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The Twentieth Century dawned to the slogan “God is dead.” It ended with the discovery that God had merely moved. The twentieth century was not the twilight of the Gods, but the twilight of Europe. European culture had merely confused its own decadence with that of everything sacred. That was understandable. The end of the twentieth century had coincided with the collapse of the center of the world, a center that had reigned, if not peacefully then continually, for half a millennium. Everything that European man believed to be true and beautiful was shattered in the twentieth century. But the end of twentieth century did not mean the end of everything. It meant only the end of one civilization and the emergence of another: the American. The Europeans were barbarians, smashing down barriers so powerful that they seemed not even to be there. They respected nothing but power, money and their own beliefs. They created a world and that world lasted until the end of the twentieth century. The new is, by definition barbaric. It lacks sophistication and moderation. It is precisely this barbarism, the simple and immoderate appetites hat allows someone to remake the world. Civilized people know their limits and decadent people are comfortable living with in them or within even narrower bounds. The Europeans were the greatest barbarians the world had known. They created a savage global regime that excluded no one and therefore included everyone. At the beginning of their time, as they sacked ancient civilizations carrying off their wealth and culture with them, it would have been easy to see their barbarism as their permanent condition. But barbarism leads to civilization. The triumph of Macedonian barbarism was that it was limitless but engulfed the small world it knew. Nothing was alien from it. The same could be said of European civilization on a much grander scale. Far more than simply taking European religion—civilization—the Europeans bought world civilizations to Europe. To be more precise, they forged a global civilization with Europe at the center, sucking in the ideas of the rest of the world. This was Europe’s triumph and its downfall. Europe first discovered that the earth was not the center of the universe and that the world was round. The first discovery gave rise to science, which challenged Christianity’s belief that the world was governed by a benevolent God who cared about the fate of man, with the idea that the earth was an insignificant speck in the universe. If that was so, then so was man and if man was insignificant then how could he be made in the image of God, and if he wasn’t in His image, then where was God? If the world was round, then Europe was not the center of the world—the world had no center. This superficial metaphor had a precise meaning. The conquest of the world forced Europe to confront the fact that most of the world had never heard of Jesus Christ and certainly did not regard him as their lord and savior. The world had many Gods, even if they were false. If the Europeans kept their self-confidence, the multiplicity of Gods would have no meaning. But science created a massive crisis of confidence within European civilization. As Europe moved from barbarism to a civilized opulence based on its conquest of the world, it moved from confidence in the certitudes of its culture, to profound doubt. The greatest efflorescence of European thinking—the Enlightenment—lived in profound tension with the existential core of European civilization—Christianity. The enlightenment taught scientific skepticism. Christianity taught a sure and certain hope. The collision between enlightenment and Christianity created a vacuum in which the multiplicity of Gods turned from a hierarchy to a jumble. If the Enlightenment was right, then religion was merely culture while science, the highest form of thought, provided only doubt. If religion were culture and science could not distinguish between cultures, then no culture was better than another. If no religion was better than another, then Christianity was merely one religion among many. And if that were true, then European civilization had no intrinsic superiority over any other. Europe moved from civilization to decadence. It came to doubt its right to rule. When an empire doubts its right to empire, two things happen. On the one side, it savagely rejects the doubt, trying to crush it with force. On the other hand, it knows that the suppression of doubt by force must inevitably fail. The twentieth century was the century in which the Europe played out the twilight of its idols. This process was inevitable. The European conquest of the world depended on science, understood as the discovery of fundamental natural principles and their technological application to political problems. These in turn were driven by geopolitical considerations. To be more precise, Europe was confronted by a geopolitical challenge which drove it to conquer the world. It was able to carry out the conquest by using science and technology in novel ways—much of it stolen from subject civilizations. This in terms created the geopolitical reality of European global hegemony. It also embedded a cultural hand grenade in European civilization that led to its fall. At the same time, a geopolitical problem insoluble by technology led to Europe’s geopolitical fall. By the end of the twentieth century, the cultural and geopolitical problem led to decadence and collapse. To understand this, we must answer this question: why was it that the Portuguese and Spaniards—Iberia—began the process of global conquest and why did it happen in the 15th century. Why didn’t it happen if the 5 century BC in Greece or in the 10th century in China. Why didn’t the Inca’s do it. Why did it happen then and why did the Iberians do it? 1492—the year that Columbus set sail, was not the beginning of the age of European conquest. That had been going on for decades, led particularly by the Portuguese King, Henry the Navigator. Nor was it the year that Muslims were finally expelled from Europe. Except for a small toe-hold, they had lost their position in Iberia decades before. But it is a useful symbolic point from which to begin. 