At some point in Empire, complexity becomes a liability
Inthe constant dance between sword and shield, offense and defense, chinks in the best armor always appear. Indeed, the ‘best’ armor is often its own worst enemy. China was overrun by Mongols on horseback, imperial Rome fell to ‘barbarians’, Nazi’s just went around France’s Maginot Line, and — today — imperial America is drowning in the Red Sea. We live in an age where a million smartphones can overpower billion dollar broadcasters, and in the same way, cheap drones and men with speedboats are putting the world’s ‘greatest’ naval power to shame.
The modern reincarnation of White Empire under America is being positively humiliated in Yemen. They’re trying to brute force their way through another genocide, and making an absolute farce of it. Yemen was blocking only ‘Israeli’ ships (to fight the Genocide of Gaza) and killing no one. Then America attacked Yemen with killing force, and everyone is scared to pass that way. The Americans blockaded themselves. These are bad decisions and it’s not even clear who’s making them. America’s War Secretary gave the orders from his hospital bed, its President is obviously senile, and its Secretary of State just wanders around the region, flailing and failing.
White Empire, under America, has taken L after L for decades now. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, not to mention ‘smaller’ atrocities that nonetheless killed millions of people. Even wars they claimed to win — like the ‘Cold’ War — are now being unwon quite dramatically (re: Russia). Now America can’t even field their own army, they have to hide behind proxies like Ukraine and ‘Israel’ and use privatized propaganda to lie about how well they’re doing. But they’re not doing well, these are all Ls, and you can only take so many Ls before actually, you know, losing.
As the saying goes, live by the sword, die by the sword or — more specifically — live by the sword, die by the arrow, live by the massed formation, die by men on horseback — greater Empires than them have been laid waste when technology changes and ‘barbarians’, ‘hordes’, and ‘terrorists’, suddenly become more efficient, more proficient, and make more ‘sophisticated’ militaries collapse under their own ponderous weight. We are at one of those points of great…