Group feeling (‘asabiyyah) is necessary to the state. The state cannot come into existence without group feeling. This is as necessary to it as the ability to attract and hold [its subjects] is to the soul, in order that it may have an impact upon them.
—Ibn Khaldun
The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer, or the actor.
—Sir John Glubb
President Biden is likely to get the U.S. embroiled in another war because he’s weak. America is weak. Whatever cognition is left in the dodderer is dedicated entirely to saving his dubious legacy.
The operating notion is that great wars make great stories of great men who make great nations. You can dress it up in highfalutin theories of international relations. But the ugly truth is that the Warcons and Warprogs have been trading in this metanarrative for a long time.
They pick fights and make villains out of weaker foes to delay the inevitable. The military-industrial complex salivates. Regime functionaries offer the president a chance to make something out of his fading story, a military campaign to rescue his presidential campaign.
Despite already grotesque debt-fueled defense expenditures—the next war will prove nothing but American decadence and decline. That war cannot be won. If Americans were bellicose after 9/11, they are belly-stuffed now. And the military isn’t ready.
To evaluate U.S. military readiness through analysis of budgets, personnel, and materiel is to miss the point—well, three points:
First, a nation’s military reflects a people’s soul, for better or worse;
Second, great enemies catalyze a nation’s people; and
Third, there are no great enemies currently in our sights.
Russia’s realpolitik was a predictable response to NATO expansion and the US-engineered 2014 Coup of Kyiv. Iran’s mullahs are but irritating provincial antagonists with money troubles and a population ready for a Counter-Revolution. Israel is more than capable of dealing with its own shit. And China, while formidable, is struggling with an unwieldy top-down governance structure, the fallout of a hyper-Keynesian bust cycle, and Xi’s indomitable hubris.
But America? The “superpower”? I haven’t seen an affordable, constitutional, or morally justifiable war in my half-century on earth. Decadence is rotting the American Empire from within and weakening it on the outside.
In 1976—two hundred years after the birth of the American Republic—Sir John Bagot Glubb published "The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival." Glubb, also known as Glubb Pasha, was an experienced British military commander and scholar best known for leading the Jordanian Arab Legion. No wonder this wizard-warrior could see the pattern.
In his seminal essay, Grubb explores the rise and fall of empires throughout history and attempts—quite audaciously—to identify common patterns. Glubb begins by outlining the average lifespan of an empire, which he estimates to be about 250 years—or ten generations. He then examines a range of historical empires, including the Roman, Persian, Ottoman, Spanish, and British empires, all of which support his theory.
Let’s explore the stages of empire life cycles, according to Glubb. I want to add my own notes and flourishes, as well as what I consider to be the “geist” or “egregore” of each stage:
Empires often begin with remarkable expansion and energy led by strong, charismatic, courageous leaders—often conquerors or colonizers. This period is marked by significant territorial exploration and expansion.
Geist: Pioneer spirit.
Following the initial expansion, empires enter a stage of continued growth through further military conquests. This surge often expands a relatively smaller nation into something gargantuan and growing.
Geist: Patriotic spirit.
Once expansion starts to slow, the focus shifts from conquest to trade—especially as the pioneers have established new commercial routes and relationships. People hustle and learn to serve each other better through production and trade, which is a sustainable pattern for a time. The people get richer, which leads to more consumption, arts, and cultural flourishing.
Geist: Entrepreneurial spirit.
Increased living standards mark this stage. The empire now enjoys considerable riches and comfort, but there's a decline in the pioneering spirit, a rise in base materialism, and a decline in religious and community affiliation. Wealth inequality prompts people to demand welfare redistribution. Mass migration accelerates as job opportunities, jurisdictional arbitrage, and generous welfare benefits draw foreigners in, which starts to dilute Asabiyyah.
Egrigore: Acquisitive spirit.
A pronounced focus on intellectualism and rationalism develops. Schools, universities, and learning institutions enjoy a heyday as elites signal status through education and moralistic crusades rather than ostentatious wealth displays. Such intellectualism usually weakens spiritual and moral values—not to mention Asabiyyah—and hastens the withdrawal from religious and civic communities.
Egrigore: Scientistic spirit.
Characterized by excessive materialism, the increasing influx of foreigners, the expanded welfare state, and a thorough weakening of religion, the society fractures. The military reflects this weakness as people are more reluctant to serve. The people have no appetite for war, and the warriors see little to die for. Functionaries rely more on mercenaries. As more and more migrants arrive, they fail to assimilate, particularly as there is no longer a binding Geist. Asabiyyah is fully attenuated.
Egrigore: Anemic spirit.
Surveying the detritus of his own British empire after its sunset, Glubb notes that the end of an empire often comes quite suddenly. Such is usually followed by a period of chaos before a new power emerges to begin the cycle anew.
I assume you can see that the US is in its final stage.
The thrust of Glubb’s thesis is that the rise and fall of empires are not just the result of external forces but are heavily determined by moral-cultural changes within. He suggests that decline is often due to losing a sense of duty or responsibility. Over-reliance on accumulated, redistributed wealth—as opposed to produced wealth—leads to decadence, division, and spiritual anemia.
The empire becomes unaffordable and unsustainable.
Grubb mentions two factors in the causal nexus that bear greater emphasis: welfare and warfare. These function like the two pincers of a great vice that eventually crushes the pillars upon which any Empire is built.
Glubb argues, however, that it’s possible to learn from history to prolong the life of an empire or a civilization. But he thinks that, like a living being, all empires have a life cycle. So, there is a certain inevitability in Glubb’s thesis. And if he’s right, America is in the final stage.
I’m sneaking away from family time to write this, so I need to keep it brief. But here are a few possibilities I’d like to explore in greater depth later:
Successes like Texas and Florida can strengthen and rise, unyoked from the “Paper Belt,” and influence can flow from Washington and New York to new centers. (Witness Texas and Florida’s defiance with respect to the immigrant crisis. If each’s leadership backs down, it could be a terrible setback.)
America breaks up, leaving a few smaller states like New Hampshire that, with independence, behave more like Singapore, Switzerland, Dubai, or Liechtenstein—that is, non-imperial prosperity centers. It’s no accident that New Hampshire is a small state, the freest state, and also has the lowest poverty rate.
The above new American dynamics must exclude more pronounced welfare-warfare state features and, after renewal, represent islands of harmony and prosperity, often amid otherwise troubled regions.
Glubb’s next “Age of Pioneers” is already here—only the pioneers are everywhere, and they are networked. They will roam among the islands of harmony and prosperity and create their own islands in the upheaval. What we argue, though, is that they have not yet found their moral-cultural center, which The Grey Robes will help to develop.
The Pioneers’ subsequent phases will not include welfare and warfare in the same historical pattern because the exodological properties of networks (see subversive innovation) will allow for the interruption of such patterns. While we can and should acknowledge network effects, decentralized networks will rise, acting as a counter-power to centralized welfare-warfare-based networks—and outcompete them. The fitness landscape will have fundamentally changed.
In short, the Decentralist Ages of “Conquest” and “Commerce” can look very different from the historical pattern of empire. Decentralism’s rise can, indeed, emerge as an empire that spreads to new territories. But these will be territories of the mind.
As
writes:If they can’t control information, crime, businesses, borders or the money supply, then they will cease to deliver what citizens demand of them. In the end, nation-states are nothing but agreed-upon myths: we give up certain freedoms in order to secure others. But if that transaction no longer works, and we stop agreeing on the myth, it ceases to have power over us.
Ours will be an Empire of Consent, high in Asabiyyah but low in compulsion; high in the gravity of attention but low in the kinetics of conquest.
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