The soft power reason 1945 British Commonwealth not globe's only Superpower

Strictly in terms of geographic climate hard power, the 1945 British Commonwealth (then at the height of its geographic extent) was the world's only global superpower.

Having lots of sovereign territory spaced out all over the world is the best way to be a superpower --- for a variety of reasons.

Geographic climatic hard power

When your territory is spread worldwide,  you haven't placed all your economic eggs in just one climate or geological basket .

You have the resilience and variety to ride out punches from Nature or Man - a valued and permanent form of hard power that the tiny, weak but geographically dispersed bacteria has long benefited from.

Empires or nations with large amounts of land - spread out or concentrated - of course tend to have a variety of natural resources and a large human population , both essential for hard power.

But when your territory is well spread out, no Blitzkrieg can ever  hope to win or hold all that territory - the Blitzkrieg trades off surprise and concentration of effort in a tiny amount of space and time for long term depths of strength - it is the war approach of non-superpowers.

Spread out territory allows empires or nations to waste less money on current military forces and lets time and space wear down their occasional opponents while they slowly build up overwhelming strength to finish them off.

And spread out territories are best suited to cheaply and permanently controlling all the world's many ocean trade and military shipping lanes.

Owning outright even the tiniest - resourceless and populationless  - rock of an island, midway in an empty ocean, will still permit an incredibly valuable airfield and a sheltered submarine or naval base.

Proof ? Try Midway Island, Ascension Island and Diego Garcia for starters.

Long range aircraft that waste most of their flying time flying out and in from mid ocean are never as useful as planes onsite.

Multi-billion dollar aircraft carriers can sink in a torpedo minute.

Task Force tankers eventually run out of fuel or quail shelterless in the face of a huge storm.

Buying temporary access to such 'unsinkable aircraft carriers and troopships'- as the USA had to do after 1945 - is always subject to the other nations pushing you back out and to the fact you hand over to foreigners your precious dollars to supply the base.

Britain , in theory , could keep all that overseas military base money circulating within its own sterling currency zone.

Given all this geographic climate hard power , why was the USA ,and not the British Commonwealth, the world's only superpower after 1945 ?

The only reason is the overwhelming mass English belief in their national superiority vis vis the entire world - including all their colonies , starting with places like Scotland, Ireland and Canada,  before working their way over to India , Africa and onto the rest of the globe.

Churchill led this crowd but the Labor party was not far behind.

Working class Britons looked down upon from upper class Whitehall simply moved overseas and practised looking down upon all the local natives , upper class or working class.

The lack of soft power loyalty this churlish attitude engendered among the other citizens of the British Commonwealth can only be contrasted to the enormous amount of soft power loyalty that America generated among its citizens -  even those who were black, latino, and aboriginal.

Pax penicillia

Britain had a chance - easy to perform, cheap and quick - to win back the admiration of its Commonwealth citizens and of the whole world - with selfless wartime penicillin distribution - but it blew it.

The post-1945 Pax Penicillia proved to be American , not British ....