Globally Rational

If you do a Google search for “rise and fall of the empire”, you’ll get lots of results about the British and Roman empires, and maybe about the Third Reich. You might also see something about the great post-medieval empires, such as those of Spain, France, Portugal, the Ottomans, and the Mughals. There’s a possibility that you’ll read about the great powers of ancient Egypt or Babylon. You may even see something about Japan during World War II.

I predict that in 80 years, somebody will write a book called “The Rise and Fall of the American Empire.” As we stand at the pinnacle of international American influence, we are nearly oblivious to the fact that we are clearly following the same pattern that so many empires did in the past. Ever since we extended our influence to the California in the Mexican War, the empire has been steadily growing and, I believe, reached its peak soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just think about it:

1836: US-born settlers in Texas revolt for independence from Mexico; soon, they joined the US.
1848: We take California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada from Mexico in a war that was supposedly fought to help Texas keep their independence.
1894: We depose the independent ruler of Hawaii and take control of the state.
1898: In a war that was claimed to be for the purpose of helping Cuba gain independence from Spain, we somehow end up getting Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines. This was followed by the little-known Philippine-American war, where we killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos because we didn’t want to give them independence.
1900: The US claims what is now known as American Samoa.
1903: US warships deployed to help Panama separate from Colombia (so that we could take control of the planned Panama Canal Zone).
1917: The US purchases the Virgin Islands from Denmark (of course, they didn’t ask the locals for their opinion).
Various times in the 1910’s - 1950’s: US occupies Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.
1945: We occupy Japan, West Germany, and many other territories after World War II. We finally let go of the Philippines.
1948: We create Israel with no regard to what will happen to the people (Palestinians) who were already living there.
After 1945: The Pax Americana, a short period of peace (caused by the Cold War) analagous to Rome’s Pax Romana and Britain’s Pax Britannica. I’m not sure how this theory accounts for Korea and Vietnam.

After World War II, the line between “war” and “not war” has become vague. Since then, we have established spheres of influence (via war) in South Korea, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and other countries. We have also failed to establish such areas in Vietnam and Afghanistan. For a large portion of the Cold War, the world was split into the “American Bloc”, the “Soviet Bloc”, and the “Third World”.

That was the rise. The fall started slowly when we lost control of Cuba, then the Philippines (although that turned out alright), the North Korea, then Vietnam, then Afghanistan… and now we’re in a pointless campaign in Iraq. Our biggest trading partner (China) refuses to acknowledge the independence of Tibet and Taiwan. We have troops all over the world in places that don’t want our troops. We act like a corrupt international police force, choosing to participate in the most lucrative areas and ignoring the most dangerous areas (i.e. North Korea). We keep stretching… and any good chess player knows what happens when you overextend.

If you overextend in chess, you create weaknesses, as the British and the Romans did, that your opponent will eventually exploit. We have slowly let go of various parts of our empire (Cuba, the Philippines, the Panama Canal Zone, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau) as we attempt to reach out to other parts of the world. We are starting to realize that we overextended in Iraq, but we are still seriously contemplating an invasion of Iran. Meanwhile, there are still state-supported terrorist groups that hate us in North Korea. As we take control of the world, we are simultaneously isolating ourselves from the globalizing economy because we are trying to balance our imports and exports. We refuse to accept that the only way to decrease our reliance on imports is to eliminate the income gap that causes imported products to be so much cheaper than American products.

The British did the same thing. The Romans did it slower and the Third Reich did it faster. The Mongols were more aggressive and the Spanish were more innovative. But they all followed the same trend:

1. Imperialism starts; country reaches out to the world.
2. Country becomes a world power.
3. Country gets arrogant and starts to flex its muscles.
4. Country bites off more than it can chew… soon, it is forced to withdraw from its international outposts.

Spain and Britain survived the crash, but lost their power. The leaders of the Mughals and the Third Reich, on the other hand, ended up being executed or committing suicide as their empires fell. We are following the same trends… if we don’t avoid this overextension, we’ll suffer a similar fate.

How do we fix it? Like the answer to everything on this blog: awareness and education. It would be nice if the average American knew the difference between Lebanon and Syria.

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