Preemptive Strikes and the Distraction of War: Why Declining Powers Hide Their Collapse
April 28, 2025โข508 words
There are few things more bizarre than watching people advocate that another country be bombed even while acknowledging that it will achieve no good outcomes other than safeguarding the 'credibility' of those doing the bombing. Relatedly, it's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one's national 'credibility' depend upon periodically bombing other countries. ~ Glenn Greenwald
The proliferation of bureaucrats and its invariable accompaniment, much heavier tax levies on the productive part of the population, are the recognizable signs, not of a great, but of a decaying society. Historians know that both phenomena were especially marked in the declining eras of the Roman Empire in the West and of its successor state, the Eastern or Byzantine Empire. ~ William Henry Chamberlin
You reside in an empire that is disintegrating, and its oligarchs and warhawks will be tempted to use war, particularly preemptive war, as a tactic to forestall or conceal decline.
They divert you away from domestic failure by mobilizing the populace in a cause against a foreign enemy in order to divert your attention from inequality, economic turmoil, lack of investment in infrastructure, high cost of inflation due to tariffs, and decaying public facilities. They may act in paranoia or fear, thinking that starting war is the only last choice to exert control and live.
Oligarch interests, especially from the military-industrial complex, and silicon valley, motivate the actions, compelling war to continue to make profit as civilian industries collapse. Ideological myths, i.e., defending freedom or fighting evil, conceal the aggression and make war moral even when its origins are in fear.
As your empire falters, it loses its grip on trade, alliances, and the crashing dollar. You watch other powers rise, and leadership becomes desperate, clinging to the hope that a war of decision can reverse the tide.
Military might may still be present, but it is temporary, and leaders feel compelled to utilize it before economic decline renders it moot. The political process disintegrates further, with mass violence, institutional suspicion, and election-rigging rhetoric becoming the new normal. The citizens polarize, divide, and become more disconnected, while politicians use foreign threats towards China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, to rationalize continued military intervention and distract from domestic decay.
You are part of a culture that is more divided and cynical. Long before mainstream media, hundreds of thousands of individuals on social media around the world have predicted the demise of a collapsing empire.
Mainstream media revels in collapse and irony instead of unity or civic purpose. Identity politics cleaves national cohesion into opposing blocs. Oligarchic leaders, meanwhile, may bet on war to recover what they have lost, prestige, power, legitimacy, and wealth.
History suggests that unraveling empires are prone to place one last gamble to freeze the world order in their interest, but gambles tend not to pay off. Instead, they drive deeper the plunge, involving both citizens and the ruling oligarchs in a cycle of irrevocable loss.
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