Geopolitics Discussion: Ends of Empires

[Will_V]

Thanks for the detailed reply @Chase, lots to think about here!

Joseph Tainter makes this point very well in The Collapse of Complex Societies.

He discusses it / expands upon it in this interview as well:

Basically, civilizations can only collapse so long as they have no powerful neighbors nearby who will invade following the collapse (because the citizens giving up on the system won't be willing to give up the system if giving up on it merely means they'll become second class citizens for a powerful nearby uncollapsed civilization).

So when you have a civilization with powerful neighbors, even if that systems is under very heavy strain and the populace is being crushed under it, it cannot collapse, and is forced to keep going, competing with its neighbors, until all the interconnected neighboring systems are so mutually strained they collapse simultaneously.

Interesting, I kind of assumed that the process of collapse was tightly integrated with the concept of an emerging power taking over from the ashes. But it makes sense, there are very few things that pull together a disfunctional society quite like war.

Globalization puts you in a position where you get these zombie societies lurching on, that would probably have already collapsed and begun reorganizing themselves in a non-globalized world, but are forced to keep going because the alternative to continuing appears worse.

Wouldn't it be the opposite? If globalization brings countries together under some kind of mutual identity, then the 'other' - the enemy that might come and conquer the weakened civilization - would seem to be more difficult to identify, and therefore the collapse would accelerate, would it not? Unless I suppose the cultural identities failed to integrate, and the proximity and dependence only made the risk clearer.

That said... I question whether we are really fully globalized to the point of becoming vassals if there's a collapse. If (for instance) the US split into a few smaller countries... like, say, "Patriotstan" in the south and middle and "Equalia" on the coasts... is there really going to be another dominant party coming in and taking those over? I suppose the US did quite effectively turn Europe into a collection of satellite/vassal states following World War II... that might suggest that yes, we are indeed fully globalized at this point.

Definitely difficult to say in my opinion, one wonders whether the lines are drawn more clearly between things other than countries these days.

It's a good question.

With Russia and China, you get what appear to me two very different approaches to both being rising powers and handling the "dying tiger" that is the US. Russia is a lot more chaotic and doesn't seem to have much of a plan. China is far more controlled and has everything planned out more or less for the next 50 years. China, for instance, has effectively banned Western propaganda and moved to reinstate traditional morality at this point... they didn't let either of the Marvel films in last year, including the one Marvel made to try to entrench itself in China (Shang-Chi)... homosexuality is banned on TV and movies, feminism is basically banned, showing one-night stands is banned, they shut down all the pickup artist apps, including a huge Chinese PUA video training app that was turning over $20 million a year, they've banned showing effeminate men, and they told parents to limit kids to an hour of screen time a day and no more than 3 hours of video game per week, and only on the weekends.

The Russian approach seems to be "well, I don't know what's going on in the West, but we are just going to try and chill here until whatever that is stops." The Chinese approach meanwhile seems to be "the West is in active cultural revolution mode, trying to reshape the entire world alongside with itself, and we just want our populace as insulated from Western propaganda as possible."

Is one of those approaches going to end up being superior?

Will China pay a penalty for over-insulating itself, or will it be fine, and still able to handle international projects like belt and road (or end up not needing them, safe in its insular bubble as the outside world falls to pieces)? Will Russia be able to weather the West's collective insanity without it spreading there as well, or will its openness lead to it going down the same path?

Maybe we'll end up with some other force that emerges later on in the century that no one is talking about or considering right now.

It's difficult to predict...

I'm trying to find the time to study more about the changes occurring in Russia and China (or at least their strategies) lately. China seems to have had something of a shift in the way it wants the world to view it, which could have all kinds of internal effects.

Well, as you probably know from Roman history, Rome was at such a point itself, where it viewed itself as the crowning achievement of civilization, and saw itself as more or less an eternal civilization, likely to lead the world forever.

China has gone through phases like this. For a long time the ancient Chinese maps basically said "here is China, here are the mountains, and the deserts, and beyond those there are a few barbarians, then the end of the world."

If I had to guess, other powerful empires at the peaks of their civilizations, and for a time after, have viewed themselves this way.

Basically what seems to follow is a coming-back-down-to-earth period, where the civilization begins to suffer more and more defeats, and grows sort of depressed, as it is forced to face the fact that it is NOT an eternal civilization, and won't get to be on top forever. Then generally there are back and forths, some periods where it seems like it is coming back, some great new leadership comes to the fore promising to renew it, things get better for a while, then it goes back into decline.

I know there are many repeating times in history where there is a collective 'end of history' illusion. What I think makes this different in some way is the advent of technology and the failure to properly understand its relationship to the human experience. The idea of technological development outpacing the ability for humans to understand it has never happened before and I believe it has caused something of a collective psychological crisis.

For one thing, fields are already so complex that a person could spend more than one lifetime studying everything in it. That makes it very difficult for people to intuit the shifts and changes that will occur as a result of different paths of technological development, and I believe has made people generally very pessimistic about the future, due to this disorientation.

One thing that interests me very much is how art reflects the sort of collective 'psychological state' of a civilization. I've listened to a lot of Sir Roger Scruton's stuff about art and architecture. It made me think about how the ugliness of postmodern art, at least in part, came about as an attempt to integrate technology into the collective psyche - a lot of postmodern art involves taking some utilitarian, mechanical item and attempting to merge it in some way with the human body.

Together with the fact that science fiction, the domain of imagining the future, has become incredibly dystopian, often with themes of a war between 'real people' and either technology itself (as AI) or some technologically weaponized oppressive society.

Not that I think these fears are entirely unfounded, but I don't exactly see what solution there is to creating a perspective on technological development that properly includes its potential positive effects as well.

This is to say nothing about other disturbing aspects of technological development, such as what people will do if machines can do everything, that possibly add to the impact of this on the emergence of a new civilization.

A good closing thought!

Yes, that's always the thing: regardless the nature of the world around you, if you improve your own self, and bring along the people you care about, your friends, family, immediate community, etc., then things will generally be improving for you. There are examples of strong communities that survive everything else melting down around them because they keep their own heads, stay on their grind, and avoid getting overly caught up in the goings on of all the other folks who are going nuts elsewhere (Venice is such an example; Rome fell apart but Venice, part of the empire, stayed fine, IIRC). Sometimes these places end up birthing new nations/empires; sometimes they just weather the storm a lot better than most.

Chase

Indeed, as the good book says, there's nothing better than enjoying the fruits of one's labor!

 

[Chase]

We're pretty far off topic here, but just wanted to continue the interesting discussion with @Will_V (probably I should split these off into a separate topic in OT):

Wouldn't it be the opposite? If globalization brings countries together under some kind of mutual identity, then the 'other' - the enemy that might come and conquer the weakened civilization - would seem to be more difficult to identify, and therefore the collapse would accelerate, would it not? Unless I suppose the cultural identities failed to integrate, and the proximity and dependence only made the risk clearer.

Humans are tribal. There's always an 'other'

Once the system becomes too far reaching and all external threats have been extinguished, the world shrinks, and groups within the system begin othering each other and warring to divvy up who gets what size slice of the system pie.

You see that in US right now, a polyglot nation of all groups against all other groups, each tribe vying for more power at the expense of the other tribes, and it all really got bad when the US became the leading world power and external threats largely subsided.

New generations were born into tremendous wealth and safety, saw no reason to remain united, and people in each group started shoving the groups next to that and saying, "Hey, give me that! Your share's too much! That should be mine!"

Definitely difficult to say in my opinion, one wonders whether the lines are drawn more clearly between things other than countries these days.

I'd say 'empires' or 'spheres of influence' these days.

