Why Empires Fail
Niall Ferguson makes an interesting point in his recent essay in Foreign Affairs. Titled ' Complexity and Chaos ', his central premise is that while we may tend to try to identify the reasons why empires collapse, these efforts are over-deterministic and suffers from 'narrative fallacy'. He attempts to illustrate this point by referring to the precipitous collapse of Rome, which happened in a matter of decades; or, that of Soviet Union, which withered away in a matter of days. Indeed, empires are complex systems, with many factors influencing one another and also the final outcome. While we tend to apply a sort of linear causation, which is equally employed to explain the rise of great powers as well as their decline, it is not the way the real world works. Professor Ferguson refers in context to the current prognosis about the decline of American empire, and contends that this may happen not in a series of logical steps as we seem to expect it, but with an abrupt, chao...