PRESIDENT Putin never liked the last president that governed the now defunct USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev. It was Gorbachev that presided over the break-up of the USSR. Gorbachev did not use force to keep the USSR intact when the republics that constituted the USSR began to go their separate ways.
Gorbachev also did not invoke the power of empire when Eastern Europe began to dissolve its subordinate relation with the USSR. At the time these upheavals were taking place, Putin was the head of the spy agency of the USSR, the KGB.

After the fall of the USSR, Gorbachev lived a quiet life in Moscow but Putin paid him no respect. Putin so disliked Gorbachev that he did not attend his funeral. Putin believed that Gorbachev was solely responsible for the disintegration of the Russian empire.
As the spy chief of the USSR, Putin was keenly aware of the enemies of the USSR and the role of those enemies in wanting to build their own empires at the expense of the USSR. But Putin was not part of the leadership of the USSR, therefore, he was not privy to the economics of empire preservation.

Gorbachev knew when he became head of the USSR that empire as a project is doomed to failure; that empires have a life span. Gorbachev knew that the USSR was a sand castle that could fall any minute. The USSR did not have the money to sustain its empire which included Cuba in the Caribbean.
For all the years that Putin spent hating Gorbachev, he now knows that empires cannot go on spending money on expansion because it is not sustainable. Putin walked away from Syria because keeping Syria alive under the untenable presidency of Bashair-al Assad was too costly.
Putin did in Syria what Gorbachev did in the USSR. Putin should offer a public apology to one of the great figures of the 20th century, Mikhail Gorbachev. All over the Western media, Putin is being ridiculed for leaving Assad to fall. But Putin could not save Assad. To keep Syria alive under Assad was a

drain on Russia’s economy. Putin finally realised last week that empires fall because they do not have a source of fund that can sustain them forever.
There is nothing this columnist here could add to the literature on the inevitable death of empires. The literature on this subject is copious. The British in the 20th century was beginning to walk away from empire and the First and Second World Wars drove them in that direction earlier than they wanted. After World War 2, the UK could no longer finance its empire.

After the fall of the USSR, Pax Americana became the world’s only empire. But the lessons have not been learnt by the Americans. It is the upkeep of empire that has led to the end of the American Dream. The USA has more than 250 military bases around the world, the latest is the one opened up in Poland.

The US defence budget combines that of the entire world. Such expenditure does not bring in money for the US to use on other sections of the country. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the decades spent fighting those wars run into trillions. That is money spent on empire that could have been used on the resurrection of the American Dream thus the birth of MAGA by Donald Trump.

Putin may be laughing at the Americans hoping that the Americans go into Syria and get bogged down in yet another expensive military adventure. If the Biden presidency does that, Trump may disengage the US from Syria after he becomes president. One of the cornerstones of Trump’s world outlook is that the US is getting poorer because it is fighting wars overseas using money that can make America great once more.
As we write this, the US is engaged in bombing exercises in Syria, yet another military engagement by the US. Trump has a large aura of unpredictableness about him but he knows that he will not have the resources to make the US great again if the US keeps using trillions of dollars in wars. What is not

unpredictable is Trump’s action is rejecting the US possession of unlimited money to finance war in Ukraine.
The US is not being served faithfully by its International Relations scholars, especially the influential journal, Foreign Affairs. The scholars who write in that journal never reflect on the innate weakness of empire; not that US presidents would listen, but they do not even attempt an analysis. It will be left to

Donald Trump to show the world that the US can walk from empire as the great Gorbachev did.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.