Wars and rumors of wars abound. The worst of the former right now are, of course, Ukraine v. Russia and Israel v. Iran and its legion of proxies. The latter? Most ominously, mainland Communist China moving to “retake” Taiwan, with the US becoming involved.

And those conflicts are just in the “nation rising against nation” category. There are also what are called America’s “operations other than war” in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Africa. The United States has been acting as globo-cop since 1945 — and is not immune to its own occasional brand of police brutality (such as overthrowing Iran’s government in 1953 and invading Iraq 50 years later for no good reason).

In this millennium alone, America has used military force overseas 72 times. In fact, such “kinetic diplomacy” has largely become the rule, not the exception, for presidents of both parties.

But the geopolitical times, they are a-changin’. From 1945 to 1991, the US and USSR were roughly equal militarily. However, the latter’s command economy and strident Marxism proved no match for capitalism and Jeffersonian democracy. So the Soviet Union collapsed, and America dominated the globe for two decades.