1492 was both the year Columbus sailed and the year that the Muslims were expelled form Iberia. Atlantic Europe was, compared to much of the world, backward and impoverished. When the Muslim’s developed a list of great civilizations of the world, Europe did not appear there. Those who knew of Europe, did not hold it in high regard as a civilization. The rudeness of European civilization did not prevent it from waging war effectively. Quite the contrary, it was the very barbarism of Europe, its lack of refinement, that released the constraints that made it so effective. There is no question but that the Europeans were barbarians compared to the sophisticated Muslims. There is also no question but that the Muslims were defeated in Europe by a much less sophisticated civilization and that that civilization ultimately, centuries later, came to dominate and fragment the Islamic world. Barbaric Europe defeated decadent islam. Wars of conquest may ultimately be turned to profit, but that takes time. In the 14th Century, the war with the Muslims, far from enriching the Iberian monarchies, was impoverishing them. There was little to be stolen from the Muslims who were being expelled. They had also spent their fortune on their retreat. The war had left the Iberians militarily powerful, particularly in Europe. It had also left them in economic crisis. Europe’s problem was to use its military power to generate wealth, before poverty undermined that military power. The Iberians were under intense pressure to move quickly. Geography did not favor a quick solution. The Iberians needed gold first and foremost and then they needed spices. The need for gold is obvious. The need for spices less so. Spices were the primary means of food preservation in the pre-technological world. Meat was a luxury consumption item. It takes about 7 grams of grain protein to create one gram of animal protein. Eating meat was the instrument of conspicuous consumption of Europe’s upper classes. However, in order to preserve meat in palatable form, preservatives are needed. Pepper, cloves and other spices serve this function. Spices also served a range of medicinal and aesthetic purposes. Like gold, they had uses. They also were a preserved form of wealth. Pepper in particular was valued at the weight of gold for its functionality. Spices were, in effect, luxury and currency. They, along with gold, were wealth. The ideal mode for the acquisition of gold was conquest. The cost was confined to warfare, ideal for a society whose primary asset was the ability to fight. Spices were also best acquired by conquest, but price differentials made trade for them possible. However, the Iberian problem was simple. There were no known or imagined sources of either gold or spice near at hand. It was assumed that gold was available in Africa while Spices were known to be available in India. The problem that the Iberians had was that they were not only very far away from either, but that their access to each was along lines of supply and communications dominated by Muslims. Expelling the Moors from Iberia was one thing. Fighting their way through the Islamic world to get to India or central Africa was quite another thing. Take a closer look at European geography in the 15th century. Iberia was surrounded by emptiness, poverty and power. To the north and northeast were England and France and beyond them, the massive poverty of the European and Scandinavian hinterlands. An immediate invasion of any of these, toward the end of the 15th Century at least, would have solved none of the economic problems even if it increased Iberian power. To the south was the North African and the Mediterranean. North Africa was still held by Muslims, whose decline had not left them helpless. Power projection directly into North Africa would have been difficult and could well have been defeated. The land routes—the historic caravan trails that bought Asian wealth to Europe were in Muslim hands and while they were prepared to do business, the Europeans weren’t economically able to pay the price. The Mediterranean was also closed to them. An emerging Muslim power, Turkey, was battling the Italian City States for domination of the Mediterranean. As was to become a hallmark of European geopolitics, the Italians were fighting each other at the same time. At various points in the 15th Century, Catholic Venice allied itself with the Turks in order to protect itself from the other Italian cities. That meant that navigation of the Mediterranean as far as the Levant or Constantinople, was impossible. It might have cut the price of spices to take delivery that far east, but it wouldn’t solve the economic problem itself. They couldn’t get there and if they did, it wouldn’t be much help. The only path open to the Iberians was to the West—the Ocean Sea as they called it: the Atlantic. But it was more complicated than