Country profilesUnited States

Humanitarian profile

The USA, the world’s largest aid donor,  is one of 22 richer countries that have pledged to give 0.7 percent of gross national product in international aid, but it has not yet fixed a date by when it aims to achieve this. An OECD review said that since “9/11”, national security goals had played a bigger role in aid decisions. A lot of aid goes to Iraq and Afghanistan, where the role of the military in channelling aid has increased rapidly due to instability.

Country snapshot

The United States is the world’s all-round superpower - its wealth and might provoke strong feelings around the world: many people love it, envy it, or hate it. During the “American Century” the United States emerged stronger from the two world wars to eclipse former European powers and by the 1990s to see off the military and ideological rivalry of the communist Soviet Union. In the new millennium it faces a struggle to remain dominant, however, as China grows into an economic, and perhaps also military and political, competitor to be reckoned with.

Under former Republican President George W. Bush the economic and political giant briefly gained enormous sympathy after the 9/11 attacks but this seeped away because of the Guantanamo detention camp and invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Bush’s successor, Democrat Barack Obama has tried to rebuild some bridges, promising gradually to close down Guantanamo and prioritise climate change. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize – more for promise than achievement as his country still fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The bad debt-induced financial crisis that erupted in 2008 severely tested the American model of laissez-faire capitalism, but government intervention prevented a meltdown in the key banking system, although at huge cost, both in money and confidence.

Government

The United States is a stable democracy dominated by two political parties, the conservative Republicans and Obama’s more liberal Democrats.

Parliament is the Congress, made up of a lower House of Representatives – who serve two-year terms - and upper house Senate in which the 50 federal states have two members each, serving six-year terms.

The president, who is the chief of state and head of government, as well as the world’s most powerful person, is elected every four years in November. George Washington was the first president, Obama the 44th.

Campaigning for president – or for Congress – is a costly business, requiring personal wealth or a well organised fund-raising machine. Powerful lobbyists in Washington, representing business, religious, regional and other groups, are highly influential in politics.

Economy

America has been the world’s biggest economy for decades, but faces challenges and growing competition in the years to come. Main exports include computers, electrical machinery, cars, chemicals, food, military equipment and aircraft.

The economy has thrived on a relative lack of red tape and state intervention and a flexible labour market, providing a favourable environment for private enterprise.

Gross domestic product – at around $47,000 per person - accounts for about a quarter of the world total. The military budget is estimated almost to equal the rest of the world's defence spending.

The national debt has more than doubled since 2001, owing to recession, tax cuts and wars. The country is also running a record trade deficit and is highly dependent on imported oil, whose price has fluctuated wildly. U.S. manufacturing costs make it hard to compete on price with China and other low-wage countries.

The global economic downturn, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, the costs of running two wars and tight credit pushed the United States into a recession by mid-2008, the most severe since the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

By 2010 there were signs of recovery. Inflation remained low and unemployment was at around 10 percent, a quarter-century high but stable.

To help stabilise financial markets after bad loans brought down major investment bank Lehman Brothers, Congress set up a $700 billion fund in 2008 to buy equity in banks and corporations. The next year it agreed to an additional $787 billion fiscal stimulus - two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts - to help the economy recover.

Immigrants – legal and illegal, from all corners of the world but especially Latin America -- are a mainstay of the workforce. The “American dream’” of personal freedom and advancement comes true for many, but not all.

Some 30 million live in what the government considers poverty and since 1975, nearly all gains in income have gone to the top fifth of households.

History

Many American leaders put their country’s phenomenal success down to the importance given to individual freedom, enshrined in the 1787 constitution – the world’s oldest and shortest still in use today – and in the Bill of Rights four years later.

The United States of America – then just a northeastern fraction of its current territory – had gone to war with Britain for independence which it declared in 1776. Over the next two centuries it expanded west and south, swamping indigenous peoples with a mass of immigrants from Europe.

The shattering Civil War of 1861-5 ended in victory for the anti-slavery north over forces from the more conservative south.

The economy expanded until another turning point in American history, the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression in which one in four people lost their jobs.

The USA entered World War Two in 1941 after an attack by Japan.

The latter half of the 20^th century was marked by growing U.S. economic dominance around the world and the fight against communism in its many facets – from the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Korean War and the 1962 Cuban missiles crisis to the space race that put an American on the moon in 1969, the era-defining Vietnam war and the nuclear arms race.

The Cold War ended with Western victory – and many Americans see former President Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising stand as the key factor.

A decade after the Soviet Union broke up, Communists were replaced by Muslim fundamentalists as America’s perceived Number One enemy when hijackers, mostly Saudis, crashed planes into New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon in Washington on September 11, 2001 – attacks now widely referred to as 9/11  – killing some 3,000 people.

That remains the single most important event in recent years for shaping U.S. policy and the national mindset, with the government declaring the country at war and ordinary people fearing the American way of life was under attack.

It led indirectly to the invasion of Iraq – motivated by the search for weapons of mass destruction, or by oil, depending on who you ask – and the deepening conflict in Afghanistan.

Legal snapshot

The federal legal system, and that of 49 of the 50 states, is based on English common law. Louisiana is still influenced by the Napoleonic Code.

The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal and is comprised of nine justices appointed for life by the president. Below it are the U.S. courts of appeal, district, state and county courts.

In most of the 50 states capital punishment is legal.

The United States has not signed up to the International Criminal Court, to protect members of its armed forces on missions abroad. It has not accepted the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.

Non-governmental organisations and private media operate free from government control.

The USA ranked 19^th in Transparency International’s 2009 index measuring the perceived level of corruption in 180 countries (1st position is perceived as least corrupt).

It gets an overall ‘strong’ rating from U.S.-based non-governmental organisation Global Integrity in its report measuring anti-corruption measures, government accountability and civic freedoms.

In corporate corruption, the Enron scandal, revealed in 2001 remains one of the most notorious. Using accounting loopholes and poor financial reporting executives of the energy company Enron hid billions in debt from failed deals and projects.

It led to Enron's downfall, the largest bankruptcy in American history – but only for a year, until it was eclipsed by the collapse of Telecoms giant WorldCom when its multi-billion dollar accounting fraud was revealed.

Former financier Bernard Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence after pleading guilty to a $65 billion investment fraud that hit thousands of investors worldwide.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff was the focal point of a political scandal that rocked Washington’s power elite and helped Republicans lose control of Congress in 2006. He was jailed for corruption, fraud and tax evasion. Prosecutors noted he had cooperated in probes that led to convictions of a congressman as well as some congressional and White House aides.