Decline and fall of the Empire of Ideas

Around AD17 the Emperor Tiberius fixed the northern border of the Roman Empire on the Rhine. There would be no further campaigns of conquest.

Communications were stretched, there was little economic benefit in the gloomy Germanic forests and the tribes which lurked there were too difficult to control.

In AD2018 United States President Donald Trump decided to withdraw his forces from Syria and half of those in Afghanistan, deciding the cost of maintaining them in the fight against Islamic extremism had no economic benefit with no end in sight.

Unlike Rome’s, the US Empire is not a physical one of territory, but of ideas and ideals – summed up by one of the greatest American Presidents as government of the people, for the people and by the people.

This empire opposed the other significant ideologies of the 20^th century — first fascism, where people were subservient to an all-powerful state; then communism with its emphasis on government by an elite of a single political party — and defeated them both.    

For a while it seemed the US Empire of Ideas had triumphed as its traditional enemies crumbled before it, but the borders, while extended were still borders and beyond it new enemies were gathering strength, marshalling under the banner of radical Islam.

Just as Rome’s forward march was halted by the disastrous Teutoburg Forest campaign, The US became bogged down in messy, unending conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan and like Rome, has made the momentous decision they are no longer worth the effort.

To Tiberius, living in the first decades of what is now called the Common Era, the decision would have seemed a no brainer. The empire was vast and prosperous, containing all that was needed for the good life. There was no need to be troubled with a bunch of barbarians living in distant unprofitable lands. Let them keep their miserable forests.

For Trump, elected on an America First platform by voters many of whom are proud to proclaim they have never owned a passport, his decision would have seemed equally logical; why waste the nation’s wealth on endless wars in distant places when a border wall, built for far less cost, could maintain the bountiful land from sea to shining sea?

History is long. The Roman Empire did not collapse for another four centuries after Tiberius’ fateful decision and, in fact, continued to grow in strength for a while, but the seeds of its destruction had been planted, momentum had been lost; its eventual decline inevitable.

Likewise a world without US involvement and leadership is not going to disintegrate overnight. It will even be hailed by those who prefer to concentrate on US failings rather than its achievements.

The hysteria of the 24-hour news cycle may proclaim dissolution and chaos around the corner, but there will probably be no great change in the lifetimes of those reading this article.

Yet the enemies lurking outside the borders will have taken heart from the latest decrees out of Washington, noting them as the first signs of vulnerability. Future historians may well mark 2018 as the date when the long, inexorable decline of the Empire of Ideas began.