In his honorary lecture Twilight of an Empire, at the HSE April International Conference, Professor Guillermo Owen, Distinguished Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, considers the case of the late Roman Empire - a once-powerful incumbent state which is beginning to lose its power - and compares it with examples nearer our own time. Professor Owen is a member of the Colombian Academy of Sciences, The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences of Barcelona, and the Academy of Sciences of the Developing World. He is associate editor of the International Game Theory Review. In an interview with the HSE English News service Professor Owen made comparisons in a game theory approach to the behaviour of the late Roman Empire and the Soviet Empire of the 1980s and 1990s.