Most people who cherish the idea of American exceptionalism and interventionism are dumber than dirt, but ironically the people on the opposite end, who think America can just be like ‘peace rest of the world, y’all got this’ need to brush up on their history.

The only country to have a comparable place on the world stage is The British Empire in the late nineteenth century, ‘Pax Britannica.’ They usually lost money on the actual empire aspect, large portions of Africa were a bit like jewelry for empires.

The British won the game through luck, technology, and trade. They were an island, large enough to grow a nation, not too large to make it hard to unify. Being an island their military policy centered around the principle of having more ships than the next two navies put together.

Then they began the industrial revolution. America has two oceans protecting her flanks, and Americans had massive room and resources to expand in, a totally unprecedented migration in human history. Our position led to domination in the 20th century.

We didn’t somehow fight our way into the dominant position. Instead of having a navy larger than the next two, our navy is larger than the next 10. The US military is so dominant it could probably go to war with the rest of the world and win. We keep the world’s ocean lanes safe and open, we spend so much on our military we are effectively subsidizing other countries. America can not simply throw up its hands and say good luck, but a transition is inevitable, can’t wait to see how that goes.