In 1976, exactly two hundred years after the founding of the American Republic, a British general sat down and wrote the obituary of his own civilization.
His name was Sir John Bagot Glubb.
To the men he commanded, he was Glubb Pasha—the soldier-scholar who led the Jordanian Arab Legion in the desert for decades. He had spent a lifetime watching power rise and eventually decline. And when he finally put pen to paper, he had marshaled the history of many nations and their cycles.
Glubb saw the pattern.
The essay was called “The Fate of Empires.” And its central claim is the sort of thing that helps you see the world in a different way. In this case: Empires fall rather on schedule.
