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America and Afghanistan are close to signing a strategic pact which would allow thousands of United States troops to remain in the country until at least 2024, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain. The prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan. It also risks being rejected by the Taliban and

For centuries, historians, political theorists, anthropologists and the public have tended to think about the political process in seasonal, cyclical terms. From Polybius to Paul Kennedy, from ancient Rome to imperial Britain, 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.

Count the waysA German scholar twenty years ago listed, I recall, some 210 reasons for the collapse of the Western empire. Readers, you have heard many of them, plausible and otherwise—corruption, civil strife, Germanic barbarians, Christianity, lead in the pipes of the elite, etc.Any such discussion is also predicated on two other twists: the Eastern Empire at Constantinople went on for nearly another 1,000 years until the 1453 sack by the Ottomans. And for the last twenty years, revisionists have disputed Gibbon’s notion of a dramatic “fall” in the West, and argued instead that it was a “transition” as the...

Isaac Asimov wrote his Foundation stories to show that every Empire, even the most powerful one, has to fall eventually. Everyone knows that America achieved its' peak power and world influence in the twentieth century. But how much longer is it going to last? It is hard to predict while it is still alive and reasonably well. But, as Asimov observed, there are certain signs that may give early hints that the end is approaching. One of them is a loss of technological knowledge. Couple of years ago I have learned from one of NASA's engineers that the know-how to...

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight." Edward Gibbon – The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire After ruling much of the known world for centuries, Rome fell due to a number of factors that, historians believe, would not have been fatal in isolation, but that proved terminal in combination. Military overspending and overreach,...

This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful. Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest...

(CBS/AP) Analysts gazing into what amounts to an intelligence-based crystal ball see a future world marked by dwindling resources, more people and diminished power for the United States, as CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports. The grim assessment, entitled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World", comes from the National Intelligence Council, an independent government body. The report concludes that by 2025, "The U.S. will remain the single most important actor but will be less dominant." There'll be challenges on all fronts. Climate changes from global warming will lead to shortages of food and water in dozens of countries. That, coupled...

November 21, 2008 National Intelligence Council report: sun setting on the American century The report said that global warming will aggravate the scarcity of water, food and energy resources Tim Reid in Washington The next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment by the US intelligence community. “The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence...

October 12, 2008 Is this the end of the American era? Paul Kennedy A few nights ago, having read far too much about the alarming drop of share prices on Wall Street, I fell asleep trying to remember those lines from Shelley’s Ozymandias that were drummed into my skull at school long ago: . . . Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that...

Just call us “leader of the free world.” The United States is getting tagged as an “empire” from all quarters. Indeed, it’s been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google “Spanish-American War” if you’re interested.) The empire charge has long been a staple of the political extremes. It’s even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon “the ambitions of empire.” Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says we could afford health care if we weren’t running...

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday. Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”. In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation. He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided...

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....

Can Liberty Survive Big Government, Big Spending and Big Mud Slinging? Today's comment is by Bob Bauman, The Sovereign Society's Legal Counsel and author of many books and reports on the offshore world and personal liberty. Dear A-Letter Reader, Recently, our Chairman and a founder of The Sovereign Society, John Pugsley, waxed poetically on the sad state of freedom in America. As always, I enjoyed hearing his thoughts as he reflected on a theme that also concerns me: The cancerous growth of the American Empire.Reading afresh about the fundamental principles of America's Founding Fathers made me ponder how little, if...

Are we Rome? That is, are we Americans, citizens of the mightiest empire the world has known since the days of the Caesars, living in the last days of our civilization? Is the United States, like the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, doomed to collapse from its own decadence? Or can we avoid Rome's fate? As historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously observed, "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." While any number of Rome's particular poisons could have been most responsible for its demise, the generally accepted view is that wealth and power corrupted its character, eroding the...

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev critized the United States, and current President George W. Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire. Gorbachev, who presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union, said Washington had sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but had failed to understand the changing world. "The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?" Gorbachev asked reporters at a news conference in Moscow. "What has followed are unilateral actions, what has...

According to ABC News, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., may have recently called his moderate-right credentials into question. "McCain has tapped a controversial academic to be a member of his virtual 'kitchen cabinet,'" ABCNews.com noted. That academic – Niall Ferguson of Harvard University – is, according to David Weigel of Reason magazine, a "foaming-at-the-mouth 'national greatness conservative.'" This academic has presented, according to Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University in Britain, an "aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right." Who is this dastardly intellectual twisting the liberal media's beloved "Maverick" McCain into a...

According to ABC News, 2008 presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) may have recently called his moderate-right credentials into question. "McCain has tapped a controversial academic to be a member of his virtual 'kitchen cabinet,'" ABCNews.com noted. That academic -- Niall Ferguson of Harvard University -- is, according to David Weigel of Reason magazine, a "foaming-at-the-mouth 'national greatness conservative.'" This academic has presented, according to Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University in Britain, an "aggressive rewriting of history, driven by the messianic fantasies of the American right." Who is this dastardly intellectual twisting the liberal media's beloved "Maverick" McCain into a...

WASHINGTON - After years of world leaders condemning America for overreaching its power, Americans elected their first ever Imperialist President. "We do everything we can to help the world, but we're still resented, they call us imperialist pigs," said DC cabbie Albert Shlutnick. "Now they'll see what imperialism is really like." Americans got a raw taste of its new leadership this morning at the first press briefing with President Hillshire in full form. The president opened the briefing with astonishing news: "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that Iran and North Korea no longer exist. Are...

History has not dealt kindly with imperial ambitions, and America, however benevolent her intent, cannot hope to be an exception. Something remarkable happened on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Commentators began to declare, in somewhat exultant tones, that America had at last become a true empire. America was of course also a benevolent empire, they insisted, but that nod to altruistic tradition could not hide their excitement that America had at last joined the greatest empires of the past. Implicit in these giddy declarations was the assumption that empire was an exalted state of power and...

PASADENA - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the United States has an illusion of omnipotence - "the victory complex" - that's more dangerous than Russia's inferiority complex. "Both countries should overcome those feelings," he said, "and their leaders should reflect what the people want, and what the people want is dialogue." Gorbachev spoke through an interpreter Wednesday to a full house at the Distinguished Speaker Series at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. He said the United States has a right to claim a leadership role in the world based on its military, cultural and economic power. "But partnerships rather than...

The striking thing about the present international situation is the degree to which America remains what Bill Clinton once called "the indispensable nation." Despite global opinion polls registering broad hostility to George W. Bush's United States, the behavior of governments and political leaders suggests America's position in the world is not all that different from what it was before Sept. 11 and the Iraq war. The much-anticipated global effort to balance against American hegemony -- which the realists have been anticipating for more than 15 years now -- has simply not occurred. On the contrary, in Europe the idea has...

September 17, 2005 -- The book: "Katrina: From America With Love -The most punishing storm in American History, is the fall of the American Empire?" will be published on/before January 2006. Colonel Ozturk asks a question in his book: "Every Empires has a birth, a period of expansion, a decline and a collapse. Is it time for the fall of the American Empire?" Through a series of treaties of capitulation from the 20th to the 21th century the American Empire gradually lost its economic independence. Although the American Empire was theoretically among the victors in the war, it emerged from...

GUEST COLUMNIST The president's basic vocabulary -- good and evil, war and victory -- has always made his liberal critics uncomfortable. But last week George W. Bush seemed to be speaking to members of his own administration when he made it crystal clear to the world that we're fighting a "war" against terrorism. It's not, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has recently nuanced it, a "global struggle against violent extremism." It's a war -- plain and simple. Of course, wars are neither plain nor simple. They're messy and unpredictable affairs. But to his credit, the president seems to recognize --...

President George W. Bush's basic vocabulary - good and evil, war and victory - always has made his liberal critics uncomfortable. ... .. But to his credit, the president seems to recognize - in his gut - that a shift in vocabulary will change nothing. A policy is either right or wrong. ... Bush has a firmer handle than even Rumsfield does on how empires think and act. And I don't mean that as a criticism... Imperialism has received bad press for most of the last hundred years.... But ancient Rome - always the brand name in empires - is...

The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States of America. His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (Columbia University Press, 2003) has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an Evil Empire. (See "The Darth Vader fallacy," June 11.) But his book offers encouragement to America-phobes: Far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is...

Nations, like men, have destinies. They choose to fulfill them or fail. Free Will, not fate, makes choices at every crossroads in life for men and nations alike. President George W. Bush stated the vision for the United States as “our generational commitment to the advance of freedom”. That vision may be part of a greater destiny for our Nation. America has a Munificent Destiny, if we, The People, choose it. America’s Munificent Destiny serves us for a century, perhaps longer. America’s Munificent Destiny is to use our phenomenal aggregation of wealth, power, technology and culture with pragmatic generosity. The...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Every time I hear someone complaining about America's oppressive role in the world, I'm reminded of a scene from the comedic classic "Monty Python's Life of Brian." In this scene, The People's Front of Judea is holding a secret meeting about conducting a raid on Pontius Pilate's palace. Reg, the tough-talking anti-imperialist leader of the group is psyching up his followers. "And what have the Romans ever given us?" he asks smugly. His question is clearly rhetorical but his group sees things in a different light. "The aqueduct?" suggests one man. "Sanitation," says another. "And the roads."...

The Empire Has No Clothes U.S. Foreign Policy ExposedBy Ivan Eland Independent Institute Oakland, California HC, 294 pages US$24.95 ISBN: 0-9459-9998-4 The rise of the American empire By Steven Martinovich web posted January 17, 2005 Students of history are often amazed how empires sometimes came into being almost accidentally. Rome, during its early Republican years, often grew by being attacked by its neighbours and vanquishing them. The Victorian British originally sought to protect trade and overseas interests before waking up one day and realizing that they controlled a quarter of the world's land, people and all of its oceans. Others,...

IT'S a risky business to predict the decline of the American empire. Ask Paul Kennedy, the Yale historian, who issued such a forecast in his 1987 book, "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers," only to witness an almost immediate American resurgence. Yet the signposts, at the end of this year, are ominous. As an economic power, the United States no longer sets the rules, much less rule the game. As a military power, it vastly outguns the rest of the world, but has a harder time translating armed might into influence. On March 1, the European Union announced that...

"A country that makes a film like 'Star Wars' deserves to rule the world." – Philip Adams, former chairman of the Australian Film Commission Love it, hate it, embrace it, deny it, American power, American influence and American values are the defining features of today's interconnected world. Questions of an American "empire" — whether we have one, whether we want one, whether we can afford or keep one — aren't just the white-hot topic of the day among statesmen and political scientists. The world really is becoming more "American." The pervasive pull of American ideals, popular culture and media, and...

FREEPER RESEARCH/ESSAY ASSIGNMENT My 10th grade daughter is enrolled in an Advanced Placement (AP) World History class at her public high school. The teacher (a "friendly" who shares conservative Christian views with my family, but has to play it down the middle in class) recently introduced a concept known as the "Conrad-Demarest Model of Empires." This model discusses the conditions which give rise to empires, the major results of empires, and why empires fail. This Monday the class will engage in a student-led discussion of whether the United States is an empire and if so, whether we are on the...

Imperialism without Empire By Jonathan Schell Is the United States -- as so many have said, in celebration or dismay -- a planet-mastering empire or not? The question presses upon us as George W. Bush gets ready to descend upon New York for the Republican convention, as he once descended upon the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln under the banner declaring "mission accomplished" in Iraq. Just as the President's landing on the Lincoln invited an assessment of the Iraq war, so now his visit to New York invites assessment of the larger, global mission of the administration. (And, come to think...

