The Fate of Empires

I was reminded of an old magazine article after reading what others have written on this topic – in this case the current political troubles besetting the USA (see 'Rolling Stone' – August 6, 2020)  

 

I kept a copy of (the now defunct) Blackwood’s Magazine, dated December 1976, because of a very interesting essay entitled “The Fate of Empires” by Lieutenant-General, Sir John Bagot Glubb, (1897 – 1986) also possibly better known as Glubb Pasha. Glubb was a highly decorated, distinguished British military man who had a long association with the Arab world.

 

This essay traces various, mainly European and Middle Eastern empires, from ancient Assyria (858-612 BCE) through to the British Empire which he dates 1700 -1950. Glubb admits to knowing nothing about the South American, Chinese, Indian or other Asian empires, so they are not mentioned in this essay. 

 

The American “empire” he barely mentions but he does suggest that this was an “internal empire” – taking over the North American continent, with all its riches, from the indigenous peoples, began after the war in 1812, with the Westward Expansion. It really started in earnest, however, in 1845 with the idea of a Manifest Destiny - “from Sea to Shining Sea” – so there was no real need to look elsewhere. 

 

With slight variations the general “age” of these empires was about 250 years and they all follow a similar pattern. While I might not agree with all his ideas – he was writing from a very British viewpoint some 45 years ago – generally what he wrote then is an accurate time line relating to the various stages of an empires rise and fall.

 

Ten generations – 250 years - is a pretty standard life-time of an empire. In summary, Glubb suggests the following as an approximate flow of events relating to any empire’s eventual fate:- 

 

1.     The Age of Pioneers (the outburst).

2.     The Age of Conquests.

3.     The Age of Commerce.

4.     The Age of Affluence.

5.     The Age of Intellect.

6.     The Age of Decadence.

This age, Decadence, in Glubb’s opinion, is marked by:

a.     Defensiveness

b.     Pessimism

c.     Materialism

d.     Frivolity

e.     An influx of foreigners

f.      The Welfare State

g.     A weakening of religion

h.     Too long a period of wealth and power

i.      Selfishness and civil disobedience 

j.      Love of money

k.     Loss of a sense of duty.

 

Generally though Empires fall largely as a result of external causes.

 

My point in quoting from this essay is to highlight the fact that, quite possibly, America (the USA) is now quite far down the path of decadence (refer Rolling Stone article). Also depending on when one considers America to have begun it’s empire 1812 or 1848 – it is quite far either into or approaching its second century. 

 

So what is next? Which country will rise to form the next Empire? I am no soothsayer so I will not make any predictions on the future of the USA or any other country. 

 

I’m not game enough!!

Now it is Assad for Syria – what if …?

Recent reports in the media indicate that analysts now consider the best option for Syria (and for stability in the Middle East) is if Assad regains control of Syria. Well now – isn’t that good news!

Ooops! Sorry we made a mistake!

I have said before (as my one loyal reader has pointed out) the Syrians are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. As I also pointed out it is very poor policy to try and pick winners when it comes to any country’s governance, but particularly in the Middle East. And then what about the one hundred thousand (and counting) Syrian casualties later?

For the sake of humanity and in the name of whatever you consider God to be, leave Syria to the Syrians and back off!

And now there is Afghanistan. The Afghanis are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. They have fought off invaders ranging from Alexander the Great to Genghis Khan to the more recent Soviet invasion and prevailed. Once more – trying to pick winners in this area of the world is an impossible, and pointless task.

In their recent history the Afghanis have lost many uncounted thousands of civilian casualties to the Taliban, the Soviets and NATO (read USA) actions. More importantly are the people any better off with NATO interference? 

The Afghanis are capable of sorting themselves out, one way or another. Just leave them alone. Back off!

Will this be another “Ooops” moment? You bet.

Now, just for a moment let us speculate. What would have happened if former President G W Bush and his cronies had come to a similar conclusion about Iraq? Maybe, just maybe, Iraq (and stability in the Middle East) would have been better off under Saddam Hussein. As afore mentioned, it is very poor policy to try and pick winners when it comes to any country’s governance, but particularly in the Middle East. And particularly for the five hundred thousand plus (and counting) Iraqi (and US and allied) casualties later.