The Western Empire is first and foremost today a banking and corporate empire, that shifted its capital from London to New York and its main power base from the British to the US military, but there are all these connections between the US as #1, the UK as #2, and then other members of the West in various roles as participants or underlings in that system.

So yeah, not really 'countries' so much, and the US is in my opinion barely holding together as a 'country' anymore... still a somewhat easy shorthand for talking about these phenomena though.

I'm trying to find the time to study more about the changes occurring in Russia and China (or at least their strategies) lately. China seems to have had something of a shift in the way it wants the world to view it, which could have all kinds of internal effects.

China and Russia have both stepped it up a lot lately.

Russia in particular seems to have tightened up its game just over the last year or so and found its footing. China really started nailing things down maybe 6-7 years ago and has grown increasingly confident.

The sharks started swimming after the 2020 presidential election debacle. I think that, more than anything else, showed China and Russia the US was well on its way out and they could stop having to pussyfoot around so much (as they had been doing).

I know there are many repeating times in history where there is a collective 'end of history' illusion. What I think makes this different in some way is the advent of technology and the failure to properly understand its relationship to the human experience. The idea of technological development outpacing the ability for humans to understand it has never happened before and I believe it has caused something of a collective psychological crisis.

For one thing, fields are already so complex that a person could spend more than one lifetime studying everything in it. That makes it very difficult for people to intuit the shifts and changes that will occur as a result of different paths of technological development, and I believe has made people generally very pessimistic about the future, due to this disorientation.

One thing that interests me very much is how art reflects the sort of collective 'psychological state' of a civilization. I've listened to a lot of Sir Roger Scruton's stuff about art and architecture. It made me think about how the ugliness of postmodern art, at least in part, came about as an attempt to integrate technology into the collective psyche - a lot of postmodern art involves taking some utilitarian, mechanical item and attempting to merge it in some way with the human body.

Interesting perspectives. Yes, the information inundation and the expansion of information in fields draws people away from any kind of awareness of their place in history. In general people alive today seem to be uniquely uneducated compared to people even 100 years ago; the average educated man then had read both the Bible and Plutarch, and had multiple examples of civilizations rising and falling, great men coming to power and losing it, whereas people today mostly seem to be ignorant of historical processes and view everything happening as a "first time."

I wonder if that's something completely new, or if there are analogues for that in other past societies too.

One thing I've realized recently is that there's very little I actually want to learn from the open Internet anymore. Much of the good stuff is paywalled. Just surfing around it's all just popcorn entertainment / time wasters / gossip / speculation. You can buy books on Amazon or pirate movies to watch, and that can get you some worthwhile stuff. But there is this paucity of real good information online.

You learn so much more reading an actual book on something than you do skimming the Wikipedia page, for instance, and you have to get the book to get the full picture, because the Wikipedia page just links to more articles with snippets (if they're even still online).

So it's not just information explosion... it is also an explosion of this really trite, repetitive, boring, meaningless "information", too.

The decline of art is one of those cyclical concepts in late stage civilizations. Happens every time...

Together with the fact that science fiction, the domain of imagining the future, has become incredibly dystopian, often with themes of a war between 'real people' and either technology itself (as AI) or some technologically weaponized oppressive society.

Not that I think these fears are entirely unfounded, but I don't exactly see what solution there is to creating a perspective on technological development that properly includes its potential positive effects as well.

This is to say nothing about other disturbing aspects of technological development, such as what people will do if machines can do everything, that possibly add to the impact of this on the emergence of a new civilization.

It's fun to look at what genres become popular and what that says about people's hopes and fears.

Hollywood is essentially philosophically nihilistic and materialistic, and nihilists and materialists tend to be very afraid of death. So they produce a lot of dystopian fiction where everything falls apart: zombie apocalypses, murder-machine apocalypses, and so on.

