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Did the British Empire collapse during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when it was embarassingly unable to open a major shipping chokepoint via military force? Did we

Did the British Empire collapse during the Suez Crisis of 1956, when it was embarassingly unable to open a major shipping chokepoint via military force? Did we know it had by 1957, or did that take a little longer to confirm the shape of the decline?

kasey_junk 2mo ago
India was already independent by then. That seems like it would have been a pretty strong signal.
- ceejayoz 2mo ago
  Didn't we rather embarrasingly withdraw from Afghanistan recently after two decades of trying to build a functioning government, only to have the Taliban take it back in a matter of days? You're kinda making the point I'm making; the sound of an empire collapsing is often a long rumble, not a sudden snap.
  - kasey_junk 2mo ago
    If your suggestion is that the US might be in decline and there have been lots of signals of that going back 30 years, I’m pretty sympathetic. But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same.
    - ceejayoz 2mo ago
      > But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same. Yes, one's a superpower failing to project power over a critical waterway to much international embarassment, the other is… oh.
      - kasey_junk 2mo ago
        Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? Did it get its population and infrastructure destroyed across 2 generations in world wars in the last 50? Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? I might count alienating NATO and China's growing independence as uncomfortably close to that, yes. > Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Doesn't that make our inability to effectively project power more embarassing? We don't even have to scrap our warships to fund operations; we're dismantling our global soft power sources willingly. > Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? Like the UK once was?
        kasey_junk 2mo ago
        By the time of the Suez incident the uk hadn’t been the dominant global economy for going on 70 years. The second Boer war is probably a better example of shocking poor outcome for their empire by that timeline. Queen Victoria was still alive at that point and ww1 was in the future. Even after ww1 when it was obvious the empire was severely diminished the English retained outsized soft power at least and had until the 60s for the empire to be truly dismantled.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        Again, all this asserts "it takes a while", which I'm not contesting at all.
        throwawaypath 2mo ago
        >The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable. You dismantled him here. He has no response.
smackeyacky 2mo ago
In retrospect the inability of the empire to hold Singapore against the Japanese in WW2 and leave Australia in the hands of the US was the unraveling of the British empire. The Dutch one as well with the fall of the Dutch East Indies.

kasey_junk 2mo ago

India was already independent by then. That seems like it would have been a pretty strong signal.

ceejayoz 2mo ago
Didn't we rather embarrasingly withdraw from Afghanistan recently after two decades of trying to build a functioning government, only to have the Taliban take it back in a matter of days? You're kinda making the point I'm making; the sound of an empire collapsing is often a long rumble, not a sudden snap.
- kasey_junk 2mo ago
  If your suggestion is that the US might be in decline and there have been lots of signals of that going back 30 years, I’m pretty sympathetic. But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same.
  - ceejayoz 2mo ago
    > But if it’s specifically the Iran war fiasco compared to the Suez incident I’d suggest those aren’t particularly the same. Yes, one's a superpower failing to project power over a critical waterway to much international embarassment, the other is… oh.
    - kasey_junk 2mo ago
      Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? Did it get its population and infrastructure destroyed across 2 generations in world wars in the last 50? Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable.
      - ceejayoz 2mo ago
        > Did the US lose control of the most populous part of its “empire” in the last 20 years? I might count alienating NATO and China's growing independence as uncomfortably close to that, yes. > Has the US just come off of required rationing for basic food stuffs and been running in 20 years of austerity? Doesn't that make our inability to effectively project power more embarassing? We don't even have to scrap our warships to fund operations; we're dismantling our global soft power sources willingly. > Or is the US still the dominant economy in the world, with a problem of over abundance of staples and stuff? Like the UK once was?
        kasey_junk 2mo ago
        By the time of the Suez incident the uk hadn’t been the dominant global economy for going on 70 years. The second Boer war is probably a better example of shocking poor outcome for their empire by that timeline. Queen Victoria was still alive at that point and ww1 was in the future. Even after ww1 when it was obvious the empire was severely diminished the English retained outsized soft power at least and had until the 60s for the empire to be truly dismantled.
        ceejayoz 2mo ago
        Again, all this asserts "it takes a while", which I'm not contesting at all.
      - throwawaypath 2mo ago
        >The idea that late 1950s uk and the 2026 us are equivalent is laughable. You dismantled him here. He has no response.

smackeyacky 2mo ago

In retrospect the inability of the empire to hold Singapore against the Japanese in WW2 and leave Australia in the hands of the US was the unraveling of the British empire. The Dutch one as well with the fall of the Dutch East Indies.