Jan 022011
This is an enlightening lecture on how economic forces have brought down empires in the past… and what it means for the future of the US:
http://fora.tv/2010/07/28/Niall_Ferguson_Empires_on_the_Edge_of_Chaos
In this case, “enlightening” equates to “frightening.”
3 Responses to “Empires on the Edge of Chaos”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Good talk. Scary talk. Thanks for posting.
Best way not to lose your empire is not to set out to make one in the first place.
Although our founding fathers knew that back in 1776 and advised against even trying it, unfortunately that concept went straight down the tubes around the time we had the military ability to try and do it.
Idle battleships are the Devil’s playground.
The only way in which you can really consider America an empire is in its global dominance and the reach of its military. You can’t really call it an empire in the sense that we rule the countries where we hold military bases. You can’t honestly claim that Germany and Japan run their governments based on what the US wants them to do. And frankly, if we ruled Cuba or Saudi Arabia they’d be more decent places to live.
Libertarians go on about how we’ve become an empire, and it’s half true. But I think the full truth is worse than that. I think we’re expending the resources required to maintain an empire without obtaining any of the benefits of an empire. If we really were a bunch of global bullies, you’d think we could get some cheaper oil around here. Crush Iran, depose Kim Jong Il, strike down slavery in Sudan, force China to keep on favorable terms with us, that sort of thing. Instead, we help fun the IMF, the UN, the World Bank. We come running whenever there’s a tsunami in Indonesia or an earthquake in Haiti. We’re not so much an evil empire as a geopolitical sugar daddy. People complain about evil America now, but I guarantee you if they ever got a taste of China they wouldn’t complain at all… not because there wouldn’t be anything to complain about, but because the Chinese government takes a far dimmer view of such things than America ever has.
That’s one of the things that scares me most about the future. When Britain lost its global hegemony, it was able to leave the stage gracefully because there was a superpower which valued freedom, democracy and the rule of law who was able to take over the role. Britain declined while shadowed by the American umbrella, along with the rest of Western Europe. But the only contenders for world power status right now are China and Islam, the religion that has a history of rising up when it scents weakness in the civilizations around it. Islam would obviously only last as long as it took to devour the corpse, but China has the potential to muster some staying power, and I’m willing to bet that their hegemony would make America’s look like a walk in the park by comparison.