Collapse of the American Empire: swift, silent, certain

March 9, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST ·

Collapse of the American Empire: swift, silent, certain
Commentary: Historians warning of a sudden 'thief at night,' an 'accelerating car crash'

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- "One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse," warns anthropologist Jared Diamond in "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

Now, Harvard's Niall Ferguson, one of the world's leading financial historians, echoes Diamond's warning: "Imperial collapse may come much more suddenly than many historians imagine. A combination of fiscal deficits and military overstretch suggests that the United States may be the next empire on the precipice." Yes, America is on the edge.

Dismiss his warning at your peril. Everything you learned, everything you believe and everything driving our political leaders is based on a misleading, outdated theory of history. The American Empire is at the edge of a dangerous precipice, at risk of a sudden, rapid collapse.

Ferguson is brilliant, prolific and contrarian. His works include the recent "Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World;" "The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World;" "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of The American Empire;" and "The War of the World," a survey of the "savagery of the 20th century" where he highlights a profound "paradox that, though the 20th century was 'so bloody,' it was also 'a time of unparalleled progress.'"

Why? Throughout history imperial leaders inevitably emerge and drive their nations into wars for greater glory and "economic progress," while inevitably leading their nation into collapse. And that happens suddenly and swiftly, within "a decade or two." ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-rise-and-certain-f...

should any empire be "improved" into better empire? Empires are evil.

. . . and if we refuse to take that chance, even if it's a tiny chance, then our surviving children can point at us as having blown it.

...Hear, hear is an expression used as a short repeated form of hear him, hear him. It represents a listener's agreement with the point being made by a speaker.
It was originally an imperative for directing attention to speakers, and has since been used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as "the regular form of cheering in the House of Commons", with many purposes depending on the intonation of its user.<1> Its use in Parliament is linked to the fact that applause is normally (though not always) forbidden in the chambers of the House of Commons and House of Lords.<2>

It is often incorrectly spelled "here here", especially on websites<3> and IM.<4>

The phrase hear him, hear him! was used in Parliament since the late 1600s, and had been reduced to hear! or hear, hear! by the late 1700s. The verb hear had earlier been used in the King James Bible as a command for others to listen.<1>
Other phrases have been derived from hear, hear, such as a hear, hear (a cheer), to hear-hear (to shout the expression), and hear-hearer (a person who does the same).<1>

...I was half-asleep, drinking coffee and surfing the Net, and I wrote 'hear, hear', when I meant to write 'here, here'. I was getting ready to change it, when it occurred to me that I really didn't know the usage, so I looked it up... so, in essence, the 'third mind' wrote it correctly the first time. I probably should have gotten out the Ouija board and did some more experimentation, but I was running late for work by then. What's embarrassing is when I recall how many times I've written 'here, here' when in agreement with a good post... many times...arrgghh.

If they're cynics; does that alone invalidate their message?

We coulda woulda shoulda be PROACTIVE....IMHO

If we can fuck up a Perfectly Bountiful Planet we can UnFuck it as well...

By procastinating...we make it more diff to solve without Draconian Measures

I definitely think the US Empire is on the verge of collapse. But, having listened to Ferurson try to analyze our current economic problems and get just about all of it wrong, I don't trust his economic judgement. His points were refuted one by one by Krugman, and Ferguson, unable to respond to Krugman, tried claiming that they were actually saying the same thing. No, they weren't. Krugman was completely disagreeing with Ferguson.

but hard to disagree that our growing debt, endless wars (and job-shoring) can lead us anywhere good.

Greed Greed Greed - we are surrounded by greed. We are no longer satisfied by working for fortunes - we want them instantly - not unlike all other instant-gratification.

wow - I am depressing myself this morning.

But I agree with him - perhaps the best investment we can make at this point is a farm in the mountains.

full of generalities. All empires collapse? really? That's it?

And all species eventually go extinct. That's it.
All stars go out. That's it, too.
But how much more there is to it, than just that.

More Fear Mongering.

The collapse of an empire does not have to mean the collapse of the country too. It's just the end of its power over a large area.

