Then there’s the not-so-little issue that, unique among the world’s major powers, only the United States has major populations on the coasts of two oceans. From economic and cultural angles, this enables the Americans to access trade and expansion opportunities in the bulk of the world as a matter of course. But the key word there is “opportunities.” The vast distances between America’s Pacific and Atlantic shores on one hand and the Asian and European continents on the other means that there is no requirement for interaction.
