[bogs_carut]

None of those pre-modern great powers could compete either economically or militarily with the modern United States.

Of course, they might have been relatively more powerful in relation to their contemporaries, but that hardly implies anything relevant about the modern era.

[genofon]

well it's pretty obvious that a gun is more efective than an arrow.

US is the most powerful country now, but it isn't dominant (see Syria, Crimea, etc..) and it not as dominant as the British Empire or the Roman Empire was at their time