[Tainnor]

IMHO, the article boils down to the fact that the US is the top superpower in the first fully globalised era, and that to me explains why it seems to be "exceptional".

It doesn't mean that it is more exceptional than earlier superpowers, like Rome, or Spain or Great Britain, if we account for the increased interconnectedness of the world. It also doesn't imply that all of these statistics may not one day apply (even more so) to a completely different country, such as maybe China.

But most of all, I don't think any of it implies that this is fully due to any intrinsic qualities of the US per se. While those certainly played a role, so did accidents of history. Had Europe not been so dumb to go to war twice in the 20th century, maybe we would think of Great Britain as "exceptional".

I also don't like how the author continues to use the adjective "great", despite acknowledging that it might be confused with "good". It's probably problematic that we speak of "Alexander the Great" too, but we do so due to historiographic tradition. There's IMHO no need to carry over this baggage to contemporary history. We can just call the US "important" or "a superpower", which is what it is, without using adjectives which so clearly imply moral judgement that the author immediately has to distance themselves from it (and IMHO in a rather half-hearted manner).