Critics of U.S. global dominance should pause and consider the alternative. If the United States retreats from its hegemonic role, who would supplant it? Not Europe, not China, not the Muslim world—and certainly not the United Nations. Unfortunately, the alternative to a single superpower is not a multilateral utopia, but the anarchic nightmare of a new Dark Age. We tend to assume that power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the history of world politics, it seems, someone is always the hegemon, or bidding to become it. Today, it is the United States; a century ago, it was the United...

Since September 11, 2001, the phrases "American empire" and "America as an imperial power" are being heard a lot more. But in contrast to the 1960s and 1970s, when such terms were brandished by an angry domestic anti-war movement or by developing nations in U.N. debates, the concept they represent has now at least partially entered the mainstream. However much it has incurred hostility throughout most of the world, including European and other countries usually allied with the U.S., the "new imperialism" has gained ground among the Establishment here. The post-9/11 rationale is that America has terrorist enemies and rogue...

SPENGLERAmerica is not an empire What is the first sin? According to the Bible it was jealousy. J W Goethe argued rather that it was sloth. Absolute rest is what people really want, God explains in the prologue to Faust, and the devil's job is to stir things up. There is something to be said for this view. It accounts quite well for the sin of imperialism. Whole continents have been ruined to maintain their conquerors in idle luxury. By the same token, it is meaningless to speak of an "American Empire" when Americans incline to sloth less than any...

<p>Several years ago, I was at a conference in London. I took an evening to do some exploring. Taking the underground to Piccadilly Circus, I tried to find a traditional English pub for fish and chips.</p> <p>I couldn't find one. There in the cultural heart of the former British empire, all one could see was McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut and an occasional sushi establishment. The fashions worn by the thronging crowds were American, as was the music blaring from almost every club. The British invasion of the 1960s had been reversed.</p>

In early May, Niall Ferguson, the celebrity Scottish historian, looked out at a packed house seething with antagonism. He had come to Washington to deliver a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations defending his idea that the war in Iraq had not only been the right thing to do, but also ought to be the first step towards a wide-ranging American empire. It would be difficult to imagine a moment when the capital's bipartisan policy elite --Ferguson's audience--were less inclined to be receptive to his ideas. The first accounts of the torture at Abu Ghraib had just appeared, and...

<p>I hate the word empire when used to describe the United States. If the US is an empire, it sure is empire-lite. We are not expanding the borders. It’s hard to have colonies when you don't have any colonists. Aside from Iraq for the next three and a half weeks, we do not administer foreign countries.</p>

April 26, 2004 'Empire' -- A Losing Political Issue by Christopher PrebleChristopher Preble is a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy (www.realisticforeignpolicy.org) and the director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.Not quite a year ago, when the euphoria over the U.S. military's sweeping victory over Saddam Hussein's armies was at its high point, Washington was consumed with talk of empire."No need to run away from the label," wrote Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations, "America's destiny is to police the world." Harvard's Michael Ignatieff agreed. "Imperialism doesn't stop being necessary," he said, "just...

An Empire? You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet By James D. Miller Published 04/14/2004 An American Empire might someday arise from the ashes of our dead. Today, America lacks the desire to conquer. But if a weapon of mass destruction were to kill 100,000 or more westerners, the American people would demand our government do whatever it takes to protect. Given the increasing ease of building mass killing devices, the best way to defend against devastating attacks is to conquer the lands of those who hate us. Ann Coulter has said that the U.S. is "the only non-imperialist superpower in the...

George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld have pledged to change the way America's armed forces are distributed around the globe. What do they have in mind? When the second world war and the Korean war had ended, America found itself in possession of what turned out to be some pretty useful territory. The bases used in the Japanese, European and Korean campaigns proved vital in the prosecution of the cold war. During it, the disposition of America's forces petrified, and large concentrations are still in Germany, South Korea and Japan. Now, as George Bush announced at the end of last year,...

