Niall Ferguson Gets One Thing Right

Niall Ferguson has written some good stuff although lately I get the feeling that his love life has impaired the clarity of his vision. Still, I think he makes at least one important point his new Foreign Policy piece on forecasting the demise of the American hegemony.

Ferguson says it's coming, and that it will be quick. Well, of course it's coming, ducks: every empire ends. I'm not persuaded that Ferguson knows the date and time and I'm not even certain that it will be quick. But it certainly could be quick. Some empires—Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Austrian--seem to take, like Charles II “an unconscionable time a-dying.” But empires can vanish in the blink of an eye. Think France in 1989 1789 (!), or Russia in 1917—scarcely anybody forecast that the apocalypse would be so swift or so calamitous. Perhaps the more troubling example is the Soviets in 1989. I met a lady who says she missed the fall of the Berlin Wall because she figured those demonstrations were nothing special, so she went home and fell asleep. Where were you in the revolution, mama? Oh, I was taking a nap. “Asleep” may be the right metaphor here. Our decline may be long and slow but nobody, absolutely nobody, can be certain that it won't be quick.

Update: H/T John for the date correction. John asks: "Didn’t we all sleep thru something?" Fair comment. Prompts me to remember Fabrizio in Stendahl's Charterhouse of Parma who lived through the Battle of Waterloo and didn't know he was there.