dadpad wrote:I'm no historian thats for sure but it seems to me several hundred years could elapse.
This is a good point. Varus (or Varo) was destroyed in the Teutoburger Forest circa 9 CE, with three full legions, and it was considered an unprecedent disaster in that "golden age" of Caesar Augustus. Nevertheless, the empire itself survived for almost 1500 more years (Constantinople did not fall to the Turks until 1453), and the empire reached its greatest extent under Septimius Severus, almost 200 years after the disaster in Germany. The Goths sacked Rome in 410 CE, but by then Rome was no longer even the administrative capital of the western portion of the empire, that having been moved to Ravena, which was safe behind a network of naturally occurring salt water marshes.
It took the Roman Empire a thousand years to shrink into political insignificance after the destruction of Varus and his legions proved to the ancient world that Rome was not invincible. The Chinese Empire (a true empire, as founded at the end of the third century BCE) shrank and grew, and endured collapse and fragmentation at the end of the second century CE, and was overrun (very, very slowly) by the Mongols who established the Yuan dynasty. But that foreign dynasty did not survive even a century, and the Ming toppled it and established yet another dynasty which survived for centuries. When the imperial system finally collapsed, the proximate cause was more internal corruption that external forces, although certainly the pressure of western nations accelerated the collapse of a system rotten to the core. Given that the current nation of China is nothing less than the Chinese empire was at its greatest extent (excepting the Yuan/Mongol dynasty), it is hard to see that as any evidence that the collapse of imperial authority meant anything ultimately significant to China as a nation.
The United States is not an imperial power by intent, but rather as a result of the growth of executive power at the expense of Congress. It is doubtful that in terms of being a military "superpower," any American need worry that the power of the United States is collapsing. What is far more likely is that China will eventually eclipse the United States as a military superpower. But as Japan learned, wars can be won without weapons. Japan became much more of a power in the world having lost the Pacific War, but thereafter becoming an economic powerhouse. The United States remains "viable" as a "superpower" because it continues to be the world's largest consumer economy. China will probably, sooner or later, overtake the United States in that regard, and like the Japanese, will likely take to heart the lesson that economic power is more important and effective than military power.
Quote:I read somewhere that the demise of all the great empires was proceeded by a hedonistic lifesyle and huge increases in the volume of rubbish being thrown away.
Seems to me to describe the US currently.
A favorite theme in many times and in many places, it is, not to offer any personal insult, bullshit. It is predicated upon an assumption that the nations so referred to were "pure" and virtuous at their founding, and degenerated thereafter. History does not support such a contention.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace