The empire. Cartoon of 16/03/2026 in CTXT
The Third Reich, paradoxically, was one of the most modest empires in terms of projected duration. Adolf Hitler proclaimed his empire as the "Thousand Year Reich" Tausendjähriges Reich, but it lasted only 12 years and just over 3 months. The Third Reich can be dated from Hitler's rise to power on 30 January 1933 until 8 May 1945 with the signing of Germany's unconditional surrender.
Others who thought they were going to spread all over the world, possibly forever, although there is no record of them being so optimistic as to manifest it as an "official" propagandistic conviction, were the Spanish and their empire with their rampages around the world, which began in 1492 with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on the island of Guanahaní (San Salvador) on 12 October, but just 406 years later, in 1898, after what is known as the"Disaster of '98", the loss of its last overseas colonies and control of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines brought about the decline of the Spanish empire.
Other empires with a similar duration were the British empire with 402 years in two stages and the French empire with just over 430 years of colonial activity, also in a pair of stages.
But the ones who came out on top were the Romans. In the Roman Empire it was believed, because it was a religious belief and not just propaganda, that the empire was destined to last forever. Thus, Rome was called Roma Aeterna (eternal Rome). Furthermore, they were convinced that their society was superior to any other presence on earth in every respect and that they were destined to rule every corner of the known world. It lasted a mere 502 years, from 27 BC to 476 AD.
The US empire is still young. The year of its birth as an empire is difficult to pin down, especially since many are still determined to deny that it is an empire. To be generous, if we were to take 1898 as the starting year of its imperial growth phase overseas, it would be only 128 years old.
Since then it has done nothing but expand its global influence with a network of some 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and has participated in, or organised, hundreds of coups (or attempted coups) in numerous countries with accompanying massacres and carried out 469 military interventions abroad (from 1798 to 2022 alone). This is not counting undeclared special or covert operations. In addition, there is its economic dominance with the dollar as the global reserve currency and its leadership of institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and others, as well as its pervasive cultural influence permeated by propaganda through film.
Using an exercise in statistical-geopolitical fiction and adding the Austro-Hungarian empire (1867 - 1918) to the equation, with a lifespan of some 51 years, to bring the speculative estimated average lifespan down a little, the US empire still has approximately 240 years left to live.
