Turning And Turning In The Widening Gyre

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

-Percy Bysse Shelley

Empires have been continuously and often times bloodily de-laminating since the final hours of World War II. That said, Brexit is writ in large, a macroscopic symptom of dissolution that cannot be ignored, because the playing piece isn’t South Sudan or the Ukraine. The entity retreating from Union is a nation that once was the core of the largest empire the world has ever seen. Once, the sun never set on the British Empire. Soon the Sun will set on the British Empire promptly at 1800 hours.

World War I was probably the era where most empires grew to their largest aggregate sizes. All the European giants were essentially land and resource owners and their charges d affaires had condos from the Azores to the Baltic Sea, from Madagascar to the Philippines, from Saigon to Cape Town. Even Japan after Meiji Restoration was scooping up large areas of rural China rich in minerals, oil and timber, where the indigenous peoples could not defend themselves.

In 1945, there were 79 countries in the world. Today the count is 211 depending on whom you ask. The continuous and unfettered disintegration of empires to nation states is as disturbing as is the silence on the topic. Viewed dispassionately, if that is even possible today, the Brexit is a bad portend for unity anywhere. My goodness, if the British are willing to forego ready access to 27 partner nations and long held and lucrative trade protocols for a feeling of pride, then we will see more of this, not less. Soon enough traveling around and doing business in Scotland and Ireland will require additional bureaucracy and documentation. The point is, as shocking as Brexit is, as disruptive as. it is, it is neither new nor unexpected.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of darkness exposed the trendiness of European powers to essentially own another country and plunder resources to sell and prosper. Leopold II woke up one day and realized his beloved Belgium needed such a nation to keep up with the expanding European powers and so conquered and purloined the rubber industry in the Congo in now famously cruel ways. Spain and Portugal boasted colonies, occupations, and outright sovereignty over dozens of countries from Chile, Argentina, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, and Morocco, to name a few examples. Britain had holdings on every continent not the least of which were bravely opposed occupations in Africa and India that required charismatics like Mahatma Ghandi and Kenyatta to reason their countries out from under British rule. Germany fancied itself a colonial empire when it once occupied and exploited Mauritania, Ghana and Benin. Russia swallowed up portions of Central Asia. At the beginning of the 20th century, freedom was a thing much talked about.

Most people look at the break up of the Soviet Union as the largest example of dissolution in modern times, but it really is only an average example of how sovereignties can become footnotes. Tiny Yugoslavia is now Montenegro, Serbia, Kosovo, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovinia. Dissolution happens even on a microscopic level. It’s as if everyone wants to be their own bosses. Perhaps the idea conveyed is that whatever happens when the economy falls, the cause is always conflated with a loss of national identity and national pride. The actual cause is economic. When it becomes too expensive to occupy and rule failed states, when the domestic poor watch the country spend billions freeing people in countries no one in American has ever heard of, then nationalism is a neat pocket to place the opprobrium.

The sad part about this is that while it appears heroic and smart from a distance, locally it means British borders that were once opened are now closed. It means more expensive imported goods. It means less trade and a restricted exchange of ideas and cultures. Revolution looks brave in a paperback at a beach. Real revolution sometimes means bloodshed, and refugees, and instability and a free for all subject to the worst that are full of passionate intensity while the best lack all conviction.

You say you want a revolution. Are you sure? This could go badly and in unpredictable ways.

Look at Europe in 450 AD. The Sassanid Persians fought the Romans who were teetering on the edge of extinction trading territory for peace with Germanic tribes now in ascendance. Huns steamrolled northern European lands and cruelly ruled the Huigars, the Lombards and the Ostrogoths. Further west the Frank’s struggled against the English, and the Saxons. Fast forward to 1350 AD. There the Scots fought the English and the Irish. It was Denmark vs. the Holy Roman Empire vs. the Hungarians. This is the anomie of small states in constant struggle. It was all a long bloody morass where the fight for primacy far outweighed governing for the benefit of or consent of the governed. Folks, this whole thing could go Game of Thrones overnight. Look at the French Revolution that wrought Napolean Bonaparte, a warmongering dictator who helped cause the deaths of millions across the continent. Europe is red with blood in battles like the Hundred Years War to the Seven Years war to the Thirty Years War and wars few can remember despite their impressive casualty lists. All of them were slaughters

The period from 1945 to today is considered one of the most peaceful in history. Fewer set piece large scale battles have been staged, fewer deaths compared to Pre World War II and unfortunately, fewer reasonable and charismatic world leaders.

How long will this go one before we start seeing stability? Who knows? The variables are endless now. The US could find itself stripped of a state strong enough to leave the Union, although few want to wake up living in an official theocracy that can’t escape.

More changes are in store. Buckle up.