01 February 2014

Foreign Policy: “Augustine’s World”

Syria is the Levant, the geographical core of Late Antiquity. And its disintegration, like the crumbling of Libya, Yemen, and Iraq, along with the chronic unrest in Tunisia and Egypt, signifies not the birth of freedom but the collapse of central authority. Rome could not save North Africa, and the United States will not save the Near East -- for as the opinion polls demonstrate, Americans have had enough of foreign military entanglements. Anarchy, perhaps followed by new forms of hegemony, will be the result.

Robert D. Kaplan

Interesting analogy between the collapse of the late Roman Empire and today’s political unrest. Of course, as the author himself emphasizes, because of global instantaneous communication, changes happen and spread much faster now than two millennia ago – there’s no telling what the next decades may bring.

What Late Antiquity says about the 21st century and the Syrian crisis

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