2050
There will be a lot of pushback on this one, I'm sure. But if by pushing back means that people are drawn to a sudden and earth shaking wake up call, then the title-statement is worth far more than the need to merely learn the lessons of history but how such a "tragic trajectory" can be reversed.
It is a truism, almost a theorem (not just theory), in both natural and political sciences that once momentum, speed and trajectory of an object or political idea is known, one may predict where the object or idea will ultimately end. In addition to that but even more importantly is that history also preeminently, almost in every case, mimic both the path and trajectory of all past societies, regardless of the make up and origin of its inhabitants that applies to where we are today.
I'll try to get to the point right away to make my case. This great nation we call America begun in 1776. 2050 is 274 years hence from its official birthday after its independence from the last great empire. If it makes it to 2050 it will indeed have had the longest shelf life of any world power, but not by much.
Sir John Glubb wrote a paper on the "Fate of Empires" in 1976. The chart below was in that thesis.
The nation Dates of rise and fall Duration in years
Assyria 859-612 B.C. 247
Persia 538-330 B.C. 208
(Cyrus and his descendants)
Greece 331-100 B.C. 231
(Alexander and his successors)
Roman Republic 260-27 B.C. 233
Roman Empire 27 B.C.-A.D. 180 207
Arab Empire A.D. 634-880 246
Mameluke Empire 1250-1517 267
Ottoman Empire 1320-1570 250
Spain 1500-1750 250
Romanov Russia 1682-1916 234
Britain 1700-1950 250
"The dates given
are largely arbitrary. Empires do not usually
begin or end on a certain date. There is
normally a gradual period of expansion and
then a period of decline. "
Why did Sir John Glubb define the end of the British Empire in 1950? Britain barely survived WWII from the onslaught of Nazi Germany. Without the help of its allies, primarily from a country that was once its colony, 1942 would have been its official denouement. Still suffering from an earlier blow to the gut from 1914 to 1919 (WWI) followed by near mortal wounds that begun in 1940, ending in 1945, it was not for another eight years before the "fall", as defined by history.
So, let's examine why almost all empires expired after approximately two and a half centuries. And why is it that only one of them at a time would reign with such dominance at any given moment in history? It seems that the rise and fall of kingdoms and great nations follow this one omnipotent rule of gravity - everything that goes up must come down.
The gravitational force that act on the trajectory of any social and political structure is directly proportional to how well developed a nation or kingdom had become. Wealth, military power, influence, sophisticated way of life of its people, envy and competition from other nations and kingdoms, the ultimate erosion of the social fiber and resolve of its people will all conspire to pull down the trajectory of its continued existence.
It is argued by sociologists that human nature is the root cause because when things get too comfortably easy the next generations to follow the preceding one loses a lot of what it took to achieve the things that are now and often taken for granted. Economists tell us that once the apex has been achieved by the prior generations, the tendency of the next is towards complacency. Taking it easy is a human trait that has its own inertia when things have indeed become easy. It might seem like a circular argument but human nature is such that once so much is given out as entitlement to the needy, the need to work harder is diminished among those for whom the need to work harder is a prerequisite to achieve a higher level of economic status. Physicists as always will tell us that what goes up must come down.
People will argue over those till sunset and on to many more sunsets. Speaking of sunsets, it was at one time either a self description or a matter of pride that once "The sun never sets on the British Empire".
"The phrase was first made by Fray Francisco de Ugalde, Spanish, to King Charles 1". And indeed it was true when its colonies circumnavigated the entire globe with an estimated land area of 13.7 million square miles.
I apologize for picking on the British Empire but it is the most recent one and closest to the aforementioned 2050. But if the reader were to go back to the chart above, one cannot escape the tragic ladders of history.
Let's look at the following statement below, that described the trajectories of empires throughout history:
"There is normally a gradual period of expansion and
then a period of decline".
Indeed, empires grew slowly when a population, singly or the banding together of several smaller organizations of people, strove to achieve dominance over others as a survival strategy for protection and self preservation. In the process they led innovations in food production, political organization, weapons development, wealth management, and so on and on. However, the defining feature had always stemmed first from the development of the human character and adherence to the rules of law and common sense. Without question, civilized behavior was both the cause and effect of the growth of empires. That is the reason for the creation of the Magna Carta and the Geneva convention, even the foundation of the United Nations (at least based on original intent), as examples, became possible. It is the reason why certain beginnings of empires failed quickly - the best example being the rapid rise and precipitous fall of the Third Reich - when the path they took were off the rail of civilized behavior. For brevity this was condensed to one compact paragraph but the reader may want to examine history for more insights into this idea.
The fall of an empire always originated first from within and only later from external pressure. Empires always weakened first from the general decline of the population's will and erosion of the fundamental moral character of its society. Of course, that is putting it quite simply, perhaps even naively, but the strength of any social structure is its moral backbone. We can talk about political will but its breakdown always begin with the people.
What are we to see or observe today that makes 2050 a reasonable prediction? These same signs were true in every decline of all empires past.
