Perfect geography.
The US east coast is perfect for trading, thanks to its naturally shielded coastline. All of the sandbar islands and relatively shallow waters create lots of natural harbors perfect for shipbuilding and making ports, which increases both the country’s ability to trade and project naval power. And it has two coastlines, along with Hawaii and various other pacific assets that help it trade with Asia and patrol the worlds largest ocean. So while China worries about making harbors, and Russia worries about its ports freezing over for half of the year, the US can focus on things like hollywood, making more money, the middle east, hand size, etc.
Also, the fact that the center of the country is basically one giant farm.
And that’s corn production alone. Not including barley, rye, wheat or a number of other grains. The thing is, this entire area is not only completely flat, but it also is positioned perfectly to allow for long growing seasons, and is centrally located to the two coasts. And the US can move this food to anywhere in the country with ease. This is because of the interstate highway system, a fuck ton of railroad tracks, and…
A whole bunch of navigable rivers, running through the national heartland, called the Mississippi river system. Since they flow south, and since winds blow north, this gave early Americans a two-way highway up, down, and around the US. This benefit was only compounded on when ships powered by fossil fuels could move anywhere they wanted without currents or favorable winds. And this map isn’t even including a plethora of smaller navigable rivers on the coastlines, such as the Sacramento in the west, and the Hudson and Connecticut in the east, and so many others that I am not going to include them in this answer in the interest of keeping this answer as short as possible.
America has a great defensive position as well, there are only two land routes in to the US that a foreign military can take to attack it, through Mexico, a hot, large, and miserable place to march through, and through Canada, a cold, large, and equally miserable place to march through, that also happens to be a close US ally. The two sea routes are similarly problematic, as no navy in the world currently has the blue water capability to launch an attack across the Pacific or the Atlantic onto the US mainland and succeed… other than the US navy itself.
This gives it an advantage over other powers, as the two next most powerful countries in the world have to defend and administer an awkwardly positioned landmass. Russia has a vast and useless Siberian frontier, that it must protect in order to keep in touch with it’s eastern ports. In addition to this, none of Russia’s ports have direct access to a large ocean, as they are located in small seas that are controlled by other navies. There’s Baltic sea, which is controlled by baltic NATO states such as Denmark, the Black Sea, which is controlled by Turkey (another NATO state) thanks to the Bosphorus strait, and the Sea of Japan, which is controlled by the wealthy US ally of Japan. Meanwhile, the geography of western Russia is practically begging for invasion, with all of it’s major cities (including Moscow) positioned on one side of the easily-crossed east European steppe (unless you attack with a mechanized army in the spring like Hitler did, wherein the mud of the grasslands will literally engulf your vehicles). China is in an incredibly awkward geopolitical situation, being encircled by Southeast asian countries with millions of military personnel to the south, India with it’s massive army to the southwest, Russia to the north, and the wealthy US-backed nations of South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan to the east. Not to mention even more US allies in Southeast asia such as Malaysia, the Philippines, etc., which can basically control access to the Pacific.
So in comparison to other powers, the US is very fortunate to occupy the land that it does. In large part, it is because of its geography that the US has been able to foster a thriving economy, build and maintain a powerful Navy, earn lots of money, ensure safety, and grow enough food to sustain itself indefinitely without outside support. “America the beautiful” indeed.
credit :- Lucas Brock
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