Lord Flashheart said:
That's the British again, and Romans, etc but not America. |
With US troops deployed in 156 out of 195 countries, and permanent bases on all - barring Africa - continents, the USA can successfully deploy troops and mount an invasion within hours on most parts of the world. The British Empire worked over weeks/months because the fastest they had to travel and communicate via boats.
The British dominance relied heavily on the Navy, whilst other areas of its military were fairly weak in comparison - and it shows, look at a map of the British empire (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/The_British_Empire.png) - and you'll see that most of the colonies were on the coast of a continent - very few were landlocked countries.
The British empire may have had more economic dominance than the USA - but I haven't the facts, and it's a close call either way. The USA currently accounts for a third of world economic output, whilst the British owned around a quarter of the world's resources - and many parts were underdeveloped, so it looks like the USA is stronger here than us Brits.
As for conference-diplomacy, the USA is a key player in many of the international organisations and has special relationships with many other powerful nations and institutions, most of these things didn't matter during the European/Asian empires in the way that they matter now.
