That's not necessarily bad. The civil war, world war 2 and the cold war are pretty obvious examples. You can't solve problems by just throwing money at them, but having money to throw at problems makes a lot of those problems much easier.

I'm willing to revise my opinion of the guy. He's done two things i thought were impossible, winning the primary and the presidency. Maybe he will get that trillion dollar infrastructure program in place. I doubt it, but, at this point there's not much for me to do but wait and see.

Many people have said the same thing before only to find themselves in a hopeless situation.

I'm having a hard time thinking of wealthy nations suddenly plundered. All i can come up with is the mongol invasion, and the conquest of the incas. The Incas are pretty marginal though, obsidian embedded in a stick isn't much use against toledo steel.

Being powerful and picking the wrong fight seems like the usual collapse. The Spanish losing their armada, or Germany's first invasion of France.

Help me out, remind me of some of those people, would you?

edit

Maybe Carthage falling to Rome? i don't know enough about the circumstances. I do remember something about Hannibal occupying most of Italy.

further edit

France falling to Germany is a pretty good example.

I can't help but think sudden all out invasion of the US leads immediately to nuclear war.

I dunno. backing away from playing world cop might be the worst thing ever. I'm just not smart enough to foresee what that world might look like. I'd hope some sort of international organization would be founded to pick up the slack, and the U.S. would play a role in that. Really, the election is over. all i can do at this point is watch what happens.

I haven't seriously studied the Punic Wars, and all this is from memory, but the one with Hannibal pretty early on started with one of the worst defeats in Roman military history, I think you'd have to go to Augustus for the next one of that level or so.

But after that, he wasn't able to take Rome, and the Romans refused battle in Italy. Instead, they eventually kicked enough ass in Africa that Hannibal was recalled to there, where he eventually lost. I think that was the 2nd, and the 3rd was simply finishing off a weak Carthage so it would never threaten Rome again, "Carthage delenda est" and all that. Neither fits the pattern you're looking for.

The number 1 thing we should focus on is keeping the sea lanes open. Everything else after that is gravy, and indeed, no longer playing "world cop" now that the Cold War is over is one of many areas where Trump and the people who voted for him are aligned.

As for other examples, maybe the Norman conquest of Britain? But that's seriously complicated in cause, and I'm not sure Britain counted as a wealthy nation back then.

Ah, that's a key, look for battles where the king was a participant and got killed in it. Resistance tends to fall apart after that.

And an "all out invasion" of the US is physically impossible prior to e.g. taking out our hunter-killer subs and otherwise securing a logistics line, unless you think Canada or Mexico/Latin America are up to the job, and there "a rifle behind every blade of grass" suffices.

The late bronze age collapse comes to mind where only Egypt really survived, if you can call it that as they were never the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse

It is interesting in that for Greece, they basically had to rediscover writing the fall was so complete. Though its likely a confluence of things contributed. Also our relative isolation in the USA means its unlikely we'll see anything truly similar but it does show what can happen to interdependent nation states.

Carthage is probably a more recent example we could key off of. But its still a ways off from suddenly as it took about 4 generations and a lot of mutual antagonism between Carthage and Rome. Rome also went a bit overboard in razing the city you could argue.

Another to add to the list, though not for plunder specifically is Portugal with its earthquake in Lisbon effectively ended their global dominance.