Daniel Immerwahr

Football is a FIFA sport on a 100-meter pitch.

And for the United States, football is an NFL sport on a 100-yard field.

The United States is, on the one hand, voice its standards on everyone else.

On the other hand, feels no obligation to adopt the rest of the world's standards.

Yeah, we used to live in... I mean, it's tricky because things might change in the 21st century and it feels like they're changing very quickly, even in 2026 this year.

But it used to be the case that projecting power involves claiming lots of territory, fighting wars of pacification to do so, and then bumping up against your imperial rivals and fighting wars with them, maybe.

World War I was like that.

World War II was like that, too.

And it seems like for...

In various ways, the United States has honed new ways of doing what it wants in the world.

It's not free of force, and it's not even free of territory.

The United States has hundreds of military bases around the world.

But when it comes to things like the screw thread, you're absolutely right.

Those aren't handled at the point of the gun.

It is true that historically, empires have...

put a lot of energy and a lot of coercion into, I don't know, getting people to speak English or speak French or speak Dutch.

That's not easy to do.

But the United States has, during a period of globalization, has been and particularly was at the start so just enormous that it acquired a gravitational force that allowed the United States to achieve a lot of things that empires have sweated to achieve in the past.

A lot of U.S.

power happens on an almost subterranean level.