From Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), Russian born American biochemist and prolific author of both fiction and non-fiction, Foundation (1951):
The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity—a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.
From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:
The state-owned Bank of China has been ordered by an American court to hand over customer information to the US. The bank has refused to comply, as to do so would violate China’s privacy law. The US court has subsequently ordered the Bank of China to pay a fine of $50,000 per day.
Any guess as to how this is likely to turn out?
China is a sovereign nation, halfway around the globe from the US, yet the US seems to feel that it’s somehow entitled to set the rules for China (as well as the other nations in the world). When China sees fit to develop islands in the South China Sea that it has laid claim to for centuries, it begins to hear threatening noises from the US military. A candidate for US president declares that he would buzz the islands with Air Force One, the Presidential jet, saying, “They’ll know we mean business.”
All over the world, those who live outside the US are increasingly observing that the US has become so drunk with power that they’re threatening both friend and foe with fines, trade restrictions, monetary sanctions, warfare, and invasions.
And in so-observing, those of us who have studied the history of empires note that history is once again repeating itself. Time and time again, great empires build themselves up through industriousness and sound economic management only to subsequently decline into debt, complacency, and an entitlement mind-set.
Over the millennia, empires as disparate as Persia, Rome, Spain, and Great Britain rose to dominate the world. Of course, we know how those empires turned out and, by extension, we might hazard an educated guess as to how the present American Empire will end.
In the final throes of empire-decline, we invariably observe the more sociopathic trends of a failing power, such as we’re seeing today from the US.
To continue reading: Et Tu, Brute? (How Empires Die)
Posted in Collapse, Debt, Economics, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, History
Tagged Empire
From Tacitus (56-117), Senator and historian of the Roman empire, The Agricola and The Germania:
Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well…Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. To robbery, rape, and slaughter they give the lying name of empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Apt words from Edward Gibbon as the American empire declines and ultimately falls:
The history of empires is the history of human misery.
Essay on the Study of Literature, (1761)
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