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From what I gather, there aren't many nations on earth that have global power projection capabilities. As far as I know, the USA of course has them, France has such capabilities as well, the U.K. but to a much lesser extent, the USSR used to have them but, well, that ended, and the PRC today can only project military power in some countries in Asia, plus a base in Djibouti. How can we change that? Can we make it so that more than 10, maybe even 20 countries have global power projection capabilities in the 21st century?

I think a useful tactic could be to handle colonialism differently, with more puppet governments and, especially, more overseas bases; so,,for example, maybe the Netherlands negotiate a withdrawal from the East Indies earlier, thus ensuring they get basing rights? Perhaps they even keep Suriname. Belgium could be able to be more powerful vis a vis the Congo, by giving it independence earlier or just having the Katangan secession succeed, thus ensuring they have a proxy in Central Africa: that could lead them to be more active in world affairs, and have more bases abroad, perhaps carriers etc.

An interesting idea would be to have more alliances like NATO, and have more military integration between those allied countries: effectively, more interested powers with more bases abroad.

These are some examples, off the top of my head, about how more nations could have somehow been able to project power, militarily but not only, abroad, in as many places as possible. How would you go about doing that?
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