And Now a Few Words

"Inevitably the seeds of destruction are present even at the moment of the empire's triumph.  The returning victor's subjugation of neighbouring states indicates an empire acquired through territorial aggression (in contrast, perhaps, to the expansion of the United States at least in part by treaties and by financial transactions such as the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but prefiguring the Mexican-American War of the 1840s, which Cole abhorred) and liable to future rebellion."