For nearly nine decades, America has undeniably been the most powerful country in the world. We held hard power — military and economic leverage —  with a terrifyingly strong and intact military from the end of the Second World War through the Cold War to today with an insane amount of defense spending.

Nowadays, it’s inevitable that in a conversation about global superpowers, China is cited as the rising power. How can it not? Politicians yanked it out of the trenches of the Communist Revolution, transforming...