Is Russia the world’s leading nation?

10 June 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

According to the most reliable global ranking of nations’ militaries, which is the ranking by U.S. News & World Report, #1 is Russia, #2 is U.S., and #3 is China, but no one denies that in natural resources, Russia not only is #1 but by an enormous margin, of 67% larger than the #2 U.S.: Russia’s $75 trillion divided by America’s $45 trillion (75/45=1.67). Russia is also, by far, the world’s largest country in land: 17,098,242 square kilometers versus #2 Canada’s 9,984,670 — it’s 71% larger. (#3 U.S.and #4 China are only slightly smaller than Canada.)

On 20 August 2022, I headlined “Why RussChina Will Probably Be the Dominant Nation Beyond the Year 2100”, and reported:

China is already a serious contender to become the world’s dominant nation because of its Governmental system and because that system has produced by far a larger number of highly intelligent and well-educated people than any other nation has. China’s most-basic asset is its having the world’s largest population; and, to this, its Governmental system has increased (added to) the effectiveness of that population, so as to make China already the world’s #1 nation regarding human resources. …

The billionaires who control today’s dominant nation, which is the U.S., understand this. They understand that in order to REMAIN the world’s dominant nation, the U.S. Government will need to grab Russia, or China, or (if that turns out not to be possible) grab its own adjoining country of Canada. Since U.S. and Canada already speak the same language and adjoin each other, CanAmerica would be the likeliest outcome of that.

Consequently, RussChina will probably be contesting against CanAmerica to be the world’s dominant country. Because RussChina would likely have both the world’s largest population and the word’s largest landmass [and because China is #1 on human resources, ChinUssia or], RussChina would probably be #1, and CanAmerica [or AmeriCan] #2.

Of course, Trump wants to grab both Canada and Greenland, but the people in BOTH of those countries have been shown in polls to be vigorously opposed to that.

From an economic standpoint, America (and even more so its two biggest colonies, the EU and Japan), are declining powers, and both China and Russia are rising powers. This is why the U.S. and EU regimes are rabid to conquer both Russia and China. The U.S. regime is already so weak that it can no longer have any hope of dominating the globe unless it continues to retain the backing of both Israel, which dominates the Middle East, and UK, which dominates its “Commonwealth of Nations” (which INCLUDES Canada; and, so, Trump is trying only to buy Canada, not threatening to simply grab it).

The desperate imperialistic powers, U.S. and EU, are, throughout recent decades, watching their international rankings decline, and are increasingly craving to destroy the rising powers, especially Russia and China — and any nations that might support those — but they continue declining, and increasing only in their desperateness to return to their former days of imperialistic “glory”(for their billionaire-class, which control there). This growing desperateness on their part explains why international polls find that peoples around the world rank the U.S. as being by far the world’s #1 threat to peace, and why, ever since 25 July 1945, when U,S. President Truman decided to start the Cold War for the U.S. Government to take control ultimately over the entire world, the U.S. military has engaged, up till 2022, in 297 invasions and military occupations around the world, of which 244 occurred AFTER the Soviet Union ended and therefore America was uncontested anywhere in the world and the U.S. regime’s ONLY remaining purpose became to establish an American global dictatorship. (Those 297 U.S. invasions in the 77 years during 1945-2022, are more than all of the instances put together during 1798-1945 — which was twice as long a period, 147-years. And none of those 297 invasions after 1944 was defensive: all of them were in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that before the U.S. Government goes abroad to fight in a foreign land, there must be a congressional Declaration of War. Truman turned the Constitution into a mere piece of parchment — and the Congress, likewise controlled by the billionaires, has gone along with that: un-Constitutional Government.)

And so it is that the American Government has continued treating Russia as an enemy even after it no longer actually was; and this Government’s empire’s news-media, which likewise are controlled by American-and-allied billionaires, have continued reporting as-if Russia and China were their enemies. This is the reason why the U.S. coup in February 2014 taking over Ukraine’s government (which turned Ukraine anti-Russian) has been reported throughout the U.S. empire as having been, instead, a democratic revolution there. It actually OVERTHREW the last democratically elected Government of Ukraine, and established America’s dictatorship there. And this is also why the U.S. Government sends weapons to Israel to complete its genocide of the Gazans, and also sends weapons to Taiwan for it to break away from China despite America’s having signed in 1972 the Shanghai Communique, which said that “Taiwan is a part of China,” which remains the U.S. Government’s official policy to this very day, even while America sends weapons to Taiwan to break itself away from China. (America’s ‘news’-media hide instead of expose this duplicitousness of the U.S. Government — which is being done by both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Government. The U.S. empire — neoconservatism — is what the U.S. Government is bipartisan about.)

On May 25th, Russia’s Sputnik News headlined “Russia Boasts World's Third-Largest Trade Surplus in 2024”. On June 10th, Russia’s RT News headlined “Russia holds strong position in global AI race – top bank executive”. Unlike in the U.S. and EU, where I have found the press to be very untrustworthy about foreign countries and also about their own Government, I have found Russian news-media to be far more reliably true. In the U.S. and its colonies, lots of lying is needed in order to “manufacture consent.” That isn’t the case in the countries the U.S. Government aims to “regime-change.”

Russia, which has NEVER sought to conquer any country in the U.S. empire (whereas the U.S. has constantly sought to break Russia apart, and been aggressive, and sanctioned, against Russia — ALL of the aggression is one-sided by the U.S.), is being constantly libelled by the U.S. empire as endangering them, because Russia responded in 2022 to America’s take-over of Ukraine in 2014; and this is the U.S. side’s desperateness to retain its former days of imperialist “glory.” Trump is no exception to this. But what you read here is effectively banned throughout the U.S. empire. And also banned from being made public in the U.S. empire is the June 10th Judge Napolitano youtube “[MUST WATCH] - Scott Ritter : How Soon Will Ukraine Collapse?”, where Ritter says that the UK (which actually started the U.S. empire on 25 July 1945), was behind the game-changing June 1st Ukrainian drone attacks against Russia’s strategic nuclear forces; and, so, under Russia’s published nuclear doctrine, not only did Ukraine but also the UK definitely crossed their red lines to respond up to and including nuclearly. Furthermore, Ritter makes clear that Trump and the U.S. also share responsibility, but less directly. It is an extremely informative interview. Ritter says that what’s happening now is that the masters of the U.S. empire are so desperate to provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons as to do this in order to ‘justify’ the U.S. to unleash its nuclear arsenal against Russia. That is how desperate they are, now that it is clear that they will be losing their conventional war against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine.

Is Russia yet the world’s leading nation? Or is China? Or is America still that? I’ve presented here what I consider to be the relevant facts. But only you will provide the answer.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.