{"id":312815,"date":"2026-02-09T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=312815"},"modified":"2026-02-03T04:39:40","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T04:39:40","slug":"i-have-seen-the-collapse-of-an-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/02\/i-have-seen-the-collapse-of-an-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"I Have Seen the Collapse of an Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the final years of the 20th Century I was a witness to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.<\/p>\n

Having spent up to six months at a time on many occasions from 1973 to 1986 in the Soviet Union, I saw how a great empire with alliances in most continents, came to crash from within.<\/p>\n

I took the time subsequently to analyse in detail the cause of the crash, as you can read here: http:\/\/www.culture-of-peace.info\/soviet-collapse\/introduction.html<\/a><\/p>\n

I suggest that you compare the following quotes on the first page to news coming out of the American Empire at the present time.<\/p>\n

\u201cthe Soviet Union had devoted its economy to the arms race\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cthe deficit amounted to 120 billion roubles which was almost a quarter of the entire government budget\u201d<\/p>\n

Dalio warned America\u2019s in a \u2018debt death spiral\u2019, with US dollar at risk<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAs contradictions mounted, the Soviet people became more and more cynical about the propaganda of government-controlled media.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Trump Administration\u2019s Lies Insult the Intelligence of Every American<\/a><\/p>\n

The culture of war is not invincible.\u00a0 <\/span>Empires do crash.<\/p>\n

The same species that invented war is capable of inventing peace.<\/a><\/p>\n

A people united can never be defeated.<\/p>\n

*****************<\/p>\n

Une version fran\u00e7aise suit en dessous<\/a>)<\/p>\n

(Y este mes tambi\u00e9n una versi\u00f3n en espa\u00f1ol despu\u00e9s<\/a>)<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dr. David Adams is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a> and coordinator of the <\/em>Culture of Peace News Network<\/a>. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the UN International Year for the Culture of Peace.\u00a0 Previously, at Yale and Wesleyan Universities, he was a specialist on the brain mechanisms of aggressive behavior, the history of the culture of war, and the psychology of peace activists, and he helped to develop and publicize the Seville Statement on Violence. Send him an <\/em>email<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 decade-culture-of-peace.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the final years of the 20th Century I was a witness to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Having spent up to six months at a time on many occasions from 1973 to 1986 in the Soviet Union, I saw how a great empire with alliances in most continents, came to crash from within.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":312817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[443,2797,491,2639,2200,70,1468],"class_list":["post-312815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-culture-of-peace","tag-culture-of-war","tag-empires","tag-soviet-empire","tag-us-empire","tag-usa","tag-ussr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=312815"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":312818,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312815\/revisions\/312818"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}