Then there's other elements to it... I think one of the things with zombie movies is wish fulfillment for people: "Just think if I could take whatever I wanted from stores without having to pay, shoot people without going to jail and instead being the good guy for it, rise up out of my station in life and become a hero, build up a fort and fortify it against attacks from barbarians outside," etc. Not a lot of ways to do that that 'feel' realistic in modern life; in a real life civilization total breakdown, raiders will just show up with guns and shoot you if you're a regular Joe, so you won't be a hero there, and period pieces aren't as compelling because they happened hundreds of years ago, not now.

Indeed, as the good book says, there's nothing better than enjoying the fruits of one's labor!

Chase

 

[Train]

The Western Empire is first and foremost today a banking and corporate empire, that shifted its capital from London to New York and its main power base from the British to the US military, but there are all these connections between the US as #1, the UK as #2, and then other members of the West in various roles as participants or underlings in that system.

I always like these sorts of posts diving into the boarder social dynamics. Helps contextualize a lot of the things more micro.

I was wondering, how is this Western empire connected or bounded? Is it basically just the collective will or net summation of elites in multiple positions of power (CEOs, boards, corp associations, high profile political figures or agencies) interacting and bound together in a sort of symbiotic relationship? Independent of nationality, culture, ethnic backgrounds?

Just curious because I find the idea of an empire not necessarily bound by land to be novel (at least compared to how mainstream media portrays it "US this, Russia that", etc).

I also wonder if pitting the idea of "nations" against one another is a similar tactic like the US does with followers of both parties as a diversion so the spotlight is off those pulling the strings.

PS. I would definitely subscribe to something like GeopoliticiansChase if it existed lol. At least before some country marks it for "misinformation" hahah

 

[Winston]

I was wondering, how is this Western empire connected or bounded? Is it basically just the collective will or net summation of elites in multiple positions of power (CEOs, boards, corp associations, high profile political figures or agencies) interacting and bound together in a sort of symbiotic relationship? Independent of nationality, culture, ethnic backgrounds?

Just curious because I find the idea of an empire not necessarily bound by land to be novel (at least compared to how mainstream media portrays it "US this, Russia that", etc).

I also wonder if pitting the idea of "nations" against one another is a similar tactic like the US does with followers of both parties as a diversion so the spotlight is off those pulling the strings.

PS. I would definitely subscribe to something like GeopoliticiansChase if it existed lol. At least before some country marks it for "misinformation" hahah

There are political and military structures that bounds the West together, under the aegis of United States: NATO and European Union (EU).

When you study the history of EU you see that this political construction was made with the blessing and active participation of the USA: all the key people had tied with the USA. Today, this is still true.

Besides political structures, another very important piece of the puzzle, are power networks of elites (which are transnational), without the blessing of those established transnational power networks of people, no one can achieve political influence.

In a concrete way, in Western Europe no one can achieve a position of influence in the media or in the political spectrum if he is not aligned with USA interests. That is, it is impossible to achieve a position of power by advocating an exit of the NATO or of the European Union. In my country, even so-called anti-esthablisment political candidates take positions that give the impression of breaking away from these 2 political structures, but they never go as far as to recommend exiting these structures. Otherwise, they wouldn't exist in the media (and thus politically) and key power networks would instantly stop supporting them.

So basically there are political structures that enforces real (ie. militay) power and the vassalization of any Western countries to the USA. There are mass media that enforce the narratives corresponding to the interests of real power. And encompassing it all, there are established power networks of people, that share common interests and a similar world view, that co-opt and fund any political and media elites.

 

[Train]

There are political and military structures that bounds the West together, under the aegis of United Stats: NATO and European Union (EU).

When you study the history of EU you see that this political construction was made with the blessing and active participation of the USA: all the key people had tied with the USA. Today, this is still true.

Besides political structures, another very important piece of the puzzle, are power networks of elites (which are transnational), without the blessing of those established transnational power networks of people, no one can achieve political influence.

