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Disasters are inherently unpredictable, with pandemics, earthquakes, wildfires, financial crises, and wars defying historical cycles that could help us anticipate them. When calamity strikes, we should be better prepared than past societies, yet many developed nations, including the United States, poorly managed the response to a new virus in 2020. The question arises: why did only a few Asian countries effectively learn from previous outbreaks like SARS and MERS? While populist leaders struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, Niall Ferguson suggests that deeper systemic issues were at play, evident in our responses to earlier crises. Over nearly two decades, Ferguson has examined modern America's shortcomings, from imperial overreach to bureaucratic inefficiency and online fragmentation. Drawing on various fields such as economics and network science, this work presents a historical overview and a theoretical framework for understanding disasters. It argues that our increasingly complex bureaucratic systems are failing to manage crises effectively. The insights offered are crucial for the West to learn from history, aiming to improve our response to future challenges and avert the risk of irreversible decline.