[THS] Collapse of the American Empire: Swift, Silent, Certain

Tue Mar 9 23:44:10 CET 2010

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24949.htm

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,

March 09, 2010 "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everything driving our political leaders is based on a misleading, outdated theory of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."

You'll find Ferguson's latest work, "Collapse and Complexity: Empires on the Edge of
Chaos," in Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council of Foreign Relations, a
nonpartisan think tank. His message negates all the happy talk you're hearing in
today's news -- about economic recovery and new bull markets, about "hope," about
a return to "American greatness" -- from Washington politicians and Wall Street
bankers.

'Collapse of All Empires:' 5 stages repeating through the ages

Ferguson opens with a fascinating metaphor: "There is no better illustration of the
life cycle of a great power than 'The Course of Empire,' a series of five paintings by
Thomas Cole that hangs in the New York Historical Society. Cole was a founder of the
Hudson River School and one of the pioneers of nineteenth-century American
landscape painting; in 'The Course of Empire,' he beautifully captured a theory of
imperial rise and fall to which most people remain in thrall to this day. Each of the
five imagined scenes depicts the mouth of a great river beneath a rocky outcrop."

If you're unable to see them at the historical society, they're all reproduced in Foreign
Affairs, underscoring Ferguson's warnings that the "American Empire on the
precipice," near collapse.

First. 'The Savage State,' before the Empire rises

"In the first, 'The Savage State,' a lush wilderness is populated by a handful of
hunter-gatherers eking out a primitive existence at the break of a stormy dawn."
Imagine our history from Columbus' discovery of America in 1492 on through four
more centuries as we savagely expanded across the continent.

Second. 'The Arcadian or Pastoral State,' as the American Empire flourishes

"The second picture, 'The Arcadian or Pastoral State,' is of an agrarian idyll: the
inhabitants have cleared the trees, planted fields, and built an elegant Greek
temple." The temple may seem out of place. However, Cole's paintings were done in
1833-1836, not long after Thomas Jefferson built the University of Virginia using
classical Greek and Roman revival architecture.

As Ferguson continues the tour you sense you're actually inside the New York
Historical Society, visually reminded of how history's great cycles do indeed repeat
over and over. You are also reminded of one of history's great tragic ironies -- that all
nations fail to learn the lessons of history, that all nations and their leaders fall prey to
their own narcissistic hubris and that all eventually collapse from within.
Third. Consummation of the American Empire

"The third and largest of the paintings is 'The Consummation of Empire.' Now, the
landscape is covered by a magnificent marble entrepôt, and the contented farmer-
philosophers of the previous tableau have been replaced by a throng of opulently
clad merchants, proconsuls and citizen-consumers. It is midday in the life cycle."

'The Consummation of Empire' focuses us on Ferguson's core message: At the very
peak of their power, affluence and glory, leaders arise, run amok with imperial visions
and sabotage themselves, their people and their nation. They have it all.

But more-is-not enough as greed, arrogance and a thirst for power consume them.
Back in the early days of the Iraq war, Kevin Phillips, political historian and former
Nixon strategist, also captured this inevitable tendency in Wealth and Democracy:

"Most great nations, at the peak of their economic power, become arrogant and
wage great world wars at great cost, wasting vast resources, taking on huge debt,
and ultimately burning themselves out." We sense the "consummation" of the
American Empire occurred with the leadership handoff from Bill Clinton to George W.
Bush.

Unfortunately that peak is behind us: Clinton, Bush, Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke,
Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and all future American leaders are merely
playing their parts in the greatest of all historical dramas, repeating but never fully
grasping the lessons of history in their insatiable drive for "economic progress," to
recapture former glory ... while unwittingly pushing our empire to the edge, into
collapse.

Four. Destruction of the Empire

Then comes 'The Destruction of Empire,' the fourth stage in Ferguson's grand drama
about the life-cycle of all empires. In "Destruction" "the city is ablaze, its citizens
fleeing an invading horde that rapes and pillages beneath a brooding evening sky."
Elsewhere in "The War of the World," Ferguson described the 20th century as "the
bloodiest in history, one hundred years of butchery." Today's high-tech relentless
news cycle, suggests that our 21st century world is a far bloodier return to savagery.

At this point, investors are asking themselves: How can I prepare for the destruction
and collapse of the American Empire? There is no solution in the Cole-Ferguson
scenario, only an acceptance of fate, of destiny, of history's inevitable cycles.

But there is one in "Wealth, War and Wisdom" by hedge fund manager Barton Biggs,
Morgan Stanley's former chief global strategist who warns us of the "possibility of a
breakdown of the civilized infrastructure," advising us to buy a farm in the
mountains.

"Your safe haven must be self-sufficient and capable of growing some kind of food ...
well-stocked with seed, fertilizer, canned food, wine, medicine, clothes, etc. Think
Swiss Family Robinson." And when they come looting, fire "a few rounds over the
approaching brigands' heads."

Five. Desolation ... after the Empire disappears

"Finally, the moon rises over the fifth painting, 'Desolation,'" says Ferguson. There is
not a living soul to be seen, only a few decaying columns and colonnades overgrown
by briars and ivy." No attacking "brigands?" No loveable waste-collecting robots from
Wall-E?

The good news is the Earth will naturally regenerate itself without savage humans, as
we saw in Alan Weisman's brilliant "The World Without Us:" Steel buildings decay.
Microbes eat indestructible plastics. Eons pass. And Earth reemerges in all its glory, a
Garden of Eden.

Epilogue: 'All Empires ... are condemned to decline and fall'

In a Los Angeles Times column, Ferguson asks: "America, a Fragile Empire: Here
today, gone tomorrow, could the United States fall that fast?" And his answer is clear
and emphatic: "For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the
public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms ...
we discern a rhythm to history. Great powers, like great men, are born, rise, reign
and then gradually wane. No matter whether civilizations decline culturally,
economically or ecologically, their downfalls are protracted."

We are deceiving ourselves, convinced "the challenges that face the United States
are often represented as slow-burning ... threats seem very remote."

"But what if history is not cyclical and slow-moving but arrhythmic?" asks Ferguson.
What if history is "at times almost stationary but also capable of accelerating
suddenly, like a sports car? What if collapse does not arrive over a number of
centuries but comes suddenly, like a thief in the night?" What if the collapse of the
American Empire is dead ahead, in the next decade? What if, as with the 2000 dot-
com crash, we're in denial, refusing to prepare?

Ferguson's final message about America's destiny comes from Foreign Affairs:
"Conceived in the mid-1830s, Cole's great five-part painting has a clear message: all
empires, no matter how magnificent, are condemned to decline and fall."
Throughout history, empires function "in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable
period. And then, quite abruptly ... collapse," a blunt reminder of the sudden, swift,
silent, certain timetable in Diamond's "Collapse" where a "society's demise may begin
only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

You are forewarned: If the peak of America's glory was the leadership handoff from
Clinton to Bush, then we have already triggered the countdown to collapse, the
decade from 2010 until 2020 ... tick ... tick ... tick ...