Some thoughts from "The Fate of Empires"

(Adapted from "The Fate of Empires," by Sir John Glubb.
Glubb was born in 1896 to a father in the British military, and lived in many countries by the time he was 15.  He published the article I've taken this from in 1976.)
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It's been famously said that "those who refuse to learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it."  But another saying explains even more:

         "The only thing we learn from history is that humans never learn from history." 

The most cursory look at the world today confirms that.  And it strikes me that if history contains universal lessons, a society with such vast power to analyze things as we have should be able to both learn those lessons, and thus to avoid repeating the clear, obvious blunders.

The overriding reason we fail to learn from history is that virtually all history courses are concerned with how great empires originated, and how they ruled when prosperous and victorious.  Most historians have ignored the fall of empires, thinking that less interesting.

Of course there are a few exceptions, mainly the fall of the Roman empire.

Because our technology is so advanced compared to past centuries, there is a compelling tendency to believe there is nothing for us to learn from the experiences of past empires--and more specifically, from their demise.  Too many people living today believe that citizens of earlier times were primitive, thus no comparisons can be made. This is naive.

Because so few historians write about the fall of empires, few people see that such falls have many conditions in common.  A short list:

Empire:                                   Duration
Assyria           859-612 B.C.          247
Persia             538-330 B.C.         208
Greece            331-100 B.C.         231  
Roman republic 260-27 B.C.         233
Roman empire   27 BC-180 AD      207
Muslim empire  AD 634-880          246
Mameluke empire 1250-1517        267
Ottoman empire 1320-1570          250
Spain                1500-1750          250
Romanov Russia 1682-1916          234
British empire      1700-1950         250  

The dates above are somewhat subjective.  Empires rarely declare their start dates, and even less often their end dates.  There's normally a period of gradual expansion and then a similar period of decline.  For example, the Roman empire nominally survived for more than a century after 180 AD, but only as a shadow of its former power, beset by rebellions, civil wars and barbarian invasions.

But while one may quibble over the author's declared dates of rise and fall, one quickly notes that the lifespan of these vastly different empires, in many different eras, are remarkable similar.  The obvious conclusion is that changes in era or technology don't seem to have much effect on the lifespan of an empire.

The first stage in the life of a nascent empire is a period of amazing initiative, incredible enterprise, courage and innovation. These
qualities enable the budding empire to defeat its rivals. These early
victories are often won by audacity and daring initiative.  For an example familiar to most readers, take Nazi Germany with blitzkrieg ("lightning war") and air power.

The budding empire is confident, optimistic and perhaps a bit contemptuous of the ‘decadent’ nations it defeats.

In the first stage of budding empires the time-honored virtues of courage, patriotism and devotion to duty are still in evidence. The
nation is proud, united and full of self-confidence.  Boys are still required to be manly—to be competent on horseback, to shoot straight...and to tell the truth.

Boys’ schools are intentionally rough.  Tough schools are designed to produce strong, tough, fearless men who understand the importance of terms like "duty"--and when necessary, self-sacrifice to help the nation survive.

Readers will immediately recognize that very few politicians or so-called "elites" today even remotely fit this description.

Conquest leads to thriving commerce, which leads to affluence, which eventually overcomes the notion of teaching duty and self-sacrifice.  Instead the goal of virtually all young people becomes getting rich.

Let me know when any of this starts ringing a bell.

Education quickly adapts to support this change in what the elites now deem desirable, so no longer do schools try to produce men who want to defend their country.  Instead parents and students alike seek the educations that will command the highest salaries.  

An Arab moralist, Ghazali (1058-1111), complained in these same words of the dangers of this shifting goal in the declining Arab world of his
time. Students, he wrote, no longer attend college to acquire learning and virtue, but to obtain those qualifications which will enable them to grow rich.  We see exactly this same situation today in the U.S. and other western nations.

There is little doubt that this shift--the replacement of bravery and virtue with the goal of acquiring wealth--causes the decline of a once strong nation, in which duty, honor and bravery were prized.  This is rarely noted at the time, in part because it happens so gradually.

The pursuit of wealth replaces duty, honor and adventure as the goal most prized by ambitious men (and today, by ambitious women as well).

As money gradually replaces courage and bravery, the declining empire begins to buy off smaller hostile nations with money instead of through military power.  Because this flies in the face of the empire's tradition, leaders rationalize to find the necessary justification:  The "elites" begin writing that a strong military is immoral, "primitive."  Civilized people, they bleat, don't settle differences by war.

Advocating for a strong military gradually becomes unthinkable.  In fact, empires are denounced as wicked.  Eventually the elites decide that all "cultures" are equally good, so no nation should try to lead.

This rationalization enables leaders of a dying empire to feel smugly superior to their ancestors, even as their policies plant the seeds of their own eventual destruction.  ‘It is not that we are afraid to fight,’ they say. ‘Instead, sophisticates such as we are consider fighting immoral.’

Unfortunately other power-seeking groups are under no such delusion.  

Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of effete "leaders" is the growing popularity of the notion that all problems between nations can be solved by intellect.  This notion is seductive, since it appears to all citizens that the "smaht" graduates of the best universities have all the power, and thus can do anything.  The absurdity of this notion should be self-evident:  intellectuals can only solve disputes between nations when the other side agrees with them.

The result is appeasement, as in 1938 when Neville Chamberlain agreed to give Hitler one-third of Czechoslovakia.  The Czechs got no say in the matter, but Chamberlain was effusively praised by elite intellectuals as a brilliant statesman.

As the former empire declines in power and wealth, a universal pessimism gradually sets in:  citizens resign themselves to gradual decline and deterioration--and the resignation itself hastens the decline. Just as the old saying that "nothing succeeds like success," failure after failure causes a malaise in virtually the whole population.  Even the wealthy, who one might imagine would remain untouched by decline until the very end, become cynical.

The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are convinced that nothing in their nation is worth saving.  Any of that ring a bell?

As malaise sets in, frivolous and degenerate behavior becomes the norm. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."  Most Americans have at least a vague knowledge of the suicidal frivolity of the citizens of the late state of the Roman empire, demanding free food, gladiator spectacles and public games.  But such behavior was not unique to Rome.  Instead many declining empires have experienced this behavior.  
To show how behavior patterns keep repeating: The works of contemporary writers (analysts) in tenth-century Baghdad are still
available. They deplored the degeneracy of the day and the corruption of government officials--and the fact that politicians always seemed to amass huge fortunes while in office.

The writers commented bitterly on the extraordinary influence of popular singers over young people, which resulted in a decline in morality. As a result, in the second half of the tenth century obscene lyrics became increasingly popular.  Several rulers issued orders banning ‘pop ’ singers from the capital, but within a few years they always returned.
 
National decline also seems to be associated with an increase in the influence of women in public life.  Late-empire Romans complained of this, as did tenth-century writers during the Arab empire.

We have failed to draw the most obvious lessons from history: that prosperity and a good standard of living is the result of courage, endurance and hard work, rather than from corrupt politicians, massive welfare and self-indulgence. 

Source.

http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf