I think you actually have the relationships reversed. Military power paves the way for projecting culture, not the other way around. Realpolitik is meaningful;

I think you actually have the relationships reversed. Military power paves the way for projecting culture, not the other way around. Realpolitik is meaningful; and everyone on the left seems to have forgotten about it (I say this as an unabashed progressive liberal). The US’ prime advantage in the 20th century was the fact that basically the rest of the industrialized world was completely destroyed twice — and then they paid the United States to help them rebuild. It wasn’t until the 70s that the US’ reliance on oil became heavy enough to exploit strategically, but by then we had built an entire post-industrial economy a decade ahead of Europe and two decades ahead of the rest of the world. We helped Japan do the same because they were basically a puppet state and gave us a foothold in Asia to serve as a buffer with Russia. Does that sound like cultural expansion driving the military, or the military goals driving the cultural expansion?