The American 'empire' is already different from previous empires - there's basically no formal control, but there's large financial influence, and the threat of a powerful military that may be used to back up the financial desires of an American government. So the end of the American empire won't be as obvious as with other empires - commercial influence declines, and is messy anyway. At some point, the sabre-rattling of some future American government will be ignored or opposed by others - there will be no 'coalition of the willing', and countries may call the American bluff, or organise boycotts of the US because of the military stance. And the American people will at some point decide the huge military spending isn't worth it, and politicians who want to shrink the US military will be able to do so without fearing loss of power by being called 'unpatriotic'.

But this doesn't mean that the US itself will collapse. It will lose 'sole superpower' status, and become one of several big countries or unions (eg the EU) jockeying for position in world trade and politics. After all, the British Empire 'collapsed', but this didn't mean any sudden change in the UK itself. All the talk of "buy a farm and retreat to it" is speculative nonsense.

an element that is largely being ignored in this discussion: the environmental overreach that often is the driver of imperialism in the first place. That is, once a country either depletes its natural resources or uses them at such a rate that the lifestyle for its population cannot be sustained, one of the common responses is to find a way to take the resources of another country. There are other options, such as reducing consumption or reforming the economy so that the country cam get its needs met through trade. Historically, though, the seeds of empires as well as the seeds of collapse, the latter of which Jared Diamond has noted, can be found in the over taxing the evnironmental resources of the nation.

When the empire does collapse, the nation at the center of it will have to become self-sustaining based on its own resources. That will be a big adjustment, especially given our dependence on oil for transportation, energy, and agriculure. In the case of the UK, it maintained an industrial base and met much of its own energy needs even as the empire was being dismantled. Our factories have largely been largely moved overseas. Therefore, we are really looking at rebuilding a sustainable economy from the ground up. In the context, having a farm doesn't sound like nonsense to me.

But thats not the main point. As was pointed out in 'Topsoil and Civilization' and elsewhere, civilizations are beasts based on destroying their local ecological carrying capacity through unsustainable methods of production which leads to empires, ie. robbing from others the resources that cannot be anymore produced locally. Empires are of course unsustainable and fail without exception. US-UK is not exception.

US is based on oil - agriculture and everything that it now needs to import more than it produces, and can only import with biggest military machine ever. Small minority consumes 25% of all resources on Earth. Global oil production has allready peaked or is peaking. US has allready lost control of South America.

Cuba survived with adopting organic gardening, learning permaculture. So did and does Russia.

and it's been downhill like a rock ever since.

Tore right through the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Habeus Corpus, tax codes, rule of law--like a bunch of paper hoops.

And there's not a politician among us willing and able to stop it. Those that are willing, aren't able--those that are able couldn't care less.

We've already lost our country. The Empire is more a Corporate phenomenon than a national one--and while the US still goes to war for profits, those profits don't feed the US, so the decline is progressive. The day we don't go to war for Exxon and GM and Monsanto is the day the empire ceases to exist. May that day come soon!

Then we have a hope of rebuilding the country.

Any empire bristling with weapons advantage, will not collapse silently. They will find excuse for conquest. Our nation will not have a Gorby to appear as traitor. Noone to just let it slide. WE will attempt to rule by spear. This has been made clear by Obama's clear message to the Pentagon. He told them to expect expansion. Add to that the PNAC statement, and you have fascism. Add to this the BNP movement in Europe, the rabid rights oath to become ever more harsh. There is only one way this will go. WAR. And it will heat up quick. And far from most people heres expectation, we may be the bad guys. With coordinated repulsion by our former friends.

one would have to say this has about already started.

The map shows potential new trade routes opening up to China due to climate change, btw, nothing warlike about that, and the perspective is interesting in this equal-area, I believe, cartographic projection. No, when one contemplates US military deployments and basing, from Diego Garcia on down in that region, the aggresive posturing appears to all come from one side.

And Venezuela, of course, is just waiting for it.

... Mal asunto compañeros.

- edit to add the map:

Most people are unaware that the American empire is on the verge of collapse, being tuned into mindless TV and listening to iPods. But it is stealthy creeping up on us, and when the financial global Ponzi will implodes, it will be swift. And Americans will not be silent after that.

or rediscover individual/national humility and sustainability, pride and greed must be denounced for what they are as opposed to being exalted national virtues.