Just like the Syrians and Afghanis, the Iraqis are an intelligent people with a very long, if rather turbulent, history going back millennia. Mesopotamia – the Land between the Two Rivers – was the cradle of civilization and extends at least as far back as recorded history, to about 3000 BC (remember the Babylonians?).

Ooops! Sorry we made a mistake! But was the mistake about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or was the mistake about invading Iraq in the first place?

Or maybe both? Why can’t we (that is the USA and the West) just leave well alone and back off?

Why Fundamentalism holds people back.

Any individual, group, society or culture that claims to be the sole protector of the “truth”, be that truth Scientific, Statistical, Christian, Muslim, Communist or whatever – holds a fundamentalist view. In fact anyone with a fixed belief, is Fundamentalist. Fundamentalism constrains human innovation; fundamentalists want to revert to what the purveyors of the ideology consider a “cleaner’ more “pure” past. Or in the case of science (and my pet aversion, statistics) if it can’t be “proved” it doesn’t exist, it can’t work or else it is a figment of someone’s overactive imagination.

Fundamentalist either forget or ignore the human spirit, which cannot be constrained. The human spirit (however defined) needs to be free to seek, to strive and to find, in its own way - and not everyone is the same or wants the same things. Anyone who tries to hold back the human spirit, or attempts to direct it into one particular path is doomed to ultimate failure. To prove this point just take a look at what is happening in the Middle East and the hundreds of thousands demonstrating against the practices of financial institutions in American cities and it other cities around the world.

The possible exception here, to returning to the past, is the Scientific Fundamentalist who believes totally in the power and purity of scientific exposition and innovation – and there have been some wonderful inventions and discoveries. But the Scientific True Believer, in whatever field of science, has an absolute conviction that scientific “knowledge” is the basis for everything including Life itself. This scientific evidence, it is often claimed, can be proved statistically; that Statistical “facts” trump all else; that scientific concepts which are supported by statistical “proof” must therefore be true, and anyone who does not see this or who voices any opposition, is worthy of nothing but contempt.

Just recall the years of ridicule and isolation suffered by two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry Marshall who in 1982 discovered that the main cause of stomach ulcers is the bacteria Heliobacter pylori. In their original paper, Warren and Marshall contended that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization with this bacterium, not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed before. They did not conform to current scientific thinking and were pilloried for their stand. Had they been scientific fundamentalist they would never have made this discovery and those suffering from stomach ulcers and medicine would have been the poorer. Stomach ulcers are now cured with a short course of antibiotics.

When the subject turns to Religious (or Political) Fundamentalism we delve into murky waters indeed. To my way of thinking religious or political fundamentalism (often considered one and the same when there is no division between “Church” and State) also holds back innovation by demanding (often on pain of death) that all people believe that they (the Leaders) alone know what is best for them – the populace – and that they (the fundamentalist leaders) are following God’s will. And generally fundamentalists of this ilk try to reduce the role of women to virtual slavery and to being totally dependent on the males in the family. Again, look at the Christian fundamentalists in America, the Jewish fundamentalists in Israel and the Islamic fundamentalists in many Muslim countries, particularly Iran and Saudi Arabia and then of course there is the basket case of North Korea.

I may be wrong (the favoured expression always used by someone who believes they are right!!), but by restricting education to learning the Koran and Sharia Law, or applying a strict interpretation of the Torah or the Bible, and by not educating women, these fundamentalists are holding back their citizens.

One needs to ask how fundamentalism, in any form, adds to the material or spiritual well-being of Mankind?

Consequences.

There are always consequences for anything we do. These consequences cannot be avoided or limited in any way – each one of us feels the effect of these, both negative and positive, on a daily basis. We do ‘good’ things and good things happen; we do ‘bad’ things and bad things happen.

The thing is that we can never, or at best very seldom, tie any specific action or behaviour or sequences of actions or behaviours, to any particular consequence or sequence of consequences. There are some obvious ones certainly – aim a gun at someone and pull the trigger and there is a very good likelihood of injuring or killing them; spend more money than you earn and you end up in debt. These are brutal, up front, in your face type consequences. What I am talking about are the subtle ones that are not immediately obvious; the ones that may take years to work their way through the ‘system’ as it were.