In a concrete way, in Western Europe no one can achieve a position of influence in the media or in the political spectrum if he is not aligned with USA interests. That is, it is impossible to achieve a position of power by advocating an exit of the NATO or the European Union. In my western country (France), even so-called anti-esthablisment political candidates take positions that give the impression of breaking away from these 2 political structures, but they never go as far as to recommend exiting these structures. Otherwise, they wouldn't exist in the media (and thus politically) and key power networks would instantly stop to support them.

So basically there are political structures that enforces real (ie. militay) power and the vassalization of any Western countries to the USA. There are mass media that enforce the narratives corresponding to the interests of real power. And encompassing it all, there are established power networks of people, that share common interests and a similar world view, that co-opt and fund any political and media elites.

Great writeup, thank you! It really helps answer what I was looking for in a concise and effective way.

I've seen pieces of this puzzle here and there but laid out like this helps to really capture the bigger picture and how all these players interact.

Particularly, this helps me better understand a case with a former US president (unnamed to avoid too much politics) where both sides of the aisles were adamantly against him because he was a total outsider who railed against the establishment. Sounds like he was not accepted by the power players in both politics and media to some extent until eventually they somewhat accepted him once it seemed he would not go away.

Reminded also how another former president mentioned that the US presidency was like middle management. Which I think really shines a light on how there are these structures or alliances that need to be interacted with to really get anything going.

 

[Chase]

Good writeup from @Winston, I agree.

@Train,

Empires often become geopolitically semi-fluid if they get big enough. The power center in the Roman Empire shifted eventually from Rome to Constantinople, and Rome, the founding city and core of the empire for a very long time, eventually became relegated to being more or less just another city in the empire, and was eventually give up altogether as no longer worth maintaining (the descendants still living there where of those who FOUNDED the empire, but somehow the empire they founded had over time completely abandoned them and moved its seat elsewhere... weird to think about, right?). Similar things have happened in China (where the capital has moved many times) -- just think about the Mongol Empire, founded by Mongolians in Mongolia, but eventually ruled by Kublai Khan from Beijing with mostly Chinese advisors.

What we have in the West right now with the power really resting in the hands of massive, privately-owned banks and massive, largely-privately-owned corporations (they're on the stock exchanges, but much of the big corporations' stock is owned by Black Rock and Vanguard, either directly, or through thousands of shell companies), that are somewhat borderless.... many of the top people have wealth, property, and even citizenships spread around among several countries. You still need population bases and militaries (tied to specific countries) to enforce order or acquire new resources or coerce parties who aren't playing ball.

The relationship of the citizens of states within an empire to the empire itself is often complicated. Using the US as an example, Americans enjoyed unprecedented prosperity after WWII, when Europe's manufacturing capacity was destroyed and the US got to make everything and export it everywhere and funnel massive wealth into itself, with banks and corporations taking their cuts. Then around 1980 or so, with so much wealth in the US, Americans were too expensive to have profitably doing labor to export, so you saw a dynamic shift, where everything became about the same big banks and corporations building and funding projects to manufacture overseas and import that into the US, with, again, the banks and corporations taking their cuts as the wealth that had flowed into middle America flowed back out into the rest of the world again. So you could say middle America benefited from the empire for decades, and now it has been getting hollowed out by the same empire. People in the cities, closer to the banks and corporations or working or them directly, tend to do better than other people -- they're on the banks and corporations' payrolls (not coincidentally, people in cities tend to support imperial ambitions and causes, while people in the countryside no longer do).

From my reading of history, this seems to be a pretty normal part of the cycle too: during the early periods, when the empire is drawing in wealth from outside itself, the rising tide lifts all boats. Later on, when external wealth runs dry, it turns to extracting wealth from its own people, starting with those farthest from the city centers, since they have less direct access to the decision makers, little ability to affect anything at a civilization scale, and effects on them stay invisible longer to the folks making and enforcing the rules.

