Best of luck to the rest of the world. Our failure doesn’t need to be yours.
Oh, it’s coming for them. Eurolibs are about to find out what happens when the Neo-Tripartite gets formed with America, Russia, and China and it turns out it’s the alliance with the only navies that matter, control of the majority of the world’s oil production, the only nuclear stockpiles that can threaten total annihilation, and the majority of the world’s weapons manufacturing.
Oh good, another world war
I mean, not that I’m pro-this scenario, but I don’t think in this hypothetical there would be anyone who would take on Russia, china, and the US. More like “whatever you three are doing…I guess we’re doing too.”
I think you underestimate how little people like being conquered, even when they will very likely lose.
Canada here - my boss made a prediction today that the world will now start to shift towards another currency such as the Euro and I never thought about that possibility until now. Rome used to be the world currency until it fell.
If the dollar were no longer the international reserve currency, the US would be in serious economic trouble, if not bankrupt. However, I don’t think that will happen because the US will probably not shy away from preventing it by force with its gigantic military machine. I don’t think that’s very far fetched, considering what happened to Iraq after Saddam announced in 2000 that he would sell oil in euros instead of dollars. It is of course difficult to prove that this was actually the reason for the US invasion of Iraq - but weapons of mass destruction, the alleged existence of which was put forward as a reason for the war by the US, were in any case demonstrably non-existent.
You’re right about the US’s military, but you know who also had an outstanding military? Almost all (now dead) empires. I think it stretches exceptionalism beyond all credibility to think the US will buck this trend. That the US empire will be thought of in the past tense is pretty much inevitable, I’m most worried about how it goes. Will it be with a bang, or a whimper. I fearful of the former as they can mount a pretty big bang.
Yes, most empires have perished because of their decadence. This is certainly also a danger for the USA, especially under Trump. If it comes to that, we can only hope that the US will not drag us all into the abyss with them. They will certainly use all means at their disposal to maintain the status quo - even with nuclear weapons, which the Romans, for example, did not have. I hope it goes well. In any case, the world would be better off if we did not continue to destroy our common habitat with our eyes open because of the excessive neoliberalism of the US.
I dunno. I find the word “decadence” ridiculous. It’s flexible to the point of uselessness. People refer to the “decadence” of the Romans to mean everything from their extreme wealth gap to the decline of citizens soldiers. Hell, half the time people use “decadence” just as a way of disguising that they’re simply blaming the fall of Rome in the existence of gay people.
What I mean is unbridled self-enrichment, corruption, greed, hubris and hedonism (in the negative, not the philosophical sense) of the elites of a given empire, which often had a certain share in the decline of formerly effective administrative and economic structures, legal systems etc. The excessive abuse of power by the powerful for selfish purposes. For a long time the ancient Romans were very aware of the creeping danger that came with considerable power in the hands of just a few. For example the expression “memento mori” (remember that you will die) likely comes from this context: The Romans used to say that to generals when they returned from a successful campaign as to remind them that they are not almighty gods but just mortals like everyone else. The late Roman elite however seems to have forgotten this as they became more greedy and selfish instead of being somewhat humble servants of their empire - they became decadent. But yes, if anything, that was of course just one factor among many in the decline of former empires. My point is just that even today, the excessive greed of a few very powerful people threatens not only their own power base, but even the survival of humanity as a whole. I simply think that we need to change fundamentally and urgently if we want to mitigate the foreseeable consequences of climate change to some extent - Trump is not going to do that at all.
Problem is it took Roman empire hundreds of years of decline, the world now sure is faster but it can still take a lot of time for contemporary empires to fall
I mean, has the British empire fallen completely yet? I feel like as long as Oxbridge keep their cachet and the BBC is still (somehow) internationally respected, the British empire isn’t dead.
But I’m definitely not a historian and maybe Britain will stay an empire until Ireland is reunited and independent or maybe the empire crashed as soon as India gained independence.