that. Traditional forms of maritime navigation were built around coastal vessels. Sticking close to the coast solved many problems. Land was available for use as a reference point. Provisions were available on land so the ships didn’t have to be particularly large in order to hold provisions for long voyages. Coastal traffic mean two way traffic. Trade could take place without going all the way to the source or market. But in this particular case, given the geopolitics of the day, coastal navigation wasn’t possible. The Muslims controlled the African coast and the Mediterranean was filled with hostile powers—Christian as well as Muslim. If the only alternative for the Iberians was the Atlantic, then the only alternative for them was a radical new form of navigation—deep water navigation. Deep water navigation required new technologies. It required a means to locate the ship without reference to land. It required larger ships able to sustain its crew without frequent recourse to the land. It required weapons systems that could make it effective when it did come into shore or port. It required a revolution in warfighting technology that would lead to a commercial revolution. By and large, deep water navigational technology was enhanced by the Iberians, but it did not originate with them. Compass, sextent, firearms, vessel design and the rest had existed before. Indeed, the Chinese had perfected deep water sailing ships in the 14th century. The Chinese had certainly sailed deep into the Indian Ocean and there is some evidence that they had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. A good deal of what they did was coastal navigation, since the south China Sea, and the Indian Ocean permitted it, but the size of the vessels clearly indicated a broader mastery of technology. The Chinese had the technology, but they deliberately decided in 1433 to stop long range exploration. It is extremely important to understand why the Chinese did not turn this into global hegemony. The reason was geopolitical. The Chinese government during the Ming Dynasty was facing issues on land. There was political instability, dangers along the frontiers that forced them to increase their land forces and reinforce the Great Wall. Moreover, the long-range trips of the great Treasure Ships of the Ming Dynasty were not economically supportable, when compared to more near at hand trading opportunities east of the Straits of Malacca. The Chinese and Iberian geopolitical positions determined behavior, not technology. Technological capabilities probably favored the Chinese intrinsically. However their internal geopolitical position and their external trade position made further investment in deep water navigation irrational. The geopolitical position of the Iberians in particular and the Atlantic Europeans in general made it rational. Indeed, deep water navigation was needed so badly that it was urgently developed under government auspices. Iberia needed to get access to India without having to pass through Muslim territory. The overland route to China explored by Marco Polo was too long, dangerous and still involved passing through Muslim territory. The only alternative to this northern route was the oceans. There was an additional geopolitical dimension to this. Christianity saw itself as locked in a complex struggle against the Islamic world. Even while fighting among themselves, there was a core understanding that European security depended on the destruction of Islam’s military power. Europe also understood, centuries after the Crusades, that its ability to both project military power into the Islamic world and maintain control once there was severely limited. Islam’s strategic depth could not be overcome by Europe along, at least not with the military capabilities Europe could imagine having. One of the enduring beliefs in late medieval Europe was that there was a vast Christian kingdom somewhere in Africa to the south of Muslim held territory. It was said to be ruled by the Prester John, and was said to have an enormous Army. If European Christians could make contact with the Prester John and join in a coordinated war against Islam, the Islamic world would crumble. One of the very serious aims of the Iberian voyages, beginning with Henry the Navigator’s voyages down the west coast of Africa, was to make contact with the Prester John and arrange joint operations. There was in fact a Christian Kingdom where they thought it was—Abyssinia or today’s Ethiopia. There had been limited contact with them during the 15th century, including an Ethiopian delegation to Lisbon. Obviously, its strength was nowhere near what Christian legend would have it, but it indicated three things that are revealing. Information did “leak” around the world. The information was inaccurate. Geopolitics drove the explorations that took place, ranging from strategic ambitions to commercial requirements. Technology followed geopolitics. The Caravels that the Iberians sent around the world were the physical manifestation of global geopolitics in the same sense that space satellites represented the geopolitics of the twentieth century. The Portuguese and Spanish governments, first in order to circumvent Arab geography, later as they competed with each other, force fed the technologies needed for effective power projection. The ships size increased with their armaments and with the number of men on board. Navigational tools, particularly cartography, underwent rapid improvements. The shape of naval and land warfare was changed. This meant that when Vasco Da Gamma