Maybe think of cities as the nerve centers of an empire... when the empire starts running out of fuel, it consumes the rest of the body first, trying to keep the nerves/brain alive. If one part of the body is healthier than the others, it will shift operations over to there. Thus the Roman empire shifted operations from Rome to Constantinople (better resources, better defenses, and much better trading position); the Mongol Empire moved from Mongolia (poor in resources and brain power) to Beijing (rich in both); the Western banking empire shifted operations from the UK to the US; etc.

If you think about an empire as sort of a system / control grid unto itself, it becomes a little easier to see how it can move itself gradually from one location to another. It's never immediate though -- usually there is a gradual transition where the two chunks are roughly equally powerful, until eventually the new seat supersedes the old one, and eventually starts bossing around the original seat of the empire.


@climbingup,

Hey guys, can we talk about Ukraine in this thread? Or should I make a new one?

It is absolutely crazy what's happening. Russian tanks in Kyiv!

Only if we can discuss it at a high level.

We have Americans, Russians, and Ukrainians in our community.

I don't want any jingoism, media-zombie demonization of anyone, or flag-swinging rallying cries. If we get any partisan nonsense, I will lock the thread.

Chase

 

[Winston]

Reminded also how another former president mentioned that the US presidency was like middle management. Which I think really shines a light on how there are these structures or alliances that need to be interacted with to really get anything going.

Yeah basically with democracies, the ruler is choosen by the elites (and not by the people, contrary to the media-enforced popular belief). That means the ruler is not the real ruler, he is only part of a power networks of people, with not much leeway.

Once in a blue moon, a man has enough will and political acumen to take back the power from his initial peers and keep it (think someone in power in Russia, who was initially chosen by a network of oligarchs, but managed to take back power from them). The democracy then turns into an autocracy.

But more often than not, the elites win and the ambitious man looses (they killed Julius Caesar, or they ousted the former POTUS you were mentionning). And that's why the West Empire advocates for democracies anywhere in the world: democracy means the elites can control it.

But I think all this kind of tension between autocracy and democracy are just smaller scale political dynamics within the bigger civilisational cycles described by @Chase, although this probably will turn out to be a very relevant factor in the several coming decades.

 

[Will_V]

Good writeup from @Winston, I agree.

@Train,

Empires often become geopolitically semi-fluid if they get big enough. The power center in the Roman Empire shifted eventually from Rome to Constantinople, and Rome, the founding city and core of the empire for a very long time, eventually became relegated to being more or less just another city in the empire, and was eventually give up altogether as no longer worth maintaining (the descendants still living there where of those who FOUNDED the empire, but somehow the empire they founded had over time completely abandoned them and moved its seat elsewhere... weird to think about, right?). Similar things have happened in China (where the capital has moved many times) -- just think about the Mongol Empire, founded by Mongolians in Mongolia, but eventually ruled by Kublai Khan from Beijing with mostly Chinese advisors.

This makes me wonder, will the West gain a new power center in a developing westernized country, such as India?

On that note, what difference does it make to the decline of an empire when it is faced with a very powerful and popularly understood threat (as is the case with the threat of Russia)? You mentioned previously that having an enemy causes a declining civilization to pull together somewhat in spite of its situation. I can hardly think of a more powerful and obstinate one than Russia. Would this occur as a slowing down of the decline, or as a sudden shift, a transformation, that sends the West on a new and reinvigorated path, perhaps with a slightly different identity?

 

[Spyce D]

It's strange that when people (especially in pua circles) talk about civilisations , they usually avoid talking about indic/bharātiyā/sanatani civilisation.

But , it's not their fault when indians (living in west ) show themselves to be just employee material , subservient , not knowing much about their civilisation ( real history , not the Marxist interpretation) , not knowing anything about power politics (of empires) .

And Then talk about "how i am indian / brown , no white girl / any girl want to date me " .

Shut up!!

 

[Chase]

Note: I've split the Russia-Ukraine war discussion off to a separate thread (here).