The Byzantine Empire lasted over a thousand years. Its secret, according to Robert D. Kaplan, was not military strength but strategic restraint - doing "everything possible to avoid open warfare." Writing in Foreign Affairs, Kaplan has contrasted this approach with the United States, which at 250 years old is simultaneously fighting in Iran, Venezuela, and Nigeria while preparing for potential conflict in the Pacific.
In a Foreign Affairs essay reported by "Hvylya", Kaplan argued that "the empires and great powers that have survived longest are those that have avoided middle-sized wars" - conflicts big enough to cause massive destruction but too small to rally the entire nation. The United States has fought four such wars since 1945 - Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq - and risks adding more under the current administration.
The pattern, Kaplan argued, is built into America's imperial structure. A global power cannot simply hide or keep a low profile, and the distinction between wars of choice and wars of necessity is less clear than it appears. "A war can appear to be one of necessity until it fails; then, it is looked back on as a war of choice," he wrote. Leaders make decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty, judged later by people with the advantage of hindsight.
What distinguishes long-surviving empires from those that collapsed is not the absence of threats but the discipline to manage them without open-ended military commitments. Kaplan argued that the United States should prioritize area specialists over grand strategists, invest in cultural knowledge of the places it might intervene, and accompany every military action with a realistic day-after plan. Historian Barbara Tuchman, he noted, "has encouraged leaders to trust area specialists more than grand strategists or democracy promoters."
Yet the current trajectory points in the opposite direction. Trump promised to end forever wars but has initiated new military operations on three continents. Kaplan warned that if the United States cannot break this cycle, "there may be a fatal split between the public and its governing elite." The effects would not be immediate - they never are. "But such divisions," he wrote, "are how republics slowly die."
Also read: Ferguson Names the Real Winner of the US-Iran War - and It's Not America.