The Roman Empire suffered from plenty of invasions and direct military defeats during its peak years. The Roman Empire also showed plenty of what people would

The Roman Empire suffered from plenty of invasions and direct military defeats during its peak years. The Roman Empire also showed plenty of what people would see as obvious signs of decline during what we now call its rise. The idea that an Empire follows a 3 act trajectory of rise, plateau, and fall is incorrect or at least incomplete. The history of empires is one of multiple waves of expansion and contraction. The peak can only be seen in hindsight. While you’re in it, you might be able to see the slope, but there’s no way to tell whether you’re headed towards local or global maxima or minima. If you’d asked a Roman on the street in 53 BC, after a Roman army had been decisively beaten by the Parthians, he probably would have been worried about obvious signs of decline as well, but that was well over a century before what most people think of as the peak of the empire. That’s not to say America can’t be sliding off of a global maximum, but there’s absolutely no way to tell until it’s over.