It has long been fashionable to describe the American state as neo-imperialist; indeed this was a staple of leftwing criticism of US policies during the cold war. These criticisms usually reflected mercantilist economics (the wealth of one society depends on the poverty of another) married to a Marxist perspective (civil and military structures are driven primarily or even exclusively by economic motives). This had a certain logic to it: if the US was waging a global battle against communism, wasn't it trying to determine by force the civil life of other, independent states - such as Chile, or Nicaragua or...

Three decades ago, the radical left used the term "American empire" as an epithet. Now that same term has come out of the closet: analysts on both the left and right now use it to explain - if not guide - American foreign policy. In many ways, the metaphor of empire is seductive. The American military has a global reach, with bases around the world, and its regional commanders sometimes act like proconsuls. English is a lingua franca like Latin. The US economy is the largest in the world, and American culture serves as a magnet. But it is a...

In a new six-part series entitled Age of Empire, the BBC's Jonathan Marcus sets out on a journey to examine America's place in the modern world. "America has no empire to extend or utopia to establish. We wish for others only what we wish for ourselves - safety from violence, the rewards of liberty, and the hope for a better life." So declared President George Bush in the traditional graduation address at the US Military academy at West Point in June 2002. But despite his insistence that the US has no imperial ambitions, the word "empire" is increasingly used by...

Historian Paul Johnson described the new American Empire a recent essay: a defensive imperialism in defense of Western Civilization. The generation for whom the latter half of the last century represents their view of the world is now wondering about the world in which their grandchildren will live. It will be very different for a lot of reasons, but the most dramatic will be the American Empire. It will be a world in which America doesn’t merely participate in great issues and events, but dictates them. It will be a world in which the hope for worldwide democracy is no...

"It is not the weapons per se that cause fear, but the nature of the government that possesses them." -- Victor Davis Hanson One of the mildly exasperating things about the plethora of news media available now is having to wade through a much more extensive swamp of fetid posturing and vain prognostications on a daily basis. The "stalemate of this" in "the quagmire of that" consumes these imposters. The disaster of beginning weakly and the hubris of winning resoundingly confounds their timorous timetables. The warnings not to be too weak in struggle nor too overbearing in victory erupt from...

<p>THESE are confusing times. America needs thoughtful critics who can challenge basic assumptions and help steer the public conversation constructively. Sadly, too much modern political debate is polarized, more suited to the theatrics of "Crossfire" than the logic of a classroom.</p>

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Secretary of Defence, believes that Saddam Hussein is alive and hiding somewhere in Iraq. He also believes that he will be found by the coalition forces. Mr Rumsfeld, whom I met last week, is visibly undeterred by the level of continuing terrorism in Iraq. He is convinced that the coalition campaign is going well, that the military problem is being overcome and that the reconstruction of the country is proceeding rapidly. Yesterday's tragic attack on the Italian police HQ in Nasiriyah will not change that view. Mr Rumsfeld read me a series of reports, from the...

From yesterday's Imus program: The Daily Imus NEWSMAKER QUOTE OF THE DAY Newsweek’s Evan Thomas spoke to Imus about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memo questioning whether the United States was doing enough to win the war on terrorism. “We are in the empire business now. We are imperialists. That Rumsfeld memo that everybody got so agitated about saying that he was a contradiction and publically he said we were winning and privately he says we’re losing. People should have read that memo little bit more closely. In it was the germ of an idea, or the beginning of an idea,...

Washington (CNSNews.com) - Members of a newly formed coalition of policy analysts last week accused the Bush administration of pursuing an increasingly imperialistic foreign policy agenda and warned that U.S. armed forces are dangerously extended in overseas deployments as a result. Doug Bandow, a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy - a group of scholars and analysts whose political views encompass all sides of the foreign policy debate - said the United States government is getting bigger as troop deployments overseas increase. "Basically, if you're going to have big government abroad, you've got to be prepared to...