To put this into context, the United States has 11 aircraft carriers, 38 overseas bases, 130,000 troops overseas and nukes [1]. Turkey has 1, 12 and 60,000, respectively; Russia 1, 10 and 50,000 (exempting Ukraine, I think).

You have to go from China to Australia--through India, Japan, France, Italy and the U.K.--to get to America's aircraft carrier fleet. U.K., Turkey and France for bases (this one is plausible). And none of this counts the massive logistics reserve the U.S. military has compared to the world.

America has built and funded a military designed to check global hegemony. It doesn't produce it, even if our policymakers sometimes pretend it does. But it prevents a global hegemony from emerging, with regional hegemons kept from dominating their neighbors. In general, it is difficult to read history without concluding this is the right approach. It's basically antitrust as geopolitics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection#Power_project...