Week signals: An empire, if you can keep it
Plus: watch points for Davos, Gaza, Syria, China, and North Korea.

This week:
IN REVIEW. Flooding the zone, jumping the shark, taking a gamble, and doing as the Romans did.
UP AHEAD. RFK meets the Senate, the Federal Reserve decides, France debates, Belarus elects, and Canada and Mexico negotiate.
The Week in Review: Shock and bore
The week began with the release of three hostages from Gaza, and the murder of two judges in Tehran. It ended with another drone attack on Moscow and warnings of a regional war in the DRC. In between, a Libyan general escaped from Italy, civil conflict returned in Colombia, and an earthquake interrupted chipmaking in Taiwan.
You could be forgiven for not noticing (unless you read Geopolitical Dispatch). The focus was overwhelmingly on Donald Trump, and to a lesser extent the World Economic Forum in Davos (where the focus was also on Trump). Washington's centrality to these and virtually all other events would suggest US hegemony is alive and well. And even if the man in the White House shares has little love for Pax Americana, it would seem he’s the one still leading it.
Despite several years of rapid news flow, and frequent ground-shifting change, the week took off with a shock. Trump’s memecoin, launched days before he took power, made him (on paper) the world’s fourth-richest man. His orders, from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to ending birthright citizenship (since ruled unconstitutional), came so fast his opponents could barely react. His speech, given to a room with a $1.3 trillion net worth, vowed to restore American prestige, expel “criminal aliens”, plant the flag on Mars, and retake the Panama Canal.
Condensing an eight-year pattern into a week, by the end there was a sense of exhaustion. To use the words of former adviser Steve Bannon, Trump was flooding the zone. And by Friday, we were drowning. Threats to NATO. Threats to Greenland. A half-trillion-dollar scheme called ‘Stargate’. The end of DEI. Leaving the WHO. A love-in with Saudi Arabia. A “friendly” chat with Xi Jinping. An apparent fascist salute.
Maybe it Elon Musk’s mock Ave Caesar. Maybe it was the inauguration’s venue in the neoclassical Rotunda. Maybe it was the nerd energy from the front row. But many quickly began thinking of the Roman Empire. Some on the left see Nero – sacrificing scapegoats, fiddling while Pax Americana burns. Some on the right see Constantine – minting new coins, smashing old idols, trampling a corrupt senate. Others see a tyrannical Caligula – perhaps with Pete Hegseth as the horse.
But for us, Trump started to seem boring. To use another aquatic metaphor, we wondered if he was already jumping the shark. The theatre looked so absurd that the drama (or tragedy) had become farce. The shock was wearing off. And we wondered if this not only posed a risk to our politics-as-entertainment era, but to America’s geopolitical position.
As even Caligula knew, an empire can’t be kept through bread and circuses alone. The Romans, after all, had their legions. The British had divide-and-rule. The Soviets, collectivisation. And the US, until recently, a mutually advantageous trade system. Trump doesn’t want to commit troops to foreign lands. He can amply divide-and-rule at home but would need a cultural deftness abroad his predecessors all lacked. American capitalism is ill-equipped for foreign socialisation. And as for the rules-based order, he came to power to destroy it.
Our concern is that a showman, or living meme like Trump, may simply stop scaring people in an emerging multipolar era. Whether it’s the states and Congress at home, or adversaries who can see through the bluff, as an emperor with no clothes crying wolf, we worry not for a Nero or Caligula, but for a Honorius (395-423), who had lost the respect of his troops and the fear of Rome’s enemies just as the empire began to crumble. Famously narcissistic, it’s said that when told “Rome has perished,” Honorius thought his pet chicken, also named "Rome", had died. Famously germophobic, we doubt Trump likes chickens (unless they’re in a nugget), but we can imagine Honorius’s posts on Truth Social.
That said, we can also see the counterargument. Trump, through his boldness if nothing else, could end up being a Diocletian (284-305), who introduced drastic reforms to address the economic crisis of the third century. By introducing the solidus, a gold coin, he combatted hyperinflation. To restore market confidence, he issued an edict on maximum prices. He reorganised the provinces and increased government efficiency. And while not all his reforms were successful, he did lay the groundwork for future economic stability. And he did so without the swingeing taxes of an earlier reformer, Vespasian (69-79), who even taxed public urinals (leading to the Roman phrase “pecunia non olet” or "money doesn’t stink").
For many in business, there’s a similar craving to those felt by third-century Romans for someone who can tackle the bureaucracy, get real about the economy, deal swiftly with foreign foes, restore the old gods, and fix the imbalances in trade and debt. And if there’s noise and chaos then so be it. The Roman motto, “si vis pacem, para bellum” (“if you want peace, prepare for war”) underlines the same businesslike pragmatism (some might say cynicism) of today’s “peace through strength”. Virgil's motto "parcere subiectis et debellare superbos" (“spare the humble and subdue the proud”) pretty much sums up a trade policy, which has fewer roots in modern economics than visceral ideas of revenge. Another of Virgil’s aphorisms, "audentes fortuna iuvat" (“fortune favours the brave”) likewise resonates with policies from border control to DOGE.
Yet the Romans, after all, were the unrivalled superpower of the day. They didn’t have a Russia, or a China, an India, a Brazil, or an Indonesia (though they did have an Iran). So while there may be a will, is there a way? Can America still do as the Romans did?