Take two current problems the World is facing at the moment, which are consequences of activities, actions, behaviours and thought patterns that go back many years – generations in fact. The first one is ‘climate change’ and the second is the Middle East (Israel, Gaza, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan).

Now whatever you think about the science behind the various claims and counter claims supporting or denying Man’s involvement in this debate one fact (to me) is obvious. We CANNOT continue to despoil, pillage and exploit the resources of the world as we are doing at the present moment. We cannot continue doing what we are now without suffering consequences of some sort. More of the same will be disastrous – there will be consequences we cannot predict but only sense.

I know that climate change – natural change – has always been a feature of geological time; ice-ages, extreme volcanic activity playing havoc with weather patterns and such like. This is natural and I have no argument with this – we can’t do anything about it anyway – it just happens and we (here we go) have to live with the consequences. My point is that by doing nothing we are not HELPING nature, the World, the Gaia, or whatever you call it, to recover naturally. And it will recover naturally – with time but we are not giving it that time.

Exploitative human activity is damaging the Nation and ‘our’ World to the detriment of all.

• Soil degradation. Much of our precious topsoils is either blown away (dust storms) or washed away (soil erosion) each year. Poor environmental planning and farming practices are the cause.

• Excessive use of chemical fertilizers. Because of the soil degradation more and more chemicals are being used which produce foods that are not as nutritious as they should be. They are deficient in essential minerals.

• Water. The essential element for life on earth. In the case of fresh water, in quantity, storage and quality, improvements are vital for the future health of the Nation and the World.

• Industrial activity. In the quest for ever increasing profits enormous quantities of toxic and polluting substances are being pumped into the atmosphere, the soil and water (both fresh and salt) of our Nation and the World. Huge tracts of land are being cleared of trees and other vegetation for what – profit?

These are just a few aspects of the immensely complex and interwoven matrix which I consider comes under the umbrella of ‘climate change’. We are in a position to do SOMETHING (my preferred option) rather than NOTHING (as advocated by the sceptics). Just think about it, even if, as some of the sceptics believe, the world is getting colder, not hotter, how will this help? It will just herald a new dark-age with shorter growing seasons.

From an economic point of view I suspect we are going to suffer, one way or another. This will be the consequence of thoughtlessness, of greed and the extreme capitalistic ideal of ‘profit’, no matter the cost (in the lives of all flora and fauna and economic cost).

Now for the second big problem – the conflict in the Middle East. This goes back a long time. Without going into a detailed history of the region one could really consider the problem as being the consequence of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (after the First World War) and the British withdrawal from India (and Pakistan) and Iraq and the West’s interference in Iran and Palestine. The immediate cause, I suspect, is the false idea that the ‘West’ can impose its will, its ideas and its manner of living on peoples who trying to work out their own responses to their environment and to world events.

To think, even for a moment, that peace will be established by the production of greater numbers of ever more complex weapons is madness. Most of us have still to learn that peace is not external, but an internal state, that then translates to all things external. How can there ever be peace if nations or groups of people are constantly thinking about and preparing for war? How can there ever be peace if people are constantly thinking violent and warlike thoughts? It is never going to happen.

A cessation of violence or truce may be established if someone or some nation subdues another by being stronger or having a bigger and better army. But that is not peace. Think of the Korean conflict in the 1950s and how about the various Israeli/Palestinian conflicts. There has never been peace in these areas. We need to think ‘outside the box’ and use our accumulated wisdom in a rational, measured and reasonable manner.

There is no peace because the underlying problem has never been addressed – injustice, perceived or actual, is at the root of most conflicts and will be the root of the Middle East and the Korean problems. Sort out the injustices (perceived or otherwise) and the reason for the violence is removed. There is nothing that rankles and festers in the mind as much as injustice. If individuals have a feeling they have been hard done by and bear a grudge because of this then, rightly or wrongly, they will feel justified in fighting (as they may think) to redress the injustice.