• BY STEPHEN M. WALT
• JULY 13, 2009

foreignpolicy _ As I mentioned awhile back, I devoted a good chunk of my vacation out west reading Piers Brendon’s The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997.As you might imagine, I spent a lot of time thinking about possible parallels and lessons for America’s current global position, just as English imperialists spent a lot of time pondering the Roman experience (ably documented by Edward Gibbon). Tiếp tục đọc “10 lessons on empire” →

by JR FEARS

bigthink_ September 21, 2010 marked the 2501^th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon.

Of  course, probably every day somewhere in the world people commemorate Marathon by running a 26 mile Marathon race. I wonder how many of them know or care that they are paying tribute to men who fought for freedom so many years ago. Marathon is a plain that lies 26 miles from Athens. After the victory the Athenian runner Pheidippides raced that distance back to Athens to tell his fellow citizens that their army was victorious. After the battle, as well, the entire Greek army marched those 26 miles, despite their exhaustion from conflict, in order to prevent the Persian fleet from making a surprise assault on Athens.

On that date in 490 BC, 10,000 men of Athens and their ally Plataea defeated a Persian army three times their size.  The Persians were the best equipped, best trained army the world had ever seen.  They were soldiers of the Great King Darius, “Lord of Lords, King of Kings and Master over the Four Corners of the Universe.”
Tiếp tục đọc “Reflections on the Rise and Fall of Empires” →