Ferguson’s Law: Debt Service, Military Spending, and the Fiscal Limits of Power

> Are there financial determinants of great-power decline and fall? This paper proposes “**Ferguson’s Law**,” which states that **any great power that spends more on debt servicing than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power.** > States have endeavoured, in some instances, by pawning their credit, instead of employing their capital, to disguise the hazards they ran. They have found, in the loans they raised,…