cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/61936
As a veteran of the U.S. war on Afghanistan, I visit high schools on a regular basis to talk about the military. I try to fill in the blanks that military recruiters intentionally ignore. I find that when asked, most students can say very little about the reasons why the U.S. fights. They often wrongly assume that the U.S. fights in self-defense or to protect democracy when in reality the U.S.
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There is no pattern. The “most empires fall after 250 years” is just some guy claiming it, there is no facts to back it up, and no historian has ever made such a claim.
No not that pattern. It’s the one where, the closer you get from antiquity to now, the shorter the lifespan of an empire. It’s not an absolute, but Rome is the biggest outlier in how long it lasted. In the current age, where empires have much shorter lifespans on average, America is an outlier, proportionately.
Plus even if it was, it’s an average not a pattern