Here's Herzberg on the scariest document of all time, the US National Security Strategy:

The main thrust of the document, however, is twofold. First, it stresses preëmption over deterrence as a strategy for dealing with threats. Second, it posits that American military power must be the operating framework for this new strategy—not just as a practical expedient, temporary and unavoidable, but as an inherently valuable and permanent ideal.

And Zakaria on US Hegemony:

America's relative position in the world has no real historical precedent. Imperial Britain, which at its peak reigned over a quarter of the world's population, is the closest analogy to the United States today, but it is still an inadequate one. To take an example, the symbol of Britain's supremacy was its Navy, which—at great cost to the British treasury—was kept larger than the next two largest navies combined. The United States military today is bigger, in dollars spent on it, than the militaries of the next largest fifteen countries combined—and those expenditures amount to only about four per cent of the country's gross domestic product.