by Jeff Thomas, International Man:
Years ago, Doug Casey stated, “When empires die, they do so with surprising speed.”
At the time, that comment raised eyebrows, yet he was quite correct in his observation.
Ernest Hemingway made a similar comment when a character in his novel The Sun Also Rises was asked how he went bankrupt. The answer was, “Gradually, then suddenly.”
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Again, this sounds cryptic, yet it’s accurate.
Any empire, at its peak, is all-powerful, but the fragility of an empire that’s in decline is hard to grasp, as the visuals tend not to reveal what’s soon to come.
Great countries are built upon traditional values – industriousness, self-reliance, honour, etc. But empires are distinctly different. Although it may seem to be a moot point, an empire is a great country whose traditional values have led it to become unusually prosperous. There are many countries, both large and small, that are “great” in their formative values, but only a few become empires.
Yes, the prosperity is brought about through traditional values, but a great country becomes an empire only when its prosperity is sufficient to allow it to branch out – to invade other lands – to plunder their assets and subjugate their peoples.
We tend to grasp, through hindsight, that this is what made the Roman Empire possible. And we accept that the Spanish Empire was created through its invasion of the Americas and the plundering of pre-Columbian gold.
And we understand that the tiny island of Britain achieved its empire by covering the world with colonies that it had taken by force.
In every case, the pattern was the same – expand, conquer, plunder, dominate.
As a British subject, my childhood understanding was that previous empires had come about through nefarious pursuits, but I was encouraged to believe that the British empire was somehow different – that my forefathers sailed the seven seas to liberate distant populations. That, of course, was nonsense.
The British empire is now long over, and the current empire is the United States. Around 1900, the then-great country of the US sought to achieve empire and, at that time, its president, Teddy Roosevelt, was insatiable in his desire to conquer foreign lands, both near (Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Puerto Rico, Cuba) and far (Hawaii, Philippines, Japan).
The results of his efforts were mostly successful, and although the countries taken were not called colonies, they were certainly intended to be vassal states. And there can be no question the US government’s methods were no kinder than that of the Huns. Some locations, like Hawaii, went fairly peacefully, whilst others, like the Philippines, required brutal slaughter on a grand scale.
And such tactics change the nature of a “great” country. Yes, it does allow it to become even greater, in terms of domination, but it ceases to be great in terms of its values.
In most cases, this plants the seeds of empirical collapse. The empire, even as it’s growing, is rotting from within, with deteriorating principles and morality – the very traits that created it.
This, in turn, causes the empire to develop a habit of subjugation – even over its friends and allies abroad – those countries that got on board to take part in the prosperity. While, to some extent, these loyalties by other nations are genuine, they are treated as lesser nations, eventually causing resentment of the empire.
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