In The Return of Geopolitics: Perspectives from the Engelsberg Seminar 2016, edited by Kurt Almqvist, Alexander Linklater, and Andrew Mackenzie. Stockholm: Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, 2017.
One of the more pressing but unspoken geopolitical issues of our time has to do with the role of the United States as the world’s preeminent military power—or as Americans like to think of it, its role as the global policeman and leader of the free world. And any consideration of that question leads inevitably, if not immediately, to a discussion of American sea power and the U.S. Navy. Because without its navy, which for the past seven decades has been the most powerful in the world, the United States could not have been as active a participant in the world as it has been. Or to take a less charitable view, the U.S. could not have gotten into or caused as much trouble as it has.More