The Rise and Fall of Empires

Abstract

KEY POINTS: (1) Participants carefully avoided precisely defining "empire" early in the conference as it was evident that considerable debate was needed on the topic. (2) Empires come into existence from a variety of causes and exhibit somewhat different characteristics. (3) Empires pass from the scene for equally various reasons and do not necessarily collapse or decay since, participants argued, some never existed until after their time had passed. (4) America appears to have stumbled into a condition popularly called empire after the Spanish-American War, but has recently stumbled into a condition of empire of a different kind, again without any particular thought of becoming one. (5) The conferees presented historical approaches/evaluations that avoided an aspect more prominent in the realm of political science - the issue of leadership among members of a community.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 2005
Accession Number
ADA437605

Entities

People

  • Douglas V. Johnson Ii

Organizations

  • United States Army War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Transportation
  • Coastal Regions
  • Department Of Defense
  • Governments
  • Infrastructure
  • Internal Pressure
  • Leadership
  • Motivation
  • National Security
  • North Carolina
  • Political Science
  • Security
  • United States
  • Universities
  • War
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.