The Raw and Real Signs Falling Of Empires – The Rooted Lessons Found Within The Current Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
Joe: We had to pause our recording because when we walked into the studio today, bombs were literally dropping.
Todd: Joe had written an episode about gold medalists, the skating Olympics, and the scandal of doping…along with the shame of that, and what athletes do when that's their life; And then while that happened, Russia did something a lot bigger - invading the little country of Ukraine.
Putin is not concerning himself with the actual information. He has declared both of these provinces and oblasts as Russian territory. This radar station took a direct hit. Russia is picking off Ukraine's military facilities one after another.
Todd: Do you think Putin waited for the Olympics to be over for everyone to enjoy it?
Joe: I really do. I think that was a political move. When we were watching the news, I realized we kind of had an episode brewing about this. So, this is kind of fortuitous timing. Have you ever heard of a man named Sir John Baguette Club? I think it would be very fair to say he was a colonialist. He went into the Royal Military Academy in Britain in 1914, his father was an officer in the Royal Engineers, and he was in the Royal Engineers serving in the first world war in France and Belgium. He was given the military cross. I’m going to shorten his biography by saying that he got just award after award through our war. And when he got out, he wrote about warfare, and he got award after award for his writing. He was eventually hired to serve the Jordan Government. So, he was not exactly a war hero, but definitely somebody of note. Now, the most notable thing did in his life was write something called The Fate of Empires and Search For Survival. I first read about it because I saw some anti-American hate online, and they kept quoting this book. Basically, this book outlines the lifespan that an Empire goes through when it starts to collapse and how it can start to collapse - like what that's going to look like.
Todd: I kind of fear that the United States is headed towards that, like America's headed that way and our best days are behind us.
Joe: That's exactly what the episode was originally going to be. The book outlines the lifespan, and there are specific markers for when an empire starts to fall. Let me bring up a little timeline here because I want to give you some samples found in the book. Let's say it's 859 BC. That's the Assyrian Empire, and they went on for about 247 years. Dan Carlin, in his Hardcore History Podcast, talks about how people would later stumble upon the Assyrian Empire, and they would see huge blank spots where they're just these incredibly massive walls used to stand, and now they are gone.
Todd: And at some point, these people and these properties tons of land, value, resources that you would think would ever be able to be stripped from.
Joe: I'm going to read you parts of this table to get a full picture of how long an Empire lasts. Because people are looking at America thinking, we're going to go on forever, that's not how Empires work. And when we say empire, I do mean like the British Empire. We're talking colonies. We're talking continents, we're kind of talking about how America has satellite colonies.
If anyone thinks that America isn't a modern-day Empire, we totally are. We never gave up the dream of empire. So, Persia as an Empire lasted about 280 years. Greece was 231 years. The Roman Republic, just as a republic, was 233 years. That's it. The Arab Empire was 246, the Ottoman Empire was 250, Spain was 250, the Romanov Empire and Russia 234, and so on. So, I want to talk a little bit about Russia as an empire, and then I want to circle back to the US. When we talk and see on the news about how Putin is gung-ho to unite The Fringe countries around Russia, he's not just after Ukraine. He wrote in his autobiography that he thought it was a shame that all these smaller countries around Russia weren't part of the USSR.
Todd: He's nostalgic about the olden days before his time and wants Russia to gobble up its lost children.
Joe: That is the absolute perfect word for it. He wants Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia and Belarus. He wants Ukraine. If people are listening to it, they see the bombs dropping left and right. That isn't something where he just wants Ukraine because they have a community of hackers who are working on US computers. They don't have that much oil. They don't have the best potato farm in all of Russia. He merely wants to restore the history of Russia and make them a part of the original Russian Empire again.
Todd: Right, but the Ukraine decided they wanted to be a Democracy, which wasn't long ago.
Joe: Right, they made their Declaration of Independence in 1991 and ironically, when I went to look up earlier when Russia began officially, it was listed in 91, but that is not true. Russia has ties back to 900AD when the Scandinavian Vikings were around. All in all, Putin looks at these areas as part of Russia, and it looks bad for them historically to have lost parts of their fingers and toes.
