You don't have to come from one of the world's current superpowers to be consumed with hubris: you only have to have been a global powerhouse a few hundred years back to still strut like a skygod.
Take the Dutch - please - take the Dutch !
A group calling itself MARS ONE and headed by a Dutchman with a Masters in Science called Bas Lansdorp, is confident it can have a tiny colony of Dutch men on Mars permanently by 2023, 11 tiny earth-years from now.