23 January 2026
Empires

But what does “empire” mean? There were multinational empires when absolute monarchies existed, but they disappeared centuries ago; there were colonial empires, but they too disappeared more than fifty years ago.

After 1945, what exists are conflicts and wars between ideologies and different political models: the Cold War, Islamic fundamentalism. It is not that Russia and the USA had empires, but that they supported opposing political models. In the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and so on, as well as in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the first Afghan war, it is not that the USA and Russia gained anything; rather, they lost money and blood.

The same is true in the Middle Eastern wars.