The salient point about U.S. strategic thought and the Mediterranean is that, for most of our history, we didn’t think about it. Between our feud with the Barbary pirates and our World War II engagement in that wine-dark sea, we accepted that the Med was a British lake, in which the Royal Navy would guarantee security for trade and wartime dominance. From the Seven Years’ War onward, and despite Napoleon’s ambitions, Britain remained master of the Mediterranean—the importance of which soared higher still in 1869, with the opening of the Suez Canal, the new short-cut and soon-to-become-lifeline to vast British India.
