Empire Trap
by Bob Reuschlein, earlwal@chorus.net
The life cycle of an empire follows definite paths and points of
demarcation. In the beginning low military spending accelerates the
rise and high military spending guarantees the eventual end. The
turning point is based on the allure of power, domination, and control,
the empire trap.
The Rise
Rome started with a part time farmer army, perhaps like a
bowling league today, not inhibiting homeland production. They were
located on a peninsula, Italy, so seas protected them from outsiders, as
was later the case for Britain, America, and Japan.
Britain, safely off the continent, could be more innovative and
less defensive, hence beating the French costly and heavily armored
knights with very low cost bows and arrows in the 1215 battle of
Agincourt. America had a whole continent to itself with no major powers
around to force it to waste resources on defense. Yankee ingenuity
resulted in a steady rise up to World War Two.
Japan was off the continent, allowing them to resist the Mongol
hoards. But their real development happened after WWII, forced to
demilitarize under the American occupation. In 2000 their per capita
economy (GDP) was 24% higher than America.
The Turning Point
Rome adopted the emperor system and an increasingly expensive
professional military at the same time, with the Senate voting to give
powers to the first emperor.
The watershed for America was World War Two. Before WWII
America had a 1% military GDP and during the Cold War an 8% average
military GDP. Japan had a 7% military GDP in the thirties and 1% after
the war until now.
Eisenhower encouraged retaining military production after the
war, Truman and the Secretary of State supported him and against the
wishes of the War Department and the chiefs of staff, America abandoned
the historically successful pattern of low military spending between
wars. They had caught the empire disease from Churchill and Britain.
The Fall
At the time of the Janasaries of the Eastern Roman Empire in
Constantinople an average soldier was paid sixteen times what a soldier
in Britain earned at the same time.
The emperor would advise his successor to “always pay the
military well”
to keep their loyalty. In America this had lead to a 1%/year linear
rise in the gap between defense contractor pay and similar private
sector jobs since 1942. The gap rose to 26% by 1968, 38% by 1981 and
41% by 1984. In Britain, the highest military spender in Western Europe
between wars during the twentieth century, has dramatically dropped from
10% of the world economy in 1900 to 4% in 2000.
Various comparisons of America, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Japan in
the seventies, eighties, and nineties show that murder and crime rates
are 99.6% exactly proportional to long term average military spending
rates. Those countries are listed in rank order from high
military/murder to low military/murder. The ratio of America to Japan
is six to one.
Social decay matches economic decay. A forward looking
manufacturing innovative achievement society with lots of engineers and
equality, becomes a sideways looking service defensive control and
power-oriented society of lawyers, lords and serfs.
Income inequality returns to medieval levels, another period of
militarism and stagnation.