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Russia Invades Ukraine
The fundamental nature of Western society means that Putin will continue to dismember Europe unopposed
Historians, looking back at events many years after they have occurred, seek to identify moments that appear to have been decisive. The fall of Rome is generally placed at 476 CE, but in reality its collapse was inevitable because of events that occurred more than six hundred years earlier. The Marian Reforms, which professionalized the Roman Army, had the consequence of making the most powerful force in society beholden not to Rome a whole, or even to the Senate, but to whomsoever could command its loyalty. Inevitably, ambitious demagogues quickly grasped that wordy old men in the Senate would always have to yield to the man who could muster a large body of well-armed soldiers to enforce his will. A series of dictatorships (Sulla, Caesar, the triumvirate) morphed into rule by Emperor, which in turn ensured increasing social divisions, managerial incompetence, indecision at critical moments, and Rome’s ultimate fall.
Those who look back on our own time may decide that 2016 was the moment Western civilization came to its ramshackle conclusion. The great tidal wave of populism that swept the West and led to such stupidities as Brexit, Trump, Modi, Orban, Duterte, and far too many other examples to enumerate…
