An empire exists when its power is so great compared with other nations that simply by existing, it changes the shape of their relationships and the way other nations behave. There are empires built out of intention, such as Hitler’s. There are empires that emerge without any intention. Rome didn’t intend to be an empire. The inability of Europe to contain its violent tendencies caused it to lose its own formal empires while leaving a vacuum that the United States and the Soviet Union were drawn into. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there remained regional powers, but no global ones
...more
