which are the top five most powerful countries ?

@Tatsumi yeh China is taking lead no doubt in that....I think country can only become powerful once it is economically stable ... As china is too focused on industrial development

@scottamadore2 For now. But China's economy has been skyrocketing for so long that it's about time they hit some stumbling blocks.

Then, there's also the possibility that they will have an uprising or social issues that will inhibit them.

It all just depends. Nobody knows what the future will bring. But, yeah, the time of American dominance and leadership will likely come to a close.

@Tatsumi Are u American?
China has very cheap labor result of one of the most populated country hence it has become a major growth centre for MNc,s almost everything is manufactured there....and every country's backbone is its infrastructure which they are really improving . So it has very strong chances of becoming one
and its hard to say for american dominancy will come down ... as they are keep on evolving

@Subsumedpat if u are talking about ww2 ... it was not Uk alone that was ALliance b/w uk us australia and other europen nations so it was not the effort of whole country ... and uk is not speniding much on R&d for army compared to other countries
A country like this has only 1 aircraft carrier, 4 corvette warships battle tank 407 where as india has2-3 carriers 36 corvette warships and 6464 battle tanks and list goes on ... I am not talking about theory here but real statistics

@scottamadore2 But the war started in 1939 and the US did not come in until 1941, Europe fell except for the UK.

@Subsumedpat exactly it was 1939-41 almost 60-70 years back ... everything has changed since that time If u remember India was colony of British empire during ww2 and large number of the soldiers from east India company were sent for ww2 from India .

@Sharky86 ok mention 9 den ranking wise

@scottamadore2
-1st today is probably China, especially since dumb-fat-orange-president took power in the US. China influence today is spreading in almost all of the 5 major continents like nobody else. But it's economy etc maybe is less stable than what we think.

-2nd is the US, the most powerful nation by economical, political and military power. But today US leaders are taking bad decisions afflicting their power and reputation on the international scale.

-3rd is probably Russia, who also hiddens a lot of his real power just to use it when it's necessary. Sad to say that Russian population are not living a so happy or rich life at all, an immense power is in the hand of just few people.

-4th I say UK, which influences politics and culture on a global scale, the city of London alone is one of the most powerful political and economical place of the planet since centuries. But Brexit is nigh.

-5th is probably Japan, living in a crisis since almost 30 years but still so powerful. Japan leaders minds their own business more than others.

-6th Germany cause it has a powerful position on the EU.

-7th-8th-9th almost on par are France, Italy and Canada, powerful and rich nations with a high well fare. They're not powerful like top3 mostly cause they are smaller, but the power here is more balanced (like Japan etc), the population lives better than in many places of USA, not even compared to China an Russia with their millions and millions of poor people.
_______

There are also Saudi Arabia, Quatar etc with huge resources.

Also I must talk about EU.
If it was more united EU would be the most powerful union of countries, by far.
The EU of today is almost on par of US when it comes to power, and it's divided. Imagine it as a whole.
People who understand the global politics, like Putin does so, and that's one of the main reasons of the meeting with random Trump of a couple of days ago.
Some of EU countries are the most evolved on the world on par with Japan, maybe South Korea, Canada and others, so if our EU governors were able to join each other and take the wellfare on a continent level everybody would be be nice with this. Everybody apart for dictators like Putin and some USA republican.

@TheOtakuNextDoor Japan is advanced in terms of technology but not in military

@scottamadore2 They have Gundams hahaha