Fall of the empire, Those'R'US!

it is interesting that "old specialist of falling empires" believed that pacifism can actually lead to fall of the empire:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire

which quite contradicts my previous post (pacifism as better alternative to the bloody revolution).

The idea of the Gibbons was that if people in Empire gets too lazy they start to outsource army positions to other people who are not as loyal to the empire as "original people of the Empire" would be. This would then lead to fall/disintegration of the empire.

I dont know.. As we all know what happened in India -- it was pacifistic way to "not to work for bad government". And they got their freedom. Interesting thing is that some indians served in british military.

In usa's military, you dont have foreign people (they have to have at least us passport, no need to live in usa in order to serve in us military). But they actually lacks soldiers, its getting harder and harder to recruit them. Now they are loosening the criterias so that ex-criminals can join the ranks or something like that. THere are so many people who wants to have US citizenship in 3rd world countries. Next conclusion what neo-conservative americans "invent" is: "hey, i awesome idea! let's hire some foreigners to battle for us and to do our warrings!"

I dont know when, but maybe they soon establish mercenary army (im not talking about iraqiis!). France has had this so many years, but I dont know was that good idea at all? Kant once said that mercenaries are bad because if you use them for bad purposes (e.g. economical, for stealing oil etc.) your OWN people do not resist because it is not blood of your own people what you spill. Therefore it gets easier to start wars etc.

other symptoms of disintegration listed by Gibbons (freely interpreted here):
* family as an institution gets weaker
* personal pleasure becomes more important than duty to serve for country / or higher ideals (like religions)
* diversions/distractions made by governments, like sports, (so that people do not think about the problems and start rioting or something..) for which more money is needed, and this leads to -->
* ever-raising higher taxes... because gov spending goes up all a time

hmmm.. oops these are all happening in all western countries!!
(expect in russia oil instead of high taxes actually can finance the government for sometime, but it will not finance it forever!)

my source for this was a little strange and may lack credibility (but it sounds quite right for me):
http://threeworldwars.com/world-war-3/ww3-51.htm, if someone wants to correct me please do so

As you can see from the title of this message, we might to witness not just fall of US..

ummm...

What about China??

Did you notice that there is some recession threat coming on?

All started this week from the US where these mortgage loans turned bad and so on. It turned out (bloomberg.com is good and credible source for this) that these are linked to other financial instruments and may even start world-wide recession.

Is this start of the end of the US dollar currency? Do this lead to end of the US hegemony?

There has been some talks about some oil countries might start selling oil in euros or in another currencies, shifting away from dollar. This would hurt dollar even more. When Iraq shifted from dollar to euro, the US started war. What will happend now??

If a bunch of fools run the country they will ruin it no matter whether they are pacifists or dogs of war. The EU is ruled by bureaucratic leftist mafia with one the only is goal to extend their competences to all possible areas. Such union must and will collapse and this is only question of time. Funny how they adopted Lisbon strategy to reach US economy and after few years they are even more behind

Other myth is that Americans are dogs of war and such France pacifist. France, third weapon exporter in the world, would likely to abandon embargo on China, sells weapons to every banana-republic. Recently used cheap excuse to got deal with Libya which freed instead unjustly imprisoned Bulgarian nurses. Pacifist hypocrisy.

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Funny thing about history is that we know HOW and we only suspect WHY, one is sure if Rome Empire didn;t loose battles it would maybe exist. Why they loose battles is another question. It very logic to me but im not historian,
US Empire is diffrent there were no developed enemys when this country was growing up, lot of space, few people. Graet condtitions for young country, they were also quite far away from England to get independence. Rome Empire was grownig by figting, USA not. And a lot of people live in this country becouse of their will not fact of born in this place. So it should be strong inferior. Not like USSR where nations were made to exist together in one allince.
USA will fall when be some outside forces and weak country, or some balance will be broken inside and one fraction dominate others but US had it yet - North & South war. It created US like red &white war in Russia created USSR.
USA don"T have to conquer, people themselves want to live there it is diffrent from other empires.

International Hate wrote:

What's wrong with that? China can be seen as a military threat, Libya can't, even if they has some French-made missiles. Weapons trade is a serious business and if Libya has the €€€, why not to sell?