There is no us vs them, just we and we must break the mold or humanity will never know peace; without resting in it.

I also believe nations with the greatest power have the greatest ability and responsibility to improve the human condition, once the power is gone so is the prime opportunity.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

The only one that comes close, I believe, is Great Britain. It's a borderline case of collapse due to imperial overreach and loss of financial and economic dominance due to overstretch and the costs of World War One and Two. The United States pretty much ate its lunch, but also cushioned the fall of the British Empire through wartime alliance, reconstruction funds, and favorable terms of trade.

There are those who hope that China will similarly hand America a pillow on the way down. We'll see about that.

Farrell relies far too heavily on Ferguson in this article -- a writer whose ventures outside of the narrow realm of economic history come off as highly polemic and questionable in his assumptions. Also, I'd remind everyone that Jared Diamond is not an anthropologist, he is a biologist. This doesn't diminish his work in Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel, both of which I found to be quite engaging -- but rather places them in the proper perspective considering the author's academic training and background.

A much better source that Farrell could have cited was Joseph Tainter's The Collapse of Complex Societies -- a dense, scholarly and quite cogent work that explored why past civilizations (specifically Roman, Mayan and Chacoan) eventually collapsed, within a time frame of mere decades in the last two cases. Basically, civilizations eventually become captives of increasing complexity that initially provides high marginal returns. As time goes on and the "lower-hanging fruit" of more complex organization is exhausted, those marginal returns become less and less. Societies are compelled to invest more and more on increasing complexity that gives diminishing marginal returns, until the point is reached at which more complexity is no longer an attractive option for the majority of the populace because they could receive the same benefit from a decidedly less complex society.

Rome provides the best-known example of this phenomenon. The expansion of the Roman republic was largely a response to increasing political conflict between plebians and patricians at home. Conquest paid for itself and then some through the plunder brought back to Rome, while the conquered provinces provided a political safety valve by making land available to the plebians. However, the administration of these new lands required more complex institutions, which were a greater expense. Concurrently, Rome turned its conquest to lands further and further from the center. In both of these instances, Rome experienced diminishing returns on its investment in conquest. Then, when the republic became the empire and the borders became mostly fixed, the administration of the provinces had to come not from the plunder of conquest but from its agricultural production. Legitimization of the governing structures became increasingly coercive as well, especially during the reign of Diocletian in the late 3rd - early 4th century AD. By the time of the barbarian incursions of the 5th century AD, many citizens of the Roman provinces actually welcomed the barbarians because they freed them from the burdens of empire while still providing them with protection at a much lesser cost.

The main thrust of Tainter's analysis is twofold. First, complexity as an atypical state of humanity, as civilization has existed for only the past 7000 years or so -- and has proven to be strikingly unstable judging by the number of them that have risen and fallen. Second, "collapse" is actually an economizing response to the diminishing returns (or losses) induced by ever-increasing complexity, rejecting that complexity in favor of a much simpler solution that can provide a greater sense of stability.

However, in light of Tainter's work the example of the British Empire "choosing" to diminish is a false one. In a world in which complex societies are the rule rather than the exception such as ours, a move by any society to move to a less complex state only results in others' expansion -- or the absorption of that state by another that does not move toward a higher degree of complexity. In this sense, it is no accident that as the British empire declined the ascendant American empire assumed its "responsibilities." The only way that the current world can "collapse" according to Tainter is for the entire thing to collapse at once, for all societies to concurrently reach the state at which increasing complexity is no longer possible due to greatly diminished returns or, more likely, losses on further investment in the status quo.

I think "disintegration" is a better word than "collapse" for these things, and that is what I expect to happen now, over some period of decades, globally, a return to "localization" instead of "globalization". Certainly what happened to Rome was more like disintegration than collapse, everybody just lost interest and the imperial authority was incompetent to enforce their will, so the Barbarians just walked in and took over. They decided they wanted to be Romans too.

I'm sort of wondering if that is going to happen here in the USA. It's pretty clear that the current governing structures are illegitimate and incompetent, and I meet very few people these days that have any real allegiance to either local or national government.

Part of the problem, in my view, is that the marginal benefits of expansion are rather minimal in the modern world. The 20th century was very unkind to empires, the "low hanging fruit" has all been used up, adventuring is very expensive.

The expansions and absorbsion element is more akin to the Paul Kennedy's theme of relative economic power in the the Decline and Fall of Great Powers than a decline or collapse due to diminishing marginal returns on complexity.

(interestingly enough, Tainter looks at the American educational system to illustrate the latter principle- where it's costing the nation as a whole and states and local districts as subsets a LOT more money to acheive the same or declining results and even more for high academic acheivement that results in fewer and more incremental gains.

We can see that one playing out.

Where Tainter's principle is really going to come into play is with declining energy and resource stocks, which he addresses to some extent in a subsequent (and equally compelling) work, Supply Side Sustainability.

Tainter's ideas surrounding expansion and absorption are his caveat on why collapse is unlikely in an interconnected, modern world. Basically, he wrote that in our modern world, almost ALL societies (with the exception of the few h/g holdouts in marginal lands) are locked in an upward spiral of complexity. I'm not familiar with Paul Kennedy's work, but it doesn't sound all too different (at least superficially) from the way that the decline of the Dutch and British empires were portrayed by Kevin Phillips in Wealth and Democracy.

Also, thanks for the rec on Tainter's follow up -- I'll have to check it out. Of course, the converging realities of "peak everything" certainly bolster Tainter's ideas surrounding collapse.

you had to do is see how it is effecting the working poor first in this country. Republicans like Reagan took over and you stopped seeing low income housing, jobs for the working poor and removing saftey nets. Why now you hear republicans saying not to give unemployment checks because people who collect them want to stay unemployeed. This country lost it moral compass when republicans started winning and stealing elections. The sad thing is people where I live (TN) will keep voting for these losers without realizing they are nailing their own coffins because they are afraid to move into the 21 century.

was the peak of American Empire - we're already running on borrowed time in some scenarios.

If you look at social factors related to great empires - the catalyst to many revolutions (France, Russia) was major political transformations (i.e., transitions of power between members of ruling families or elites) and the inabilities of the new ruling elites to meet the masses' rising expectations which were fostered by the promises of the new elites.

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only because our farmers use massive quantities of fertilizers -- soil enhancers -- to grow ever greater crop yields. The production of fertilizers could become a very expensive process. If that happens, food prices will make buying three meals a day a problem for the large number of our citizens.

I'm oversimplifying and drawing broad conclusions. My statement is inaccurate in its detail, but just watch, basically it's a dwindling food supply that will present our biggest problem.

Buying a small property in the mountains and sustaining yourself and your family on the land sounds easy. But not all land is fertile enough to produce much. That's especially true in mountainous areas. Think about the long winters in those regions -- short growing seasons. Growing your own food sounds so easy, but it really isn't.

In the end, we have to control our imperial ambitions and learn to reach out and help each other. The Fox News crowd is headed in the wrong direction. They are like animals caught in a trap, wriggling to resist their constraints, not realizing that the more they struggle, the more they limit themselves.

Community as opposed to division -- that is the answer. We Americans are resourceful. As we did in the 1930s, we will discover the value of community -- not subservience to some central authority -- but pulling together. Those of us who are strong will begin to lend a hand to the weaker. That is how families and societies thrive -- working together toward common goals. We can rediscover those social skills. It is an important part of our heritage.

who lives in Northern Finland self-sustainably, without money. To satisfy his material needs he needs to work 4 hours per day, gardening and gathering.

Nature is full of edibles that we can learn to recognize and use. We have exceptional talent for sustainable gardening - with no upper limit of production per land area. Also in cities. Singapore produces 90% of its food in the city. We have the skills, we just need to share them and learn them widely enough so that everybody can sustain him/herself.

Self-sustainable community means liberty. That is why the oppressors who need others to provide for them hate it and fear it.

...why? Diamond is no prophet. Guns Germs and Steel was pretty good, but he's slipping into advocacy.