Humm... Apparently History is a Guide - Not Definative, but a Guide

I have,occasionally, believed that history can be an interesting guide to the future. Particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, I reread some of my old history books. I have a reasonable collection of political books about the 20s and 30s in Europe - written in the 1920s and 1930s. In these I found that "current thinking" of the time was way off the mark - often lead astray by hopeful pronouncements about the "Great War" and how it portended the end of armed conflict.
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But that is really not the point, except to say that "in the moment" people see what they expect and hope.
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Which leads me to this month's article in Foreign Affairs by Niall Ferguson. (FYI - Niall is a professor of History at Harvard and a Professor at Harvard Business School as well (site and bio)).
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The thrust of his article is that maybe our current fascination with the long slow decline of nation states (in particular the US) is wrong. Although Collapse (a GREAT Book), Rise and Fall of Great Powers (a good book) and Clash of Civilizations (an interesting book) speak about the long rise and fall of major powers, they tend to borrow from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire the idea that a major power fails slowly. Prof. Ferguson argues that there is a lot of evidence that Major Powers, sitting atop a complex infrastructure of military / economic / social powers are more susceptible to sudden collapses.
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His idea is that this infrastructure can cushion many shocks, but in some cases will amplify the exterior influence.
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He uses not only the example of the Soviet Union (the obvious example), but relooks at the actual decline of Rome, the British Empire and China as well. And, of course, extrapolates to the current US position. He doesn't presume we must fail - nor does he project if a decline would be relatively benign (as in the case of the British Empire) or nearly fatal (as in the case of the Soviet Union). But it is an interesting argument.And scary - but that is normal, fear sells magazines.
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What to me is truly interesting is that The Next 100 Years (a current bestseller by George Friedman) looks at this same data and sees exactly the opposite result (an ascendant US through 2100).
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I think history is a guide, but only in retrospect. Which means it isn't a guide at all. It has been a very Vonnegut day.
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As for the picture - if is one in a series (by American Thomas Cole) of the life cycle of an empire.