What The U.S. Need to Do?

And you've studied how empires rise and how empires fall over the past several hundred years. You've said that generally speaking, empires collapsed for three main reasons. The first is debt, the second is internal conflict—so you know, polarity within a nation—and the third is external conflict.

Is the American Empire in decline? The American Empire, since 1945, was the dominant empire, almost singularly the dominant empire. The American Empire is in relative decline; it has been in relative decline. That's not a subjective interpretation; that is using measures of share of world GDP, share of the military, quality of education, and so on. It is in relative decline.

Each of the three factors that you described is very, very relevant. I should say that I discovered two more. Acts of nature—droughts, floods, and pandemics—have killed more people than wars and changed more orders than any of the first three I mentioned. And then, of course, man's inventiveness and technologies have also created big, orderly changes.

So, all five of those are at work in the United States. If I was to say one thing that is most important, that one thing is how we are with each other. In other words, the capacity to deal with all of those things in a way that is both smart and doesn't produce fighting. If we produce fighting, we'll have a terrible, terrible set of circumstances. If we can rise above that, we can be very effective. So the number one thing is how we deal with each other.