Just out if interest, some stats from the web, although all current sources seem to be about 10 years old now (1999) but I'm guessing a comparison of the figures to day would be similar.
These figures include secondary speakers (i.e. native speakers plus second language speakers). This helps significantly boost the French and Spanish figures, whilst adding a little to the English and marginally increasing the Mandarin Chinese. Figures are from various sources/studies: Comrie (1998), Weber (1997), and the Summer Institute for Linguistics (SIL) 1999 Ethnologue Survey:
Chinese, Mandarin: 1.12 billion
English: 480 million
Spanish: 320 million)
Russian: 285 million
French: 265 million
Hindi/Urdu: 250 million
Arabic: 221 million
Portuguese: 188 million
Bengali: 185 million
Japanese: 133 million
German: 109 million
Of course, number of countries against language has English way out in front at 115, and inverts the Chinese dominance in pure numbers:
English (115)
French (35)
Arabic (24)
Spanish (20)
Russian (16)
German (9)
Mandarin (5)
Portuguese (5)
Hindi/Urdu (2)
Bengali (1)
Japanese (1)
There was an interesting Sci-Fi show a few years ago that only lasted a season, called Firefly, and that had humans of some unspecified future being (prophetically?) bilingual in English and Chinese...
As to the question of US imperialist ambitions, it's too big an issue for this simple forum. Comparing the modern methods of imperialist oversight to those of colonial England, France, Spain or Holland is a rather fallacious attempt at denial of reality. No longer the colonial legions marching in to dominate a region or engage in open warfare, the modern toolbox of conquest uses much more subtle and insidious means to control economic resources and influence governments, and when necessary implement 'regime change' to secure the national interest. A somewhat smiling assassin doctrine - 'we come in peace; shoot to kill.'