1. Deep Internal Division - The country today, is deeply divided. Not just from the traditional political party split where not all of the population are always actively engaged but it is a far more serious split between conservatism and liberalism. And there are integral parts to each side. One is about conserving the ideals and belief systems of what brought this country its decisive success for over two centuries. The other half is about liberally forging and fundamentally changing the country into something else. Worse is the slow but almost penetrating allure of socialism. Nevertheless, when the country is divided, it is almost as if it loses half its strength and resolve. While the flu pandemic of 1919 united the nation, today's Covid 19 has become the source for a severe division.
2. National Debt - Every empire in history always suffered from the same debilitating, resource sapping burden of debt. To view the U.S. debt in real time, copy the link below to your search bar for a second by second increase in the national debt.
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
At this very instant while typing these few words, the national debt is almost 29 trillion dollars, $87,000 per citizen and $230,000 per tax payer. By the time the reader gets around to viewing the debt clock, you will be shocked at how far the numbers had gone up. The amount to service the debt (interest rates alone) is staggering.
Every past empire was so saddled with debt that its ability to hold on to the vastness of its glory and influence and managing its own national affairs felt no differently from a family selling its assets, little by little, until all it had left was a fraction of what it used to have. Debt erosion was the slow gradual loss of any empire, as in losing a foot of its river bank one day at a time from the rampaging rapids, or the shrinking of its shoreline from the constant battering of the gathering storm from far and wide, from the pretenders to the throne of another emerging empire. Incredulous, you say, examples please? Napoleon sold Louisiana to the then emerging USA so the French emperor can continue to fund its slowly declining empire; Spain gave up Puerto Rico and The Philippines to the U.S. after the quick but decisive Spanish American War. Two generations earlier Spain was still untouchable as a super power. How did the U.S. purchase Alaska so cheaply from Russia? Britain had to retrench from its global colonies when costs to maintain them became a huge financial burden to the empire.
3. Foreign Adventurism - For lack of a better phrase, this refers to maintaining forces in foreign soil long after the need for it in the mistaken notion that it will prevent future conflicts. The U.S. after realizing early on that it was becoming a superpower, did something right. It did not go the way previous empires did by amassing vast colonies across the globe, except perhaps but briefly in claiming the Philippine Islands as its one and only colony. Perhaps that was because of a 300 year period that the archipelago was under Spanish rule. Since granting independence to the islands after just two generations, the U.S. had never once claimed another colony. However, maintaining forces across the globe - from S. Korea to Japan to Germany and a host of many other locations around the globe - the cost is still very high without benefiting from the rewards of a colonizer. Yet, it had been engaged in regionally limited but never trivial military engagements from Korea to Vietnam to the Middle East. Costs to all of these contributed to the gradual accumulation of debt that to this day is growing and seemingly unrepayable; not counting the cost of many young American lives. The Greek and Roman empires suffered the same fate. Alexander's generals divvied up his empire into little ones while the Roman Caesars brought foreign adventurism severe aftertastes at home. The empires soon lost the political will and it was no less than politicians who ultimately ended Julius Caesar's hold on the empire with violent strikes of many daggers right on the senate floor.
4. Growing De-assimilation - The country at near the apex of its development benefited from being the melting pot of many cultures, accumulating the strength of multinational skills and talents for innovation and entrepreneurship. The assimilation of people who have come from near and far were the obvious recipes for success. Today, there is a great tear in the fabric. Multiculturalism has become the reverse of assimilation to the detriment of creating a unifying ideal that made "The United States". It has devolved into the weaponization of race as a political cudgel by those interested only in holding on to power over a divided country, buoyed unwittingly by supporters who are made to feel nobility in subscribing to the delineation of the races. There are those who suddenly feel the invigoration of waking up condemning the norms of what are otherwise benign ideas and traditional systems. The waking up to adding multiple gender identities to the traditionally accepted norm, while demanding that society abandons the notion of the traditional family units, the elimination of certain elements of language perceived to be oppressive to others became the destructive cancel culture. Revising history by eliminating or destroying certain elements and signposts of it are the quickest way to erasing lessons that can be learned. There is so much, too many to list them here, that fall under the umbrella of cancel culture and woke-ism that is more damaging to established social norms. De-assimilation is widening the division. Division only weakens the national identity.
Now, I can go on and expand the list several folds longer, i.e., "The Dumbing Down of the Educational System", "Breakdown of Law and Order", "The Deleterious Effects of Social Media", etc. But the reader gets the idea. But there is hope. Perhaps this country will heed the warning signs, reverse the course of the trajectory, even if only to flatten the curve from the ever trending downward direction.
If we do not reverse the trajectory, 2050 will be real. The ebb of a once great nation may come sooner than later.
The widely accepted laboratory of the "Great Experiment" built up by courageous men and women in 1776 is in danger of being dismantled before our very eyes. It is as if the results are being challenged by those proposing fundamental changes that, by the way, are not exactly new. Socialism has been tried many times before and failed in other laboratory nations. From the Soviet style communism - the only relic of which manages to survive, but barely, is Cuba - to many versions of it that were tried in Venezuela, Argentina and Eastern Europe decades earlier where their lessons are largely ignored. Instead, the lesson plans that made America are being shredded to pieces. The irony is that the "new textbooks" being proposed are recycled pieces of failed manuscripts from which we see nothing but failed states wherever they were tried.
If this country does not wake up to the high winds and the rumbling thunder of a gathering storm that is about to hit in the next decade or two, it will wake up in the aftermath in the first morning of 2050.
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