Reply #5: Not quite -- this is not the phase that produces a Hitler or Stalin

[starroute]

Germany was not a failed empire in the 1930's. They were a nation on the rise that felt they were being unfairly held back -- first because they were still working on their own unification in the 1870s when Britain and France were scooping up worldwide empires, and then because of being on the losing side in World War I.

Russia under Stalin was also trying to make its way out of third world status and industrialize quickly so as to compete with the West.

The decline of empire produces something more like Spain in the 1600s and 1700s -- backwards, superstitious, Inquisition-ridden. Or like China and the Ottoman Empire in the 1800s, when repeated efforts at reform and modernization just wound up in failure and corruption.

I'm no more hopeful than you are about the US making it's way past the stage of denial into something more positive -- but I don't thing that hyper-imperialism is the thing to be worrying about.