Population and Potential Power ISA, 2016

Powerful countries continue to be the critical component by which the international system is created. The paper investigates differing potential and actual power possibilities between the developing and developed world focusing primarily on both the United States and China. It argues that traditional policies of power creation, conflict, economic development, and cross-national corporation are no longer viable to the developed world and that the last remaining policy is immigration and assimilation of new population. This comparative study shows that the United States became the current dominant nation because it benefited from early, effective immigration policy, while increased barriers to immigration introduced in the mid-20th century reduced potential power. China benefited extensively from nearly thirty years of continuous high levels of economic growth but may have undermined their future power potential via the single child policy that distorted cohort structures. China’s astronomical rise in ranking to the point of challenging the global dominance of the United States will be tempered by an aging population and domestic demands generated by the anticipated massive rural to urban migration anticipated in the next half decade.