Decline and Fall

Table of ContentsPrologue: Understanding EmpireEmpire is not simply an all-purpose "snarl word" for cultural forms the speaker does not like, though it has been used that way far too often in recent years. It's a specific form of interaction between human societies, which might best be described as a "wealth pump" through which the imperial center extracts wealth from subject nations. It's also a self-terminating system, because the subject nations who serve as cash cows for the imperial center are eventually milked dry, leading to bankruptcy and collapse. The United States currently has the world's largest global empire, which is well into the process of imperial decline and fall. PART ONE: THE COURSE OF EMPIREChapter One: Origins of American EmpireTo understand the decline and fall of America's empire, it's necessary to understand how that empire came into being. The United States has never been a single society; the complex process of invasion and settlement that turned scattered European colonies into a global imperial power drove hard fissures through the expanding society, which finally blew up in the Civil War. The Northern victory transformed the United States into a major military power, and the end of westward expansion shortly thereafter made imperial expansion a tempting option. Chapter Two: The Conflict Over EmpireEconomic crises and rising tensions between industrial and agrarian factions in the postwar North helped drive the rush to empire that followed the Civil War. Still, that rush was by no means unopposed, and the debate over empire in late 19th century America sparked discussions of the economics and military strategy of empire far more open than anything in print nowadays. A close examination of those debates provides a useful understanding of the shape of America's current empire. Chapter Three: America at ZenithThe rise of the United States to global empire was made complex by the decline and fall of the previous world empire, Britain's, and the bare-knuckle brawl among a variety of powers over who was going to take the British Empire's place. America's huge petroleum deposits played a major role, but so did Britain's desperate situation in two world wars, which forced it to seek American help at whatever price the United States chose to ask. As gasoline-powered war replaced older models, the United States crushed most of its potential rivals and rose to global dominance. PART TWO: THE WIDENING GYREChapter Four: The Failure of PoliticsThe American political system was poorly suited to manage an empire, and shifts since the beginning of America's imperial age have not improved the matter. Despite claims widespread throughout today's society, those shifts have driven a dispersal of power, not a centralization: in the United States today, power can only be exercised by winning the temporary allegiance of diverse power blocs and interest groups, pushing the entire system closer and closer to permanent stalemate. This process was well understood even in ancient Greek times as the normal fate of a democratic society. Chapter Five: The Economic UnravelingThe economic aftermath of empire is a familiar process in world history. As the wealth pump of a successful empire bleeds its subject nations dry, institutions and military systems set up in an age of extravagance become too costly to maintain, but cannot be abandoned without an immediate imperial collapse. This time around, the same process is happening in tandem with the end of the age of cheap abundant fossil fuel energy, and the combination of the two is driving an economic unraveling that places the current global empire at imminent risk. Chapter Six: The Specter of DefeatThe immediate cause of that collapse, however, is likely to come from another side-the military side. The illusion of American military invincibility faces at least three massive challenges in the years ahead: first, the hypercomplex American military machine is extremely vulnerable to "monkeywrenching" tactics that target its technology; second, an ongoing revolution in military affairs is rapidly shifting the basis of warfare toward small, flexible, technologically enabled approaches that can readily cripple the far more clumsy US military model; third, depletion of petroleum reserves means that the essential energy source for modern warfare is running increasingly short. . Chapter Seven: The End of the DreamThe flashpoints that will most likely drive a collapse of American imperial power are easy to list. The rise of China as a rival imperial power is one; the imperial overstretch that leaves America overextended and vulnerable, especially but not only in the Middle East, is another; political and cultural disintegration here in the US, leading to a steeply rising chance of insurgency, is a third; and the cluelessness of the current US political class, caught up in the common fate of sheltered aristocracies, doesn't help. Exactly what combination of these and other factors will terminate the US empire is a good question-the answer of which many of us may live to see. PART THREE: A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP ITChapter Eight: The Future of DemocracyTalk about democracy today almost always loses its way in useless idealizations based on civil mythology and an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. Real democracy, like any other political system in the real world, is rife with its own inescapable flaws; what makes it worth pursuing is that these flaws are by and large less destructive to human rights and welfare than those of other systems-including the consensus systems onto which many activists nowadays place exaggerated hopes. Rebuilding democracy in the aftermath of empire will require a willingness to accept the imperfect but good in place of the perfect but imaginary, and to produce democracy instead of merely consuming it. Chapter Nine: Reinventing SocietyEmpire behaves much like an addictive drug, and its impact on a society closely parallels the impact of drug abuse on a family or a community. The collapse of civil society, the debasement of education, and the rise of ideologies of entitlement that reject the idea of individual responsibility are among its consequences. Those can be overcome, but it will take a substantial effort by individuals who are willing to reject common beliefs and a range of popular ideologies to accomplish that valuable task.Chapter Ten: Facing a Hard FutureEmpire is a wealth pump, and one of its payoffs is that people in the imperial center and its inner circle of allies benefit from the tribute economy that pumps the wealth of the world into their national economies. The end of American empire means that citizens in the US and such core allies as Canada and Australia will have to relearn how to make do with a small fraction of their current abundance. Difficult as that will be, it has its own benefit, since the age of abundant fossil fuels is coming to an end as well, and those societies that begin downshifting sooner rather than later will have a less traumatic transition than those that cling to fossil fuel abundance.BibliographyIndexBibliographyIndex