Illustration by Nate Christenson
Essay from Mapping China's Strategic Space
To the Grand Area and Beyond
The Sudden Transformation of the United States’ Strategic Space
In this essay from NBR’s project Mapping China’s Strategic Space, Stephen Wertheim asks how and why the United States reversed course and made a decision for dominance, building on his book Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy (2020).
The essay is part of a section on Learning from History that presents a collection of historical case studies, used for comparative purposes, that examine how rising or great powers, including China, have in the past defined their strategic space and the factors that led them to consider expanding it beyond the strict delineations of their national territory.
Read the essay on the Mapping China’s Strategic Space website.
