csteele,

"The second is one we can take from history. It is claimed by some scholars that the real decline of the Roman empire set in around the time of Commodus."

That's with the benefit of hindsight. There were some reforming Emperors after Commodus-- Aurelian, Diocletian and Constantine, who succeeded in slowing the decline. The Empire was also faced with enormous external pressure from the barbarians and Persians, and later the Moslems. The Americans are safe in their hemisphere and still have, by far, the world's most efficient military machine.

The Eastern Roman Empire survived for centuries after the collapse of the West, a fact which is often overlooked.

Yes the Romans were often their own worst enemies, but there's more to the story, with a little more luck, the Imperium Romanum might still exist. There was no inevitability about the Roman decline and there is nothing inevitable about the forecast decline of the US

Dear Mac,

'That's with the benefit of hindsight.', sure but to throw in another adage, 'those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.'

However I will confess to being attuned to the history of the Roman Empire and it's lessons for the Republic of the United States of American as I am availing myself of an excellent podcast series by Mike Duncan. I am half way through the Second Punic war at the moment. 

Mike is really interesting, not only in his references to the current dominant power throughout the podcasts, but also by revealing how much the founders and settlers of the US were so cognizant and appreciative of Roman History.

For instance Cincinnati was named after Cincinnatus who relinquished power and returned to humble pursuits after defeating the invading northern tribes. 

"His immediate resignation of his absolute authority with the end of the crisis has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, lack of personal ambition and modesty." Wikipedia

Washington's similar action after the Revolution is honored by the Society of Cincinnati.

As you say the US is indeed blessed with relatively benign neighbours and extensive ocean borders but the flip side is the need to extend its military presence to protect trade and supply routes on the other side of the world. This requirement soaks up funds that might otherwise go to social spending and the incarceration rate flags the effects.

As I said I don't see the decline as totally irreversible I'm just not seeing the willingness to get the job done. When China recently set quite ambitious targets to attack poverty it was not hard to see them achieving them purely because the determination is there. The furore over Obamacare leaves little sense of the same for the US.

mac, csteele

How much do we actually know about the fall of the Roman Empire?

Most of what we think we know is simply a rehash of Gibbons.

Here's in a nutshell what I learned in history.

--Western Roman Empire falls in fifth century

--Dark ages. Science, technology, arts, literature, commerce stagnate

--Muslims keep learning alive

--Greek knowledge recovered from Muslims

--Renaissance, enlightenment, progress

--Eastern Roman Empire does not rate a mention

And for a long time I believed it.

Only the archaeological evidence says something different. It says that while the Western Empire may have fallen Roman civilisation persisted for many centuries. Instead of an abrupt change there was actually a gradual transition from classical Roman civilisation to the more vibrant civilisations that succeeded it.

The period between the supposed fall of the Roman Empire and the advent of the renaissance in Western Europe was actually a time of great technological advance and vibrant commerce. It was during this period that Western Europe was laying the foundation for what was, in effect, the world's first knowledge economy.

For those who want to understand what really happened in the aftermath of the (supposed) fall I recommend:

Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered by Peter S. Wells

http://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Angels-Dark-Ages-Reconsidered/dp/0393060756

Never mind the hand wringing of the Roman writers that Gibbons relies on so heavily. This is the on-the-ground evidence of what really happened.

mac wrote:

>>At least half the commenters here appear to be missing the point entirely-too busy with their own agendas>>

I have to agree with you. People who are blinded by ideology will always try and shoehorn everything into their preconceived notions.

mac

As you point out the Eastern Roman Empire persisted until the fifteenth century, until it was overwhelmed by the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

It was the Ottomans that produced the great stagnation in science, technology and the arts.

It is now hard to believe that pre-Islamic North Africa, Middle-East and Arabia were once great centres of learning. It was astronomers in present day Iraq who, using only naked eye astronomy, laid the basis for our modern calendar. They discovered that 235 lunar months equalled 19 tropical years. They also mapped the paths of the planets between the constellations using a sort of primitive sine function. Much of Greek cosmology is based on the observations of those early Babylonian astronomers.

