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02/09/2008: "American empire en route to collapse"

I have studied empires pretty carefully over the last few years, and I have figured out the basic nature of these systems and concluded that all empires collapse, and usually within less than a century, because of their inherent nature. They not only make mistakes but usually the same set of mistakes simply because of the inevitable character of the imperial structure, which ultimately fails because of its size, complexity, territorial reach, social stratification, economic disparities, heterogeneity, domination of people and nature, hierarchy, and environmental ignorance.

There are, to my reading, four basic reasons that empires collapse, and I’d like to set them out, particularly in reference to the modern American empire.

1. First, environmental degradation. Empires end by destroying the lands and waters they depend on for survival, largely because they build and farm and grow without a sense of limits.

2. Second, economic meltdown. Empires always depend on excessive resource exploitation, in their heartlands and then in colonies farther and farther away from the center, because their populations become large and their armies too extensive, and when the resources fail the economy fails.

3. The third major cause of imperial collapse is military overstretch. Empires are by definition colonizers and trying to keep control over hostage peoples by force inevitably leads to large and often uncontrollable armies, massive drains on the economy, and ultimately rebellion on the periphery.

4. Finally, empires fall because of domestic dissent and upheaval. Crashing economies, food shortages, political repression, military drain, and increasing disparities between the rich and poor create domestic discontents that, lasting long enough, lead to rebellion and civil war.

[ Spengler said this ninety years ago, Nietzsche said it 130 years ago, and Plato said it 2000 years ago. The truth never changes. The lies and excuses always do. ]

http://www.middleburyinstitute.org/