> to keep the trade routes safe or whatever, I don’t know During the Cold War, Washington used free trade as a bribe to get countries to consult with the Penta

> to keep the trade routes safe or whatever, I don’t know During the Cold War, Washington used free trade as a bribe to get countries to consult with the Pentagon on security issues. It was able to do that because although it was mostly decoupled from international trade, the American economy was so large that what little international trade it did engage in (as a percentage of total US GDP) was quite valuable to smaller economies. I guess governance quality in the US could have declined so much since the end of the Cold War that narrow business interests have gotten control of US trade policy, but for many decades Washington cared more about preventing the rise of a competitor (in the Soviet Union) that could eventually challenge it militarily than about using international trade to improve American economic performance -- because the US economy ran well without international trade. The main reason the US had a dominant navy is that it is the most efficient way for the US to prevent the most potent military threat against it: namely, some other country's navy showing up on American shores and bombarding things or interfering with coastal shipping from one US port to another US port. The fact that this same navy has been useful for keeping the world's sea lanes free from piracy and privateering has been just a nice secondary effect. (Similarly, Britain's global empire was a secondary effect of centuries of British efforts to prevent Dutch, French, Spanish and North African fleets from raiding the British coast and raiding British ships operating near the British coast).