Talk:Great power

Who Coined the Term Great Power?

I came to the Great Power page looking for the answer to this question. According to the World Wars section of this article, "It was first coined in 1944 by William T. R. Fox." But when I checked that footnote, I was only linked to a Wikipedia biography on Fox, which credited him for coining the term SUPERPOWER. Obviously the two terms are different, and I had assumed that the term "great power" wass much older (like, Westphalia of the COncert of Europe kind of era). Please confirm and fix the error. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Defenestrator12 (talk • contribs) 14:58, June 3, 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of this discussion was: not merged. Theknowhowman (talk) 02:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

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I propose merging Superpower and Potential superpower into Great power. The content in the first two articles largely duplicate and overlap with the content in Great power. To what extent there is a semantic difference between "superpower" and "great power", it can be described in Great power or Hegemony. A merge would not cause any article-size or weighting problems in Great power. Thenightaway (talk) 16:55, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - A superpower is not a great power. Per existing definitions, the classifications differ significantly. Not to mention, merging the three articles together will be a logistical nightmare and having all these similar sounding (but different in meaning and scope) terms in one article may confuse readers even more. Archives908 (talk) 17:24, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

• The definitions of great power and superpower are nearly verbatim in both articles, so I don't buy that the concepts are meaningfully distinct. Scholars overwhelmingly use the term "great power" and more commonly refer to "hegemons" (rather than superpower) to denote when one power is vastly dominant, so it makes sense to merge all content into Great power and Hegemony. As for the size problem, it's actually very easy to resolve. Most of the content in Superpower and Potential superpower is of exceedingly low quality, as it's poorly sourced (pop science books, non-peer reviewed papers and op-eds by pundits) and contains a lot of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. A lot of the content can be deleted and it would be of no loss to readers. In fact, it would probably be good for readers. It's probably sufficient to merge two or three paragraphs into Great power and Hegemony, and that's it. Thenightaway (talk) 19:45, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose -A superpower is not a great power. If the definitions are to close, that is a failure of the Wikipedia articles. Great powers and superpowers are completely different terms, used at different parts of history. Powers in terms of international have multiple categories. The model that these terms describing incldues superpowers, great powers, middle powers, and smaller/lesser powers. These are extremely well documented in literature outside Wikipedia. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 00:42, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Simplyred90 (talk) 06:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Oppose content may overlap but they are both different topics — Karnataka ^talk 21:20, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Oppose. Great power is a 19th century term, while superpower is a Cold war era term. Wikisaurus (talk) 19:30, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Remove middle power accusations

The UK, China, Russia, and France were accused of being middle powers I between the 1990s and late 2000s. These stats are no longer accurate, but apparently this requires me to go ask here. So opinions? 14.201.77.56 (talk) 13:13, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

None? 121.45.107.215 (talk) 05:29, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems me and the other person are the only ones here. I say remove it. 121.45.107.215 (talk) 05:30, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

This information is well sourced. You may provide other sources of similar or higher quality to balance this section, but it seems there is a number of scholars, who dispute power status of at least some of these states. Articles on Wikipedia reflect what the sources say, so the best course of action is to provide newer sources of the same or higher quality and propose a new wording for that section. Note even historical view of power status of some powers may be due to inclusion. Pavlor (talk) 06:50, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, but these would have to be changed radically. For example:

In the two decades after the end of the Cold War, the UK, France, China, and Russia were still subjected to being labelled "middle powers" by some sources.

The problem with keeping it as it is is that, taking the example of China, it's economy has increased by more than four times in output since those criticisms. And if that's considered fine, then why don't we just use USSR statistics for Russia? That'd be fine, right? No. Of course not. The thing with China is that it has radically changed into a developed country with a powerful economy and power sphere along with it that challenges the U.S. Back then, it had an economy not much larger than Japan. I say we remove it or change it until there are reliable sources found stating that in the past ten years. 121.45.107.215 (talk) 11:23, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

For now, I added "In the two decades succeeding the cold war, some sources said that (list powers) were middle powers 121.45.107.215 (talk) 11:27, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Looks fine. Pavlor (talk) 13:17, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

"European powers" redirect

There's a redirect, European powers, that points here, but I'm not sure if that's appropriate since the term "European power" doesn't appear on this page (except in a reference). I just added it as a link on New Imperialism, but it feels weird to link to "Great power" in this context:

New Imperialism characterizes a period of colonial expansion by European powers, the United States, and Japan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Thoughts? I'm not much of a history buff myself, just wanted to raise this to people who might feel more strongly about it.

The redirect only has a handful of pages linking to it (14).

— W.andrea (talk) 17:43, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

References