Unified Germany; More a Great or Regional Power?

To be frank, I think this is a key example of why global projection should not be rated too highly when considering Great Power status. If a state such as Germany can be considered the strongest individual state in Europe, but lacks global reach, it shouldn't, in my opinion, be considered secondary to official Great Powers, particularly when for a state which exerts global reach, superpower might be a more appropriate term.

Sure, but to me the only difference between a superpower and a Great Power with global reach is that the OTL Great Powers were mostly all reduced by WWII to shadows of themselves. There were only two intact, both of which expanded global reach by default. Before then there were arguably four superpowers: France, the UK, the USA, and the USSR.
 
This may sound dumb, Zmflavius, but Germany could challenge the Great Britain of Europe, but I doubt it could, in the time-frame of 1870-1900 conquer its' global holdings, or maintain such an empire.

This actually reminds me a great deal of Athens and Sparta. Personally, my opinion is that this renders them overall equal, which is my primary justification for naming them both Great Powers.
 
Compared to Britain, a regional power attempting to reach Great Powerhood. Compared to the USA, a Great Power all the way (though this is due to the USA being a regional power at best).

Problem is, that while Germany certainly had the capacityand potential to be a great power, its geography greatly limited its power projection ability. There was virtually no country in its neighborhood for it to projected as everyone else was a great/regional power by itself. Thus its direct influence on others was limited, while Britain, with its colonial empire could operate anwhere.

this. Although it should be noted that Germany had colonial possessions (if mostly worthless) and also had significant influence in the Middle East pre-WWI.
 
Maybe we should separate two aspects : raw power and localisation of said power. I think germany was a great power but also a regional power (the japanese didn't give a fuck about Germany power during WWI for example) while the UK was a great power and a global power (Japan would care about what the UK think before acting). I personnaly think that's why the CP lost WWI. They were only regional powers and thus only relied on their own ressources to fight the war, while France, Russia, the UK and the USA with their empire (informal latin american one for the US) had ressources of whole continents to fight the war.
 
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