Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing. I have returned to all of the comparative defence spending and military personnel sta… - Paul Kennedy

The US possesses 12 such carriers (another, the USS Ronald Reagan, is to join the fleet soon), each with the attendant group of complementary warships. There are also smaller carriers designed, not for open-ocean combat against all, but to take powerful Marine Corps battalions ashore.
This array of force is staggering. Were it ever assembled en masse the result would be the largest concentration of naval and aerial force the world would have seen.

As each great power has risen in the ranks, boosted by its expanding material base, it has tended to devote more and more of its resources to military protection – to guard its interests, to deter (or defeat) jealous rivals. Affording that protection is not such a great problem when the home economy is growing swiftly; when, however, the nation concerned becomes "mature" and its growth rates slow down, it becomes ever more difficult to maintain its extensive military and strategic obligations in the face of newer, faster-growing challengers. The faltering great power thus runs the risk of what I have termed "imperial overstretch", a widening gap between its global interests and obligations and its own capacity to defend them all.

The above remarks about conservatism could be made with equal or even greater force about the Mogul Empire. Despite the sheer size of the kingdom at its height and the military genius of some of its emperors, despite the brilliance of its courts and the craftsmanship of its luxury products, despite even a sophisticated banking and credit network, the system was weak at its core. A conquering Muslim elite lay on top of a vast mass of poverty-stricken peasants chiefly adhering to Hinduism. In the towns themselves there were very considerable numbers of merchants, bustling markets, and an attitude towards manufacture, trade, and credit among Hindu business families which would make them excellent examples of Weber's Protestant ethic. As against this picture of an entrepreneurial society just ready for economic "takeoff" before it was a victim of British imperialism, there are the gloomier portrayals of the many indigenous retarding factors in Indian life. The sheer rigidity of Hindu religious taboos militated against modernization: rodents and insects could not be killed, so vast amounts of foodstuffs were lost; social mores about handling refuse and excreta led to permanently insanitary conditions, a breeding ground for bubonic plagues; the caste system throttled initiative, instilled ritual, and restricted the market; and the influence wielded over Indian local rulers by the Brahman priests meant that this obscurantism was effective at the highest level. Here were the social checks of the deepest sort to any attempts at radical change. Small wonder that later many Britons, having first plundered and then tried to govern India in accordance with Utilitarian principles, finally left with the feeling that the country was still a mystery to them.