HOW EMPIRES PERISH “At the opening of the twentieth century there were five great Western empires—the British, French, Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian—and two emerging great powers: Japan and the United States. By century’s end, all the empires had disappeared. How did they perish? By war—all of them. … “America survives as the sole superpower because it stayed out of the slaughter pens until the other great powers had fought themselves near to death and avoided a cataclysmic clash with a nuclear-armed Soviet Russia. … “Yet, today, America’s leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers to ruin—from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new “crusades,” to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.” — Patrick J. Buchanan, “A Republic, Not an Empire” (1999)

A chain reaction is building that will be impossible to stop. It’s reckless to plunge into actions without knowing where they lead.