According to the 2022 Elcano Global Presence Report 2022, the US remains the most powerful country in the world, while Russia drops to 7th place in importance.

Spaniards from the Royal Elcano Institute calculate a aggregate index which measures several parameters – economic power, military power and “soft presence”, which includes cultural, tourism, sports and scientific development.

According to the same Elcano index, Romania ranks 47th in importance.

The Elcano index includes 16 variables and provides results since 1990. This allows us to analyze the evolution of the globalization process since then and how the influence of some countries has increased or decreased over time.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, globalization was already showing signs of fatigue, the authors of the Report write. In fact, the sum of Elcano’s global presence index for all the countries for which we calculated it reached a maximum in 2015. Since then, this value recorded a slight decline.

Of the three dimensions of global presence – economic, military and “soft”, the last one suffered the most (a 7% decrease between 2020 and 2021), despite the fact that soft exchanges were the ones that showed the most dynamism in the last two . decades

The ranking of the top 20 countries remains relatively stable

The ranking of the top 20 countries remains relatively stable, with the same group of countries occupying the same positions for several years in a row.

But over time, the evolution is not uniform at all, there are countries that have strengthened their global presence, while others have weakened it.

So, in 1990, the rating was led by the USA, followed by Russia, France and Great Britain; in 2022, the US remains in first place, followed by China, Germany and Japan. Now Russia has dropped to the 7th position.

The US is, after China, the country with the strongest global presence during this period and continues to lead in each of the three dimensions and in most of the 16 indicators.

But China’s momentum is stronger, and the gap with the US is shrinking more and more.

Spain is the country that has lost the most of the 150 countries for which the Index is calculated, despite maintaining 13th place. The impact of the pandemic has been particularly strong on the Spanish economy, especially on tourism. All 16 variables included in the index register are decreasing, with the exception of exports of goods and foreign investment.

This issue of the Index does not include the effects of the war in Ukraine, sanctions against Russia or the energy crisis, which will be visible in future issues.