passed into the Indian Ocean via the Cape of Good Hope, and sailed north to Calcutta, he was not only able to sustain his fleet, but was able to intimidate and even overwhelm native forces on land via land bombardment. When Cortes and Pizarro arrived with a handful of men in South America, they were able, using firearms, to force the capitulation of existing regimes. The force they bought to bear was irresistible. The global balance of power shifted in two ways. First, the Iberians forced themselves into every continent and through their commercial enterprises, created a global economy. Second, by doing this they began the process whereby European countries dominated the economies and the internal political life of cultures that had hitherto been, at best, vaguely aware of the existence of the Europeans. The process became iterative. European military power generated economic power, which in turn generated more military power. There was, however, a fundamental weakness in the European imperial system. Europe waged an interminable civil war while simultaneously conquering the world. Where the Chinese, facing internal strife and external challenges abandoned deep water maritime adventures, the Europeans continued it. Put differently, the fact that there was ongoing struggle between European nations increased the pressure to continue empire building. Given the poverty of Atlantic Europe, a nation without an empire could not hope to compete. Empire became the key to power in Europe as well. Had this resulted in the conquest of all of Europe by a single power, this might have ended in an even more extended global hegemony. But there was a built in equality in the process. Imperialism generated so much wealth for relatively little investment, that even the smallest nations could engage in it. The Netherlands is a prime example of a tiny nation that became a global power, giving it disproportionate influence in Europe. This created an unexpected consequence among the larger nations as the emerged to maturity. The competition for empire was sufficiently balanced that no one power could ever emerge preeminent. This could be seen at the very beginning, with the competition of the Spanish and Portuguese. On paper, Spain should have been able to crush Portugal. But Portugal—farthest west and first to expel the Muslims—had a substantial lead on the Spaniards. That meant that they could use their wealth to compensate for their geopolitical weakness. In effect, they could buy power in the form of mercenaries and the ability to manipulate Spain. In the end, the Portuguese and Spaniards were unable to defeat each other and were forced into an historic compromise. In 1494, only two years after Columbus established Spain’s maritime capabilities—and made it clear to the Portuguese that their temporary monopoly on maritime imperialism was at an end—Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Tordesillas, brokered by the Pope. The Treaty divided the globe—its size not fully appreciated—into two spheres of influence. Spain dominated one and Portugal the other. The languages spoken in Latin America today, and their geographies, memorializes this treaty. The Treaty had a far more important effect than dividing the world along a line that wouldn’t hold. It prevented an all out fight between Europe’s most dynamic powers, preventing a united Iberia and therefore protecting the rest of Europe from the imperial ambitions of Spain. It permanently diverted Spanish strength toward Portugal, at least to the point where both had declined relative to the rest of Europe. In negotiating a stalemate, the Treaty guarantee an ongoing an insoluble European civil war. The Treaty of Tordesillas set the stage for the problem, but the heart of the problem was geography. In order to conquer continental Europe, the focus had to be on land forces. The force required to both conquer Europe limited naval capacity to what was needed to maintain colonial power. But there was one European power that could not be taken by land power—England. The English Channel was only thirty miles wide at its narrowest point, but the strongest European Army could not force its way across the Channel, even if once there, they would sweep the British Army away. Even if all naval forces were concentrated against Britain, they proved insufficient to achieve successful lodgement. And the process of focusing that force made the rest of the empire vulnerable to poaching. Three times in the five hundred years of the European Imperium, powers sought to conquer Europe and even succeeded. Three times they were defeated by the English Channel. First, the Spanish Armada was destroyed in a storm in the 16th century. Then Napoleon’s Navy was defeated at Trafalgar. Finally Hitler’s invasion was stopped at the Battle of Britain. In each case, total hegemony over the continent was insufficient to force the British to capitulate. European history turned on that fact. The British, for their part, took full advantage of this geopolitical reality in two ways. First, they manipulated the European balance of power to prevent the domination of the continent by any one power, who could use its secure power to build a massive navy. Second, they used the ongoing continental wars that diverted continental Europe’s maritime strength, to this weakness to build their own empire out of the rubble of preceding ones. Understanding the British concept of the balance of power is critical both to understanding why Europe failed and how the U.S. uses balance of power manipulation on a global scale.