Author: Andrew Klein PhD 

9^th January 2026

Lecture Series – Summer School Australia

Abstract:

This paper examines the structural, psychological, and historical parallels between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the observable decline of the United States of America. Moving beyond superficial analogy, it employs a comparative archaeological methodology—sifting through the stratigraphy of state propaganda, economic predation, and institutional self-deception—to argue that the American experiment is not an exception to historical rules but a stark, amplified recapitulation of the Roman paradigm. The study concludes that the terminal phase of this cycle is characterized by a return to overt, spectacular violence against besieged populations, as seen in the contemporary case of Gaza, revealing the core parasitic logic common to both empires.

Introduction: The Echo in the Bone Yard

Historians have long been fascinated by the shadow Rome casts over subsequent Western powers. The United States, with its self-conscious founding on republican ideals and its rapid ascent to global hegemony, invites particularly close comparison. This analysis asserts that the parallels are not merely thematic but structural, revealing a blueprint of imperial rise and decay rooted in unsustainable extraction, ideological solipsism, and the eventual substitution of civic virtue with administered violence. This paper charts the congruent arcs of both empires through four phases: Founding Myth & Expansion, The Architecture of Self-Deception, The Mechanics of Parasitism and Violence, and The Mode of Collapse.

1. Origins: From Res Publica to Novus Ordo Seclorum

Rome began as a republic defined by mos maiorum, a collective ethos of sacrifice and law (Beard, 2015). Its early expansion, while often brutal, was rationalized as defensive or consolidatory. Similarly, the American republic was founded on Enlightenment principles of liberty and popular sovereignty (Wood, 1998). However, in both cases, success bred a transformative corruption. For Rome, the wealth of conquered Carthage and the East destroyed the agrarian economic base, creating a super-wealthy senatorial class (Hopkins, 1980). For America, the twin engines of enslaved labor and continental dispossession created a foundational capital surplus and a mindset of entitlement to foreign resources (Baptist, 2014). The idealistic republic, in each case, became an engine for oligarchic enrichment.

2. The Architecture of Self-Deception: Eternal City, Shining City

Both empires developed potent, necessary mythologies to disguise their predatory nature. Rome cultivated the idea of Roma Aeterna and Pax Romana, a civilizing mission that justified endless war and exploitation (Woolf, 1998). Enemies were barbaroi, outsiders to the divine human order. America’s equivalent is “Manifest Destiny” and later, the “Indispensable Nation” leading a “Liberal International Order” (Williams, 2009). Its enemies are “tyrants,” “rogue states,” and “terrorists,” ideological absolutes that preclude negotiation (Said, 1978). This self-deception becomes institutional. The Roman Senate devolved into a hollow theatre where rhetoric about tradition masked venal corruption (Gibbon, 1776). The U.S. Congress, paralyzed by partisanship yet unified in serving corporate and military-industrial interests, performs a similar ritual (Drutman, 2020). The spectacle of politics replaces its substance.

3. Parasitism and the Grammar of Extreme Violence

The economic model is fundamentally extractive. Rome operated a tributary system, sucking wealth from provinces to fund the luxuries of the core and the loyalty of the legions. When wealth slowed, it debased its currency (Duncan-Jones, 1994). America operates a financialized global system, using dollar hegemony, structural adjustment, and corporate extraction to achieve similar ends (Varoufakis, 2011; Piketty, 2013). This parasitism requires enforcement.

The violence is both pragmatic and pedagogical. Rome’s destruction of Carthage, the massacres in Germania, and the crushing of the Judean revolts were meant to terrify and pacify (Goldsworthy, 2016). The U.S. application of air power, from Dresden and Hiroshima to the “shock and awe” of Iraq and the drone campaigns across the Middle East, serves the same purpose: to demonstrate omnipotence and annihilate resistance with disproportionate force (Scahill, 2013). Gaza stands as the most concentrated contemporary example: a densely populated, historically contested territory subjected to a medieval-style siege enabled by modern technology. The reporting of UN officials and human rights organizations echoes ancient descriptions of Roman sieges: collective punishment, destruction of civilian infrastructure, and a rhetoric that frames the besieged as less than human (Finkelstein, 2018; UN Commission of Inquiry, 2024). The technology changes: the imperial logic of breaking a people’s will does not.

4. The Collapse: Bifurcation and Inertial Decay

Rome did not fall overnight. It bifurcated. The vibrant, vital energy of the empire shifted to its frontiers and the Eastern provinces, while the city of Rome itself became a depopulated, subsidized museum piece (Ward-Perkins, 2005). The army relied on mercenary foederati with no loyalty to the idea of Rome. Internal decay—hyperinflation, a vanished middle class, a disconnected elite—made the empire vulnerable to external shock (Harper, 2017).

America follows the same path. Its cultural and economic vitality is increasingly found in its cosmopolitan cities and its adaptation to a multipolar world, while its political heartland is beset by decay, conspiracy thinking, and nostalgia (Putnam, 2000; Klein, 2020). Its military relies on a high-tech equivalent of mercenaries (private contractors, proxy forces) and a volunteer force drawn disproportionately from the economically precarious (Turse, 2023). Its currency is sustained by faith, its politics by spectacle, and its unity by manufactured fear. Like Rome, it is a system running on inertial momentum, increasingly unable to address its core contradictions.

Conclusion: The Watchful Eye on the Cycle

The lesson of history is not that nations repeat it verbatim, but that underlying patterns of power, when built on similar foundations of exploitation and self-mythology, produce tragically familiar outcomes. The United States has not invented a new paradigm of empire; it has merely updated the Roman one with digital and financial tools. Gaza is not an aberration but a manifestation of the core, brutal logic of imperial control that has always existed beneath the veneer of Pax Romana or Pax Americana.

As I have said before, empires do not learn. They assume their moment is unique, their power eternal, their virtue unquestionable. They are always wrong. The collapse is behavioural; a series of choices made in arrogance. This world, as the old chronicle warns, will not go quietly into the night. It will choose its path to the end, loudly, violently, deceived to the last. Our duty is to record the pattern, so that what emerges from the dust might, perhaps, choose differently.

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