Todd: Is this an isolated, insulated tyrant egomaniac? One who has an inner circle that tells him he can do whatever he wants, and he's the most powerful man in the world. Is that possible?
Joe: Back in the day, around the time Trump was beginning his presidency, I investigated a book called Nothing Is Real and Everything Is Possible, and it outlined Putin as not really having an inner circle. He has people like spymasters and Generals, etc., but even the Russian government and people around him paint him as a loan gangster. There's a lot of information we’ve gotten talking about how Putin is possibly the richest man who currently lives; it's just that he doesn't claim any of it. Putin went around and got rid of the oligarchs who owned the factories throughout the Communist period, and he basically put the money or the control in the hands of his personal friends. It sounds like he picks his inner circle out of complete randomness, but instead of having a traditional circle where he gets advice from, it's just an inner circle of people who hold bags of money for him.
This sounds like a weird way to come at this, but in The fate of Empires, they mention that there are signs that an Empire is about to go into its collapse period. It talks about how there are weird indicators when this is about to happen, and one of them is that people get more decadent and listen to chefs more. This book was written in the 70s, and he’s talking about things that are happening now. Like, we can't stop watching chefs, and we make celebrities out of them. But the biggest indicator is that an Empire is starting to shrink when it hits about 250 years. Now. We are about 250 years away from the phrase ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’
Todd: Right, but we might get a little bit of grace because we didn't get that established right away. I think when you start the rising of world power is when the clock truly starts. But statistically, history shows us we are there right now. So, it could happen any day or has already started to happen, but no one really has noticed just yet.
Joe: When I had originally planned out an episode about The Fate of Empires, I wrote that for the end of the show - the idea was we would compare all of these indicators to the fact that we're still desperately clinging to our satellite nations and hoarding resources, etc. A couple of weeks ago, you and I did an episode about Jared Kushner and how these land barons own 900 apartments under Jared’s name. So, there are some real mirrors and parallels to a collapsing Empire.
Todd: I’ve seen that all around having issues with those baron challenges. There are places where commercial property is vacant, but they refuse to run it out or lease it out for less money than they're asking. They'd rather just keep it vacant and let it rot than have people in it and make a profit. It's crazy. But it's happening all over the country.
Joe: right? That's what we see non-stop is a company would rather keep something vacant and let it slowly collapse than not make the profit that a fleece renter would give them if they moved in. However, it doesn’t have to go down with a bang – you can collapse gracefully. We started the show by saying the Assyrian Empire was dust and blank spots on the map, and their ruins were gone. The British Empire, for all the atrocities they committed and all the colonialism, we really should hold them up to the standard of what not to do when you make an Empire, but when they collapsed, they shrank. They did exactly what they were supposed to do to retain a country. They went from empire to island nation. They went from an empire to a country that could still participate in the world economy.
Todd: Same for human nature, right? If you're having problems in your relationship, you should work on it. If your business is struggling, you should acknowledge it and attack the problems. But talking about the end of America as we know it, doesn’t that feel a bit unpatriotic?
Joe: It really does. This is not a conversation I can have with everybody, and there's no good way to address it.
Todd: Well, if we're headed for the rocks, and we know that, and their signs and history has shown us proof of it, shouldn't it be something we should be able to openly talk about so maybe we could change the outcome?
Joe: That would be nice, and I would like it more. If people could just imagine me ruining dinner with my girlfriend's parents by being like, hey everybody, you know what this chocolate show reminds me of? The collapse of America. To wrap things back to Russia and what's going on now, I know we've taken quite a few caveats here, and we've gone on a ride, but I kind of want to point to everybody in history and not say I told you so, but to bring things into a bigger spotlight. The things you're going to hear for the next several months on the news will be all about how the little micro atrocities are going to happen. You're going to hear coverage of the war. You're going to hear bombs dropping, refugees fleeing, about Russia's pride and individual country reactions. But what you probably won't hear is why in the very grand scope of countries and Empires, why is this happening? Everybody is looking at this like Putin is crazy. Why would he invade Ukraine? They've been independent since the 90s. Well, this is why. If you don't want to be Britain and don't want to collapse gracefully, you do what both America and Russia are doing right now - you cling to your satellites; you cling to your children while you collapse.
