The Oil Drum

Graeco Roman civilisation was pretty bloody before the Emperors, with cheerful hobbies like decimating armies to maintain discipline and live dissection of slaves to improve medical knowledge.

That quibble aside, most of what you say I would agree with, with the exceptions that inevitable is usually best determined in hindsight - how do you prove that greater understanding of what was occurring could not have altered the outcome? - And also I don't think that individuals should escape all responsibility - the group around Bush is still a criminal clique intent on subverting the country in their own interests, even if the tide of history is that which empowers them to do so.

Nice comment, sampson.

I too like to fit current events into a larger historical context in order to try to gain understanding. And even though I might disagree that Rome offers the "best comparative empire," I nevertheless agree that much of what we are seeing can be attributed to the "decline of empire."

I wonder though if what is transpiring is not just the decline of the American empire, but a more general decline of the Western imperial complex as a whole. For the last 500 years the baton of top global empire has been passed around, the United States carrying it for the last century or so, perhaps at times in close competition with Russia, but before that Spain, England and France all had their day in the sun. But the baton always remained within the Occident. Could it be that the time has arrived when non-Western empires will dominate, as they did after the fall of the Roman empire, and when all of Europe came within a hairbreadth of falling under Moslem domination?

Jacques Barzun has written about the cultural rise and fall of the West in From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present. He argues that the "point at which good intentions exeeded the power to fulfill them marked for the culture the outset of decadence." This sentiment is echoed by Carlos Fuentes when he wrote: "The Renaissance dream of a Christian Utopia in the New World was also destroyed by the harsh realities of colonialism: plunder, enslavement, genocide. Between the two was created the baroque of the New World rushing to fill in the void between ideals and reality." In the United States the Baroque has taken the form of our whirling, flamboyant, excessive lifestyles, every waking moment filled with movies, music, sports, entertainment and extravagance. "Nothing," as Fuentes goes on to explain, expressed "uncertainty better than the art of paradox, the art of abundance based on want and necessity, the art of proliferation based on insecurity, rapidly filling the vacuums of our personal and social history...with anything that it found at hand."

That said, I've often wondered how Peak Oil plays into this. I for one am convinced that Peak Oil in the Occident (more or less corresponding to the OECD) is upon us. Only a small portion of total global petroleum reserves reside within the borders of Western countries. Does that have anything to do with, or will it contribute to, the decline of the West?

It seems that, if the empire were functioning properly, it would not. Fuentes gives us a definition of the Bourbon concept of empire:

[T]he function of the Spanish crown was to promote the development of the Iberian Peninsula and that of the American colonies was to furnish raw materials and cheap labor for the greater prosperity of Spain.

With the advent of the 19th century, overt empire became unfashionable, or unprofitable, and a more sophisticated type of empire evolved. "Economic liberalization" was its creed. The cross and the sword were replaced by the calculator and the gunboat. Again quoting Fuentes:

In the phase immediately after independence, Britain managed Latin America's foreign trade; in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the United States came to be the principal partner. However, they employed the same instruments of economic power, namely favorable agreements for their merchants, loans and credits, investment, and the handling of the export economy of minerals, agricultural produce, and natural products required by Anglo-American expansion. A highly privileged local minority served as intermediaries, both for these exports and for the imports of manufactured European and North American goods, which were in demand among the urban population in the interior....

Saudi Arabia provides the perfect current-day example of one of the few remaining "highly privileged local minorities" serving as intermediaries for Western interests. Bin Laden has avowed to remove this privileged minority. At the same time, the United States is trying to re-establish another privileged minority, loyal to Western interests, in Iraq following the betrayal of Saddam Hussein.

I suppose two scenarios are possible as to why the non-OECD countries are no longer providing abundant and cheap oil:

1) Failure of empire, or

2) The non-OECD, as well as the OECD countries, are experiencing Peak Oil.

And perhaps these two do not operate independently of each other.