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Sorry but I can't buy into using history to compare if an empire is collapsing or not especially in this case where the USA is apparently doing every fuck up al

by 0dayz 3y ago

Sorry but I can't buy into using history to compare if an empire is collapsing or not especially in this case where the USA is apparently doing every fuck up almost all other empires did. Each empire they bring up was torn apart with an entirely different world and multiple factors that the author didn't include.

RetroTechie 3y ago
Your point kind of illustrates the article: Past empires didn't learn from the history of earlier ones. Or failed to adapt to changing circumstances. And were then caught by surprise. True, knowing what happened to past empires may not help to see where a current great power is heading. But it does help to avoid past empires' mistakes. China appears better at avoiding such mistakes than the US, imho. That said: "This integration into Western-dominated and US-constructed international institutions and organisations would not only help China to become a ‘responsible actor’. It would also serve to constrain Beijing's threat to the wider liberal international order, neuter China's threat as a great power competitor and leave the US's primacy unquestioned." Western policy may have failed at the 2nd half of this quote. But maybe it did succeed at the 1st part? At least to some degree? China's economy is highly connected with the rest of the world. Any large-scale conflict would cause China huge economic pain, regardless of the capability to develop its own tech / military, manufacture its own goods, grow its own food, etc. Had China been (more) excluded from integration with Western economies & Western-led institutions, but developed on its own anyway, then today it could 'flex its muscle' with impunity. In the current situation, not as much. One should alway keep such alternative scenarios in mind, before claiming the current situation is worse in any way. Every nation that's welcomed into the international community, once in has something to lose. And as someone wrote: "Germany after WW1 had little to lose, and dived 'happily' into WW2. But 40y later, not so much: they'd be scared to get a scratch on their Mercedes". Today's China is much in that 40y's-on situation I think. The average Chinese isn't doing too bad. Why risk that by starting a conflict with <insert military/economic power here> ?
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  China and the west are in a MAD situation with their economies still. Maybe in 20 years they’ve disentangled but if there were sanctions / blockade on China that would mean the global economy taking a fall similar to the Great Depression
- mc32 3y ago
  This the reason Iran doesn’t open up and doesn’t care about sanctions. If they stopped doing the things that get them sanctioned they could 10x their economy but then the leadership or establishment would lose a lot of their power and ability to do as they please and follow their own version of self determination.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    aye, this is the way. CCP ain't remotely communist anymore, and at this point they're just the ruling bloc. they're not going to let go, nor are they going to rock the boat too much unless they're sure they can come out ahead.
derstander 3y ago
> Sorry but I can't buy into using history to compare if an empire is collapsing or not The point isn’t that history is the perfect tool for predicting collapse — it’s not. The point is it’s seemingly the best tool we have at this time. What would you suggest as an alternative? Gut feeling? Intuition? “Logic”? The last I deliberately put in scare quotes because there’s no from-first-principles mathematical / logical model of this that accounts for all of these things (and I kind of doubt there can be). And even if it was possible to create one, there isn’t one now and one has to navigate the world in its absence.
- 0dayz 3y ago
  The issue is that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. I'm not saying history is useless mind you. But the author is putting the cart before the horse, in that they don't form a strong foundation that is based on observable data or events that we suspect is contributing to the collapse. Instead they define a probable cause "Strategic naïvety", okay fine how do we know this is the cause? From The author we don't instead they just jump straight to historic similarities and is only focused on proving the link between present and the past. Instead to demonstrate a more proper way of analyzing plausible collapse, look at China. When we look for China there are various observable data and signs that it isn't doing to great for this demonstration I'll focus on the social aspect, because it's harming the backbone of Chinese might, it's demographic. We can observe various data here like the amount of young people, the amount of babies, immigrants, the welfare of the people, homelessness, social services etc. We can also look at social dynamics such as how many people get together, what about the social hierarchy, how much trust do people have in society, how does socialization generally work? What about it's antisocial cultural norms how severe are they? Etc. Now we can start forming a more proper picture of what the social issue are that are harming demographics, and the inability of the government to even want to consider the issue. Now we can look into history for inspiration or as a alternative timeline into what happen, but not to how things will play out.

by 0dayz 3y ago

RetroTechie 3y ago

Your point kind of illustrates the article: Past empires didn't learn from the history of earlier ones. Or failed to adapt to changing circumstances. And were then caught by surprise. True, knowing what happened to past empires may not help to see where a current great power is heading. But it does help to avoid past empires' mistakes. China appears better at avoiding such mistakes than the US, imho. That said: "This integration into Western-dominated and US-constructed international institutions and organisations would not only help China to become a ‘responsible actor’. It would also serve to constrain Beijing's threat to the wider liberal international order, neuter China's threat as a great power competitor and leave the US's primacy unquestioned." Western policy may have failed at the 2nd half of this quote. But maybe it did succeed at the 1st part? At least to some degree? China's economy is highly connected with the rest of the world. Any large-scale conflict would cause China huge economic pain, regardless of the capability to develop its own tech / military, manufacture its own goods, grow its own food, etc. Had China been (more) excluded from integration with Western economies & Western-led institutions, but developed on its own anyway, then today it could 'flex its muscle' with impunity. In the current situation, not as much. One should alway keep such alternative scenarios in mind, before claiming the current situation is worse in any way. Every nation that's welcomed into the international community, once in has something to lose. And as someone wrote: "Germany after WW1 had little to lose, and dived 'happily' into WW2. But 40y later, not so much: they'd be scared to get a scratch on their Mercedes". Today's China is much in that 40y's-on situation I think. The average Chinese isn't doing too bad. Why risk that by starting a conflict with <insert military/economic power here> ?

coffeebeqn 3y ago
China and the west are in a MAD situation with their economies still. Maybe in 20 years they’ve disentangled but if there were sanctions / blockade on China that would mean the global economy taking a fall similar to the Great Depression
mc32 3y ago
This the reason Iran doesn’t open up and doesn’t care about sanctions. If they stopped doing the things that get them sanctioned they could 10x their economy but then the leadership or establishment would lose a lot of their power and ability to do as they please and follow their own version of self determination.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  aye, this is the way. CCP ain't remotely communist anymore, and at this point they're just the ruling bloc. they're not going to let go, nor are they going to rock the boat too much unless they're sure they can come out ahead.

derstander 3y ago

> Sorry but I can't buy into using history to compare if an empire is collapsing or not The point isn’t that history is the perfect tool for predicting collapse — it’s not. The point is it’s seemingly the best tool we have at this time. What would you suggest as an alternative? Gut feeling? Intuition? “Logic”? The last I deliberately put in scare quotes because there’s no from-first-principles mathematical / logical model of this that accounts for all of these things (and I kind of doubt there can be). And even if it was possible to create one, there isn’t one now and one has to navigate the world in its absence.

0dayz 3y ago
The issue is that history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes. I'm not saying history is useless mind you. But the author is putting the cart before the horse, in that they don't form a strong foundation that is based on observable data or events that we suspect is contributing to the collapse. Instead they define a probable cause "Strategic naïvety", okay fine how do we know this is the cause? From The author we don't instead they just jump straight to historic similarities and is only focused on proving the link between present and the past. Instead to demonstrate a more proper way of analyzing plausible collapse, look at China. When we look for China there are various observable data and signs that it isn't doing to great for this demonstration I'll focus on the social aspect, because it's harming the backbone of Chinese might, it's demographic. We can observe various data here like the amount of young people, the amount of babies, immigrants, the welfare of the people, homelessness, social services etc. We can also look at social dynamics such as how many people get together, what about the social hierarchy, how much trust do people have in society, how does socialization generally work? What about it's antisocial cultural norms how severe are they? Etc. Now we can start forming a more proper picture of what the social issue are that are harming demographics, and the inability of the government to even want to consider the issue. Now we can look into history for inspiration or as a alternative timeline into what happen, but not to how things will play out.