I beg to forgive me for reopnening this old, but interesting threat.
The superpower definition came after WWWII. At first it included three members, the British Empire, the United States and the Sowjet Union.
The USA was surprisingly small then with only 100 million inhabitants, not much more than the Empire of Japan or the Greater German Reich they had just helped defeat. The population growth post WWII to current levels of 300+millions that rivals the European Union of 450millions is the phenomena behind the increasing power gap between the USA and France or the UK with around 60 million each.
The British Empire had a most friendly dissolution process accelerated post WWII. It still has a core of cooperating powers of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK which combined account for slightly more than 100 million. The problem was that through the decolonialization with the loss of India and the increased bilateral cooperation of the former dominions with the former insurgent colonies, the USA, the British Empire became increasingly limited to the current UK framework. The USA formed with the other Anglo-Saxon nations a sea-power alliance with strong mutual intelligence connections. The UK is the small senior partner in that business, but the former junior partner by now leads the company.
France and the UK remnant of the British Empire are of similar size now and they never let go of being defined great powers. That's why they need nukes, aircraft carriers, amphibious assault ships and lots of occupied islands all over the world. Being defined as great powers is important for having a UN security seat. This seat in turn allows them to block diplomatic legitimization of measures and the blocking ability in turn helps them to maintain their clout of unequal partners, mostly weak economically not so strong former colonies.
The Soviet Union had their claim to superpower based on military capability that became unsustainable with the increasing gap in microelectronics technology between them and the embargoing US-led camp.
What does the world look like today?
Powers with military and economic capabilities approaching UK and French level are usually the so called regional powers that do have a regional clout of less powerful countries with strong friendly ties. Brazil would be a prime example.
India also has a a local enemy, Pakistan, and a bumpy relationsship with a country defined as a great power, China.
Japan is economically way beyond UK or France as it has the combined economic power of both. Germany has made good her former influence in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe thanks to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Yugoslav Wars. However, they feel most comfortable if outsiders see them as the power-dwarf power that only acts in alliance.
Russia today has a tremendous ressource richness, military industrial complex remnants and influence mostly within the borders of the former Russian Empire, but they are a far cry from the Soviet Union.
Other than these regional powers with a great power claim for a UN seat, there are a number of regional powers with more limited capability.
South Africa is the undisputed local hero of southern Africa, Nigeria of Western Africa and Egypt is the cultural leader of the Arabian world. Turkey is an amphib of Turkishness, Muslim and old European power. Australia and Oceania have a pretty clear relationship of effective power constellation.
What these countries lack in comparison to the regional powers listed above is economic wealth, except for Turkey. Wealth is not guns, but to me it seems that wealth is also a defence against all kinds of black ops (like in Syria). These can act with impunity the poorer a nation in total and per capita is as low per capita GDP goes along with less organization of GDP for common purposes that do include intelligence and armed forces among many other measures and people are more susceptible to the buying power of foreign influence. The higher the wealth, the better are the abilities for power expression imbalances between countries. More disposeable income gives more power of one country over another. That makes the European situation quite difficult to navigate with many not so unequal players. Intelligence power serves more as a longterm effect that supports negotiations and sensible courses, while flexing the military power is like a wrestling competition. A seemingly equal opponent can be totally subdued surprisingly fast or it grinds down to a subtle long match.
As such there are two layers of regional powers, some that can hold their turf and some that can't. Above the regional powers that can hold their turf are powers with global influence capability. Whether or not you count France and UK among these and create a layer is open for debate, but I would group them among strong regional powers that like Russia move within the global remnants of former empires.
The power level above the regional powers, including the former empire region powers is the one power that can put to test the regional powers. Regional powers that can hold their turf against the highest power level are second rate powers, like Russia, UK or France (also former empire region powers). Currently the only power capable of posing such a challenge is the USA in intteligence, military and economic terms, while China does seem to have reached that level economically, possibly in HUMINT, but not SIGINT and by far not military.
As such the first rate regional powers are great powers, the second rate regional powers are just that and the highest power level with global action capability is a superpower. If there's only one superpower going on a rampage of intended regime changes within a five year plan it might be opportun to call that a hyperpower from hybris. Based on the current levels, the question is whether to put China among the first rate regional powers or the global action capable superpowers. The longer we debate that the clearer is the shift to the later answer from all but a US perspective that will tend to overrate their military build up.
