Empires can normally expect to survive for about ten generations, around 250 years, argued Glubb Pasha persuasively in The Fate of Empires. The imperial republic, as great French philosopher Raymond Aron described the United States, is the West’s great hope, especially in any major war. But the United States is being pushed before our eyes into a premature and possibly accelerating decline from inside by that phenomenon, la trahison des élites, the treason of those elites who have sold out to a hostile Beijing.