The link doesn't work.

The fact is whether Britain only had the coast of a continent, or the whole continent, they had them. They only had to face the country they was invading. For the US to do anything like this they will have the worlds forces to contend with and they can be there just as quick or quicker given Americas position.

The empire did have economic dominance given that they ruled the countries and plundered their natural resources for themselves whereas America has money tied up in other countries and need to be very wary of China as they hold the most reserves of us dollars outside of America and could devalue the dollar or even cripple their economy if they wanted to.

It doesn't take much for a country to fall out of favour with everyone else or to become a player now. The world is different to what it was during the empires reign so comparisons like you make are meaningless.

The empires control and standing reflected the world at that time but now the world is different. You can't go conquer half the world and loot them for yourselves. You can with smaller middle eastern countries but that's about it and that's not going so well for them so how would they take control of the world by themselves?

This also counts for any country not just America as it's a bit unfair to keep singling them out.

America is the big kid in the park telling everyone how he runs things around here and the world is the rest of the kids going about their business. Sure some will go to him for help with the other big kids that are pushing them around but if he starts to believe his hype and gets too cocky then he might just find himself alone in the corner sobbing because no-one likes him and won't let him play.

Or with a bloody nose.

*ahem* China.

Also they would make them cheaper

People forget that when a country goes to war it doesn't really matter how poor they are they will build up their armed forces no matter what and relitively quickly. Also being underpowered doesn't mean you'll lose and having the most fire power doesn't mean you'll win. Far from it.

No-one can go on a big scale war like we are talking about not even America.

Unless Americas dominance is challenged then it's dominace de facto.

Well, I disagree. Simple as that. The USA is the greatest superpower this world has ever known (hell, all powers were referred to as "great powers" before the cold war), the world may be different to what it was, I was just using examples to highlight, I didn't bring up the whole Empire thing, others did.

Yeah, there's not a country on earth that could cut off the US oil supply and then survive the 10 years it would take us to use ours up. The US has only had trouble in areas like Iraq because of so much concern for colateral damage and loss of American soldier's lives. When the US is being actively sieged (which cutting off oil supplies basically is), public support will rapidly shift towards war, and when the military doesn't need to worry about keeping loss of life ot a minimum to maintain public support, there's not a nation on earth that could withstand the assualt and few that could hinder the occupation.

I think the empire was used as the most recent reference.
The term superpower might have been coined for them or by them but its only a word. We have to look past what they or their people tell us about them being a 'superpower' and get to the truth whatever that is even if it's that they are in fact the greatest superpower. There is a lot of we are the greatsest and no-one can stand against us wishful proclamtions from them and we have to remember that is what they are brought up believing.
Unlike other previous superpowers America has yet to show they are. Until they do they are just one of the big players to me. But each to their own.

Also all the other superpowers fell due to other powers challenging them in war whether right or wrong.

I would hope that we have moved beyond this pattern or else the world is going to be in for more big troubles in the next few decades.

I find the amount of history butchering in this thread amusing. So the USA, who's history started as a Colony of one of the largest Empires in the middle ages/rennaiscance, and the largest empire known to men, the British Empire, be it by total worlwide area and dominance of the most valuable strategic resource of that time, the sea ; is history's greatest superpower? Ha.

Forgetting the fact that america's "dominance" is more on the economical terms, as it's nowadays financial center of the world, as it was shown in the past months, in which the Lehman Brothers meltdown dragged down most of the world's markets. Also it's the largest in global GDP as well. But that ends there.
Even on military terms the USA pales, in comparison, to the massive army that the British had, as it was the largest Naval force ever known to men, and the biggest infantry known to men is still the Persian army, which had at one point more than 2 million soldiers fighting at the same time, which if you convert to today's population would be an staggering 100+ million soldiers.

So yeah...history is a funny thing that I recommend everyone to do a proper research before doing some claims like these ones that have been said in this thread ;).

Clearly the US has huge power and influence. Arguably, it's influence globally is less than say that enjoyed by the British Empire at it's peak.

On the other hand, past Empires had a lot more latitude. The US has a lot of military power but it's more hobbled than most previous empires in its use, both politically, economically and on equality. At the height of the British or Roman Empires they ruled by force, and had few limits on them for a period of time, US faces huge limits, and indeed it's no surprise recent think tanks have projected it's influence actually reducing.

Maybe we should just agree that, respective to their times, the British and Roman Empires (plus some others I won't drag in) were the biggest examples of true, Imperial, imposing their will and rule on others Empires, while the US (although in many ways similar to an Empire) although theoretically more powerful in some ways, operates in a world that constrains it far more, and also, by it's own nature, tends to be more inward focused vs outward.

@Reasonable

That's the best history summarization i've seen in this thread so far.

It's true, empires like the British, Mongol, Roman, Macedonian and Persian ones had fewer constrains and impositions to limit their subjugation power and thus they could take over by force and wit with much more disposition and ease, given their supremacy at that time; While the US has to deal with the modern consciousness of deterrance and global unity that severely limits certain areas of their influence.

I have no qualms in accepting that the US are the biggest economical empire in the history of humanity, and that their representation, whether it's diplomatical or militial, is also one of the most widespread as well. But what most people tend to forget, as it was shown on past posts, is to see the empires per se in the time frame that they existed, because most of the feats and accomplishments that past empires had, wouldn't be considered important in modern terms, while in their era terms were simply over-whelming.

You can't use the number of Soldiers to determine the dominance of a military. They are different era's in history they can't be compared. Now days if the US(or any developed country) has X number of men(let's say 10), 10 men at it's disposal, 3 of them are going to be in the factory building tanks, figher jets, warships(civilians), 1 will be in a government office(government officials), 2 of them will be researching for a third party company on weapons and technology(civilian scientist), 1 will be a doctor back home treating soldiers or other civilans contributing(civilian) and 3 may be considered soldiers, with only 1 of them actually out on the battle field. All ten of them are contributing to the military might, but only 3 are soldiers. During the times of the British empire if they had 10 men at their disposal probably 7 or 8 of them would be soldiers. 

With the technology now days the number of soldiers is not important and the whole point is to reduce the need for human lives to be involved in war. A fighter Jet may be flown by 1 soldier, but it took 10 people to put that fighter Jet in the battle field. So you can say that it's only 1 soldier, but it's a lot more dominant even relative to the times than 10 British soldiers were. Just ask Japan how one soldier pressing a button can have the might of 50,000 soldiers.