It was Eratosthenes, born in present day Libya, third librarian of the Great Library of Alexandria so shamefully destroyed by the Christians, who gave us our first realistic estimate of the circumference of the Earth in the third century BC. His experiment was as ingenious as any designed by a modern scientist.

See: http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Eratosthenes.html

The Romans called present day Yemen "Arabia Felicia" because of its wealth and its sophisticated commercial culture. Hard to believe when we look at present day Yemen.

The rest of pre-Islamic Arabia, including present-day Saudi Arabia, too had a sophisticated commercial culture.

Many people think of Islam as a primitive religion because they think it originated in a primitive part of the world. They may be mixing up cause and effect.

csteele,

When I think about reasons for a possible American decline and fall it's not the Roman Empire that comes to mind but the Ottoman Empire. I worry that the kind of anti-science mentality that ultimately destroyed the Ottomans could infect the USA. Could Christian fundamentalists do to America what Islam did to the Ottomans?

Come to think of it, that worries me about Australia as well.

csteele,

I'm another fan of Mike Duncan, he presents a very coherent continuous narrative of Roman history, I'd also recommend Joseph Hogarty's "Europe; From its Origins." Hogarty is a critic of the idea that the Roman Empire collapsed suddenly in the 5th century, many of the barbarians who captured the Western Empire were, in fact, pro Roman and civilisation survived for centuries in some areas. In his opinion, the actual destruction of Greco-Roman civilisation was caused by the Islamic occupation that started in the 7th century, practically nothing survives in North Africa and the ME.

stevenmyer,

I'd also recommend Hogarty's podcast to you.

I disagree with you in regard to Islam, it indeed originated in a primitive tribal nomadic culture, this was the basis of the early Moslems' military advantage over the Romans and Sassanids and they were spectacularly lucky, of course.
The jury is still out as to who destroyed the library at Alexandria, there are many suspects, (most likely the Christians) but it probably also perished from neglect as Greco-Roman culture disappeared and Islamic civilisation stagnated.

I don't disagree with your comments re the Ottomans, however it's worth remembering that the "Golden Age" of Islam was over by the 13th century, everywhere in the Moslem world. The Ottomans simply absorbed the prevailing non-scientific culture.

Steven, I'd worry about Moslem fundamentalism as much as Christian fundamentalism.

Dear Steven and mac,

From the article I had assumed that rather than the thought of how long the US Empire may last Steven's proposition was centred around how long it will remain the 'dominate' world power.

That the Roman Empire survived in the East a reasonably healthy state in the guise of the Byzantine Empire for a thousand years past the fall of the Western Roman Empire is not in dispute. The question of course is was it the dominate world power through that period, even in a limited euro-asian sense? Of course not and the US is not, we hope, going to suffer a sharp decline outside a nuclear war even if it foregoes its position to China.

The most pertinent thing have I learned from listening to Mike Duncan's podcasts is that the Roman Empire was often on its knees having suffered defeats that had driven other powers of the time into the pages of history, but what kept them bouncing back was a deep investment in the notion of what it was to be a Roman. Pride, nationalism, patriotism, call it what you like but the citizenry bought into the narrative just as the much as the US citizen has up till now. Time and time again they were prepared to put their bodies and wealth on the line for Rome. The citizen soldier is an ethic that sustained both empires. It ultimately proved too powerful for the very well equipped and dominant mercenary armies of Carthage (note the growing propensity of the US to engage mercenaries).

So does that ethic pervade the Chinese? Here in the West we have been taught to assume no. Images such as those of Tienanmen Square still inform the notion that the people are terribly oppressed and can not wait to throw the yoke of government rule from their shoulders. Over the last few years I come into contact with quite a number of Chinese students studying here and I must say there is a strident nationalism that surfaces when longer discussions are ventured.

Cont...