Qaddafi has history of financing terrorist organizations. Another case is how the French armed Hutu tribe in Rwanda. We both know what was the outcome of this deal...

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France has no friends, but interests (Like every big power, maybe excluding the USA - Israel connection).

If only they would stick to this rule but this hypocritical dislike of American foreign policy represented by Chirac was really ugly. Still I think that developed countries should not sell weapons to every possible country and I'm economical liberal.

PS: Unfortunetly politicians from our region have a lot of "friends". Square idiots !

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The EU is ruled by bureaucratic leftist mafia with one the only is goal to extend their competences to all possible areas. Such union must and will collapse and this is only question of time.

You really mean it or it's just a myth?
Lefti-wing mafia? Ah c'mon You...You...Euro-sceptist! Yeah, You heard me!
That's kinda crap, Mafia is totally diffrent, that thingy got a democratic parliament, mafia makes illegal buisness, unlike EU. Leftie? Naah. There are also righties, what's wrong with lefties anyway? Not all of them are bad, just like with righties.

towito wrote:

US Empire is diffrent there were no developed enemys when this country was growing up, lot of space, few people. Graet condtitions for young country, they were also quite far away from England to get independence. Rome Empire was grownig by figting, USA not. And a lot of people live in this country becouse of their will not fact of born in this place. So it should be strong inferior. Not like USSR where nations were made to exist together in one allince.

Yes it was, the American civil war, the known today america, was formed by the "Union" wich was fighting againts the Confederation wich was mainly against banning slavery. USA also fought with Mexico for territorry, it was victorious. Thanks to that America annexed Texas and other states for good.

PS: The term ''US Empire'' is really not fitting, the official name is the United States of America, that country doesn't have any sort of monarchy, and a person wich we call, emperor.

Both fall of USA and EU is very far from beign a fact, we'll probably won't live up to it, if it'll ever fall that is.

Ciizens of USA consider themselves as members of Imperium.
Some of them consider themselves as successors of Imperium Romanum Partly it's true becouse of italian immigrations. For example Salvatore Maranzano american - italian gangster was little crazy about Julis Caesar.

It not accident that in 60's (XX century) hollywood was so interested in making films about ancient Rome.It was social demand for cuch productions.

For polish readers only:(
http://www.dziennikarze-wedrowni.org/archiwum/2004/listopad/imperium.htm

«Trayus» wrote:

You really mean it or it's just a myth?
Lefti-wing mafia? Ah c'mon You...You...Euro-sceptist! Yeah, You heard me!

We need to define what euro-skeptic really means. If somebody who support common trade zone and free market in European countries, free travel zone, cooperation in NATO and have positive attitude towards people in this region can really be called euro-skeptic? Or this is just demagogy?

What is the EU anyway? The soul of true citizen of European country? The enlightened body that one cannot disagree with without being pointed out with some negative association?

So I'm EU-skeptic who has many arguments to back this position.

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That's kinda crap, Mafia is totally diffrent, that thingy got a democratic parliament, mafia makes illegal buisness, unlike EU. Leftie? Naah. There are also righties, what's wrong with lefties anyway? Not all of them are bad, just like with righties.

You ask what is wrong with the left. Generally all leftist cannot imagine the state without tones of regulations and central planing, this is called bureaucracy. What do you think this EU-integration is all about? They want to take over more and more competences of local bureaucratic mafias, step by step. For me this is easier to fight against Polish bureaucracy than all-European one! The goal would be theoretically the same but opponent much more powerful. To convince Polish society to some ideas would be not enough, you would need to convince most of people in Europe! This is impossible if you don't control mass media in those countries. Centralization sucked in Soviet Union before and suck in the EU now.

By the way in Poland only UPR is truly rightist, PO wants to be considered as such but they are liars. The rest is openly leftist, the only difference between them is that some are religious and some Godless, some steal more (SLD, SO) and some less (PiS, LPR).

This elected Euro-parliamnet have little competences so far. EU commissioners have some real power and they are simply unelected bureaucrats.

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Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

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Thomas Homer-Dixon interpreted the development of the Roman Empire in terms of thermodynamics

[url href=http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2381]http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2381
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and how about RUS? is there any difference, really?

(how you make links here??? :O )

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(how you make links here??? :O )

I copy web address and then put it into post.

For this ones who cannot sleep

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Empire#Cultural_imperialism