Trump’s designation of the U.S. as “No. 1” and Russia as “No. 2,” as well as his observation that “it’s good” when those “two big powers get along,” has multiple, conceivably terrifying implications. Image by Jørgen Håland.

“We’re No. 1 and they’re No. 2 in the world.”

That was President Trump’s blunt assessment of global power politics when it came to the United States and Russia following his inconclusive “summit” meeting with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15th. Of all his comments about the meeting, that numerical assessment — made during a post-summit interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News — was perhaps the most revealing, if also in some strange sense the hardest to decipher.

Supposedly, the intent of the Anchorage meeting was to arrange an immediate cease-fire in Ukraine and devise a path to lasting peace there — none of which, of course, occurred. Instead, Trump appeared to focus on repairing U.S.-Russia relations, which had been in a deep freeze since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“I think the meeting was a 10,” Trump exclaimed triumphantly after being asked by Hannity to rate the outcome of his talks with Putin. “In the sense we got along great, and it’s good when two big powers get along, especially when they’re nuclear powers.” Then came the observation that we’re No. 1 and they’re No. 2.

What Could Trump Have Meant by That?

Ostensibly, the comment suggests that Trump was anointing Russia as the second most powerful nation in the world after the United States. But while few would contest America’s status as the number-one world power, most analysts would certainly rank China as the world’s second most powerful nation, given its mammoth economy, expanding technological base, and growing military capacity. So, was this just a dig at China — a crude way of denigrating its rise to superpower status? Maybe, but it’s likely that there was more to it than that.

As with so much Trump says in public, his comment appeared to be both a spontaneous outburst — prompted by his chummy conversation with Putin — and a reflection of his long-held understanding of global power politics. Speaking as if international relations were a competitive sport like baseball or football, where team rankings matter, he celebrated America and Russia’s status as the top two competitors.

But there’s more that can be extracted from Trump’s comment, including hints as to his preconceptions about the core constituents of national power and his strategy for perpetuating America’s status as “No. 1.”

Calculating Global Power Rankings

First of all, what parameters might go into a calculation of such global power rankings? While there is considerable debate about this, analysts usually cite some combination of economic, military, geographic, and demographic factors when making their assessments.

In his interview with Hannity, Trump referred to the status of the two countries as nuclear powers, so that’s a good place to start. According to the most recent (2024) tally from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the U.S. and Russia possess the world’s largest inventories of nuclear warheads, far surpassing those of the other nuclear-armed powers. And in this one key area, Russia is, in fact, number 1 in total numbers, with an estimated stockpile of 5,580 nuclear warheads compared to 5,044 in the U.S. arsenal. (These figures include warheads in storage as well as those deployed with battle-ready........

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