Like ancient Athens, US is arrogant, powerful, declining and in denial

The Statue of Liberty looks out on the lower Manhattan skyline, January 2014. [AP photo

The United States behaves as if it is a 21st Century ancient Athens and Rome rolled into one.

It is arrogant, discriminatory, powerful, declining and in denial. Athens collapsed because, despite having brilliant philosophers like Thales, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, it also had tyrannically disdainful imperialists like Solon, Cleisthenes, and Pericles who believed that forcing others to be like Athens, or discriminating against them, was divine.

Similarly, America has had men of brilliant practicality like Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt but it also had imperialistic James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush. Athenian assertiveness appeared to threaten militarily dominant Sparta. This led to the Peloponnesian War that destroyed both Sparta and Athens.

Similarly, America and its NATO allies worried Russia into a proxy war in Ukraine. As former German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that NATO helped Ukraine to prepare to fight Russia, Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock admitted, "We are fighting a war against Russia." Warning that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was not in Africa to watch leopards, she expected Africans to join her war.

The United States is also like Rome, sprawling and suffering from senses of insecurity. In its rise to dominate the Mediterranean, Rome decisively defeated Carthage twice but since it had a perpetual sense of insecurity, it feared that vibrant Carthage could rise again.

This constant fear in Rome was best expressed by Senator Marcus Cato who, after visiting Carthage in 157 BCE concluded that Carthage could still threaten Rome because it was thriving. He thereafter reportedly ended speeches by stating, "Delenda est Carthago", meaning "Carthage must be destroyed."

Similarly, after destroying the Soviet Union as an imperial system, some Americans disliked the very idea that Russia still existed. They would want Russia finished irrespective, as Maryland Congressman Jamie Ruskin stated, of the cost.

While Clinton spent "sleepless nights thinking about" how to force changes in Russia, his team reportedly enjoyed making Yeltsin destroy Russian economy and bragged of "stuffing shit down Boris throat". Biden's Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin wants Russia weakened. The only thing that probably stops The United States from doing a 'Carthage' on Russia is the Russian possession of nuclear weapons.

Both the Roman Republic, eager to destroy Carthage, and the American Republic, anxious to finish the Soviet Union, succeeded; they both had problems as empires. Rome self-destroyed, and America is self-destroying, due to prolonged internal weaknesses that include national self-doubt.

Donald Trump's self-glorification antics are similar to those of Caligula and Nero. His critics, however, cast doubts on the solidity of American institutions when they implied that Trump's 2016 election was invalid because Russian President Vladimir Putin supposedly helped him. This American self-destruction fits into Ibn Khaldun's Muqadimah analysis of declining empires.

America is internally self-destructive with presidents behaving like Roman emperors. Trump, like Caligula or Nero, loves self-praises. George W Bush, like Emperor Domitian, started wars that had little meaning.

The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive invasions to spread 'democracy' and strike out 'tyranny' seemingly inspires Joe Biden whose proxy war in Ukraine against Russia splits America the way Richard Nixon, seemingly an Americanised Tiberius, did. In reference to Nixon, Arthur Schlesinger wrote his Imperial Presidency, introducing a concept that some Kenyan intellectuals borrowed to beat up on Daniel arap Moi's presidency.

As the 21st Century equivalent of Athens and Rome, the United States exhibits all the bad habits that led the two to collapse. Arrogant, discriminatory, disrespectful, disdainful, and imperialistic, it is obsessed with its sense of mission to impose its desires on the world.