One of the little-known amazing facts of the Civil War is that the Russian Czar Alexander II posted his navy to both the Atlantic and Pacific coast of the U.S. His actions thwarted British and French military interventions. The Czar proclaimed that if Britain or France intervened in the U.S. Civil War, then he would consider it as
casus belli to initiate war. His actions may have
saved the Union.
Close ties between the U.S. and Russia led to the 1867 Alaska Purchase, and eventually in 1906 there were plans to build a rail tunnel crossing the Bering Strait. It would have connected the U.S. and Russia. Eventually it could have joined with the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which the Russians started building with American help in 1891. The connection would have linked the U.S. to China and Europe too, with a “land bridge” of rail.
The British Empire viewed railroad construction as acts of “aggression”. The British Empire tried to sabotage them, because they bypassed the mighty Royal Navy, which ruled the sea.
Empires view any competition as acts of aggression against their world domination and trade. British propaganda labeled Germany’s Berlin to Bagdad railroad “German aggression” leading up to
World War One.