism." -Ahmed Shah Massoud
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I meant 80 different wars happening at the same time.