The US is the most powerful nation on Earth because it has the most powerful economy. As such it has more technological resources to push the envelope of military technology while spending a normal percentage of its GDP on the military. Throughout history military powers have usually been economic powers as well. Our values can only be judged relative to others based on what percentage of our resources we devote to causes we believe are important. Spending more money on a cause than anyone else does not make us more fixated on it than anyone else unless we spend far more proportianally. It is easy to see from the chart why NK is such a mess. The Soviet union fell precisely because it could not sustain matching US military spending with a far smaller economy.

If or more likely when China becomes the dominate economic power it will eventually become the dominate military power as well. The US sole hope for continued world economic and military leadership is that China will not reform enough to keep pace with the US once its economy reaches a more mature state or that its one child policy will result in economic catastrophe as the population ages. Overall it is still a third world country capable of tremendous growth while in places its rate of technological improvement far surpasses the US. Immigration to the US is also a good thing in this light because population and basic natural resources are also fundamental to economic potential.

Regards,
Mark