Crossing the Rubicon

Narrative history at its best and the opening paragraphs are some of the best English you could read anywhere. Caesar as he stood looking across the Rubicon what must he have thought, committing a crime against the City he loved.

As a Western European, ancient Greece and Rome will always fascinate me more than the great Eastern empires, although the Mongols you could argue are the primary difference between Russia and Western Europe. If you go to Russia you can still see the genetic legacy and parts of that great country were dominated for hundreds of years by the horde, or should I say the golden horde.

Rome was the first great European empire and there began the movement of power away from the middle East, although, they had another renaissance after the collapse of the Roman empire and as we all know reintroduced Plato to Europe. So why did Rome fall and what lessons does that give us for the future?

It is a scary world for the Western powers now, as we move to a multi-polar world where power is shifting away from the traditional centres and those countries who once bestrode the world are now having to deal with a realignment. It may not appear so as Russians desperately try and live in Western Europe, impoverished Africans head in their droves to any European destination, yet Economic and military power is shifting. It might not always be so noticeable as these up and coming countries have chosen not to spend on their people. There are huge inequalities but precisely as they are not spending their wealth in such huge amounts on their social systems means they have more to spend on the military, infrastructure and perhaps nationalistic economic objectives.

Rome fell as all Empires do, now why... perhaps it is simply when a country is successful we focus on the positives and forget the negatives.... Perhaps Rome destroyed itself, its dynamism came from its competitiveness, perhaps it was the ending of the republic, perhaps it was the spread of ideas outside of its domain of control, perhaps it was the over use of lead in flavouring reducing the fertility of the elite.

So now one country bestrides the world, the sole economic and military super power. The only large country with a high standard of living, a capability to renew itself. Yet what will bring it down, perhaps it will be its short term democracy and an inability to focus on the long term. One election doesn't finish before the next one seems to start. Its people are hooked on every greater living standards, it requires always more immigrants to feed its creativity, perhaps there are the seeds of its downfall. Who knows, but as Hilary looks tearful and wonders whether she will follow her husband, pick up the book Crossing the Rubicon and wonder how will the US fall as it surely will and will it be in our life time, and does that make the world a scarier place?