'Fourth Rome'

In the heat of the political debates in Washington about the budget, there has been speculation on “America’s bankruptcy that will never come to pass.” Is that so?

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire first, and then the Eastern one, the center of the world — i.e. the “Third Rome” — was supposed to be Moscow. Russian monk Pilotheus of Pskov wrote to Vasili III, the grand prince of Moscow:

“Two Romes have fallen. The third stands. And there will be no fourth. No one shall replace your Christian czardom.”

But the “Third Rome” fell. Today, the U.S. is considered the “Fourth Rome.” It is said that America, which issues the dollar, the world’s transfer currency, and which has the most modern military technology, cannot fall. The Soviet Union also had a nuclear arsenal, as well as the transfer ruble that it issued, which was the main currency of the socialist world, and yet it fell anyway. Thirty years ago, did anyone predict that it would?

The founding fathers of the United States also referred to the traditions of Rome — not the empire, but the republic. It is interesting — why did they not seek inspiration from Athens? Today, the U.S. is abandoning republican values and beginning to pay homage to something that is a mixture of the Athenian “demos” and the Roman “empire,” which is one of the reasons for its budgetary problems, but that is a topic for a whole other story.

I would not particularly worry about the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. When the U.S. began building its power, there were no such things as financial markets and rating agencies. The much bigger problem for the U.S. is the successive destruction of the American dream: that is, the ideal of freedom, the most dangerous American weapon, much more dangerous than military technology.

Technology grows old fast nowadays. The technology used in fighter jets is out of date even before they go up in the air, and America keeps building them on credit! Of course, the main creditors are U.S. citizens; the domestic debt is decisively bigger than the external one, but these proportions keep changing, and among the external creditors, one’s position is growing ever stronger — China’s. Maybe it is China that will be the “Fifth Rome”?

The belief that everyone has the same right to the “pursuit of happiness,” expressed in the Declaration of Independence, created a competitive supremacy that allowed the U.S. to issue a currency that others trust, as well as build the most modern fighter jets. Some have decided, however, that the right of pursuit alone is not enough and happiness must be decreed, and the federal government ensures it best, and this is where they can be very wrong, just like many before them.