Todd: So, picking fights with other countries and getting involved in things you shouldn't end up collapsing too? Is that part of the formula?
Joe: Before Rome collapsed, it split off, and it split off again, and it was invaded, and its population was replaced by people who didn't care about it. You have this period of empire in the last few years of the 250 where all the landowners try to hold on to what they have. The empire doesn't want to shrink. It resists shrinking and reaches the limits of what it can contain. It will then try to recapture land around it and hang on to its colonies…and then it will pop.
Todd: Like a poorly run business. They are wasting their time and energy clinging to things they probably should have cut loose.
Joe: As I said, a graceful shrink of a nation is what Britain did, and they did that by letting go to become a nation instead of an Empire. Sadly, we don't look like we're doing that in America. Russia obviously isn't doing that. And if anyone's wondering how this timeline stacks up - 250 years factor, we had Ivan the Terrible in Russia in 1547. Tsar Peter started laying the foundation for what they call the Russian Empire in 1689, which lasted until about 1725, and from the laying of the foundation Empire for Russia, it has been about 280-290 years. So, we are a little bit overdue, but we're close to on track for Sir John’s projection of how long an Empire should last.
Todd: Do you think we get a little bit more time because of where we're geographically located? If we were in the Middle East or in Europe, do you think we would already be over?
Joe: I think that might be part of it. I'm going to get slaughtered by historians, but the idea that in the last couple of years we have been very obsessed as Americans with Mexico sending immigrants to take our jobs, that sounds so close to how the Romans reacted to the French. They would come up in big groups and legally buy land and start taking jobs, and they spoke a different language. It looks so similar, senators having all the land and having us have corporations holding all the land. I mean, the parallels are so distinct, and then we look across the water, and we see Russia doing almost the exact same thing - unwilling to give up her original lands. I think maybe Putin should have read Sir John’s book. He might have benefited from The Fate Of Empires.
Todd: I just can't understand these world leader dictator types. To me, it would seem like a pain in the ass. I don't want any trouble. I don't upset the rest of the world. We are already doing well. Why cause more trouble? Why expose myself like that?
Joe: That's a good question. Why not gracefully shrink into a stabilized country and become a participant in the UN and the greater global economy? Can I read a couple of quotes from the countries that are now starting to get involved in this? Because many people are going to be asking who the allies are. As far as we know, Russia and China have basically agreed to let Russia take Ukraine. But the United States, Biden said the world would hold Russia accountable. Now, China’s Foreign Ministry repeatedly declined to call the attack an invasion at a press briefing on Thursday. So again, China basically has a pact with them. NATO obviously has sided with Ukraine. From the UK, Johnson said, “I am appalled by the horrific events in Ukraine. And I have spoken to present Zelensky to discuss next steps.” In Germany, they called it an unscrupulous act. In France, they said there would be deep and lasting consequences for our lives. In Canada, they said these reckless and dangerous acts would not go unpunished.
We could play this game all day. We will link off to an article that has responses for most of the countries, but this isn't going to look like World War III. There are too many countries and superpowers who have already thrown in for Ukraine. So, this really could look more like China and Russia deciding that it’s okay to take a nearby territory and everybody else shaking their head saying, whoa, you are a nation right now. Stop trying to play empire.
Todd: I woke up this morning and saw that the first seven Ukraine military died, and as the day progressed, it's up to 170. And I know when we go over 3, we get desensitized to it. We don't have a name or a face. These people may be soldiers, but they are also a dad, a husband, a brother, a son. Even more, women and children are being killed. And I want to just remember that this is not just a video game where 500-1,000+ people died. These cities got bombed, and these are people's lives taken. People are dying and people are afraid. They're scared, and they want to feel safe.