Ooops, We Own It

Empires of Absent Mind: Rome and the USA: "'We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.' This is the famous explanation given by Victorian classicist and historian JR Seeley for the British Empire.

However debatable, it could equally be applied to the Roman republic. By 146 BC, the Romans found themselves the undisputed masters of the Mediterranean world. But they had achieved this without ever really intending to, and consequently they were unprepared to take on that mantle.

'Rome and America were founded upon the same myth, and it has shaped their destiny.'This is the position that the United States of America finds itself in today. Like the Roman republic, the US is now the policeman of the western world. Its armed forces are unstoppable, its influence is everywhere and just like the Romans, it got there by mistake. "

hmmm... there was some stuff that happened after it got there.