Excellent comment. It’s revealing that those final words came from someone as reactionary as Schumpter who, I’ll add, was not only a conservative monarchist aristocrat, but at several points expessed deep sympathy for the Nazis and Fascisti. Also, by-the-bye, a pedophile.

The comparisons of the American Empire to the Roman are a cliché but I’m often still struck by how applicable they are.

In the run-up to the third Punic War, the Romans used their ally, the King of Numidia, Massinissa, to encroach on the little remaining Carthaginian territory, as they were increasingly unhappy with the recovering Carthaginian commerce and economy. Hence Cato the Censor’s famous words when seeing an economic rival, even when completely outmatched at this point by Roman imperial might: Carthago delenda est.

When the Carthaginians inevitably declared war against Numidia, the Romans used this as a pretext to claim that they were obliged to intervene to to protect their ally from Carthaginian aggression. Carthage was raised to the ground, the inhabitants massacred or enslaved to the last man, woman and child.

A generation or two later, the grandson of Massinissa and king of Numidia, Jugurtha, had now become an enemy of Rome. Rome would eliminate him without qualms (notably by Sulla, who would go on to become dictator), especially once he started intervening through bribes in the corrupt politics of Rome. As Kissinger pointed out, it is dangerous to the Empire’s enemy, but it is sometimes even more dangerous to be their ally.