History shows there are no invincible armies, and there never have been
Stalin.
Pleasantly surprised by this article considering it’s from the social-imperialist journal Mother Jones, and I wonder if the author is not a Marxist. His explanation is basically dialectics without calling it as such. Not much of a materialist analysis though, but it’s a good primer on the topic.
Progress happens by leaps and bounds. That’s a very important law of dialectics. Things slowly change, imperceptibly, until they reach a topping point and suddenly everything falls in place. Quantitative change also leads to qualitative change – all change has a quantitative aspect. To draw from the article, shipments not arriving in checkpoints and barracks can be measured. In tonnage lost, etc. This is quantity. Suddenly, a mutiny erupts in the barracks and the soldiers all abandon their post. This is qualitative change that reached a boiling point and everything seems to erupt at once, but the premises were there long ago. Of course, qualitative change also affects quantitative change, otherwise it wouldn’t be dialectics. A paved road breaking down with nobody willing to pay for it (qualitative) leads to less merchants using it (quantity), which leads to cutting off a city from its supplies (quality).
While we are unsure how long it will take for the American empire to fall, we will certainly live to see it. Major changes are about to happen, and I especially liked the opening line: “Any political unit sound enough to project its power over a large geographic area for centuries has deep structural roots”. But we will see an independent Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the return of Guantanamo bay to Cuba, abandonment of foreign military bases… at different moments.
Excellent observation, and I suspect most serious historians think dialectically even if they don’t necessarily recognize it. I do think collapse of the empire is well under way, and I predict that it’s actually going to be climate change that drives the final nail in. US already had massive crop failures due to extreme weather this year, and aquifers that millions of people depend on are drying up. As extreme weather continues to get worse, that’s going to further strain food production. And of course weather is also affecting infrastructure as well with events like Texas freeze causing massive economic damage. US is utterly unprepared to deal with these problems and the people in charge don’t appear to even recognize that these things are happening. This was a particularly insightful observation in my opinion:
It took a long time, decades, for the true reality of the change to hit the Romans whose writings have survived. Aristocratic Roman officials in Italy maintained the same kind of bureaucratic structure their fathers and grandfathers had, writing the same kinds of administrative letters for Ostrogothic kings of Italy that they had for emperors beforehand. The pull of the past is strong.
Since people in positions of power are least affected, it’s hard for them to see problems in time to take meaningful action while it’s still possible.
The next place the US military flee from will be Iraq. That will also mean an end to the US occupation in Syria. Which will completely change the balance of power between Iran and “Israel”. So I guess parts of the empire will fall one by one in quick succession, like dominos.
