by Alfred McCoy
April 26, 2026
History’s lessons are unsparing about what Trump’s micro-military fiasco is costing a country already in imperial decline.
Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.”
When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers.
Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever aura of imperial majesty remains and revealing instead the moral rot deep inside the ruling elite.
There is mounting historical evidence that America is indeed an empire in steep decline, while President Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is becoming the sort of micro-military disaster that helped destroy successive empires over the past 2,500 years — from ancient Athens to medieval Portugal to modern Spain, Great Britain, and now the United States.
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