How Empires Die
by Alan Caruba
Issue 137 - August 5, 2009

I recently read an interesting book by Christopher Kelly, “The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and The Fall of Rome.” Our popular image of Attila is that of a barbaric pagan, but Priscus of Panium set off to meet Attila in 449 AD and, as Kelly relates, “Attila turned out to be surprisingly civilized and a dangerously shrewd player of international politics.”

It’s always a good idea to review one’s assumptions about the world in which one lives, such as the current politically correct view that Islam is “a religion of peace” and that the barbarity of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and other Arab groups is outside such a tradition, the result of their incorrect interpretation of the Koran. Their interpretation, however, is quite accurate and the Koran is a call to arms and battle plan for the conquest of the world although not all Muslims interpret it that way. But, like the Huns, Moslems have been shrewd political players.

Our European ancestors were threatened by armed Islam for centuries and even America confronted “the shores of Tripoli” from its earliest years. In modern times we have put our troops in harm’s way in the Middle East in Beirut in the 1980s and to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in August 1990. Following 9/11 we returned in 2001 to drive Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of Afghanistan. They took refuge in the frontier provinces of Pakistan and have since returned. On March 20, 2003, the Second Gulf War was launched against Iraq.

Although the U.S. is now beginning to withdraw troops from Iraq, a large contingent of U.S. military will remain. At the same time, there has been a new buildup of troops in Afghanistan. Yet, no empire has ever successfully conquered or subdued the Afghani tribes and, in modern times, the most recent effort brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is generally agreed that the real threat to Mideast stability is Iran and that the shakiest nation in the region is Pakistan.

History teaches that even the emperors of the Roman Empire had to make choices about where they too would place their troops throughout the vast expanse under their control; it surrounded the Mediterranean which they called Mare Nostrum, our sea. At the end of his book, Kelly asks “What makes great empires endure or collapse? How do governments defend their actions? What causes the breakup of a leviathan superstate? When is it right to go to war, or purchase peace, or pay off an enemy? These are issues of enduring importance.”

When an empire expands beyond its military and financial resources, it becomes highly vulnerable. An empire, too, depends on its alliances. When allies become unreliable, the empire—any empire—is in trouble.

The Roman Empire fell for many reasons, but chief among them was the relentless arithmetic of demography, the movement of populations of people. The Romans regarded the Goths and Vandals as “barbarians” and naturally aggressive, crossing the Danube to trespass on Roman lands in France, in Spain, and down into Northern Africa. But the Goth tribes were retreating from the very aggressive Huns, as much challenged by them as the Romans - and needed land for their growing population.

By contrast, “the Huns seemingly offered no moral or religious justification, however thin or unconvincing. They sought neither to find a new homeland on Roman territory nor to glorify themselves as heroic freedom fighters warring down a harsh imperial regime. The Huns appear more brutal precisely because they had no known motive for their raids beyond the acquisition of booty and captives.”  But both the truly aggressive and those pushed by demography and events represented a real threat to Rome.

Like the Romans, the U.S. faces both Islamic terrorism and demographic pressure from immigration, especially from Mexico and South America. Having forsaken universal conscription, the U.S. depends on an all-voluntary military to project our power. The Romans, toward the end, often allied with the Goths to fight the Huns and, on occasion, allied with the Huns as well. Our military allies are mostly for show, with the partial exception of the British, Canadians and Australians. Again like Rome, America has weakened itself morally, culturally and educationally at home.

What is the reaction of the president of the U.S. to these challenges? Recently, in Russia, President Obama said, “The future does not belong to those who gather armies on a field of battle or bury missiles in the ground.”

As Kelly suggests, legitimate questions can be raised as with Rome regarding how broadly America’s resources can be stretched and what challenges to accept and which to accommodate. But denigrating armies and undermining critical weapon systems ignores the entire history of civilization. It is simply naïve not to believe that military, alliance, demographic, cultural, moral and financial powers and the wisdom and courage to know when to use them and when not will always be decisive.

Ronald Reagan reminded us that security is not an automatic thing and that it depends on the moral seriousness of each of us. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

America may be at a crossroads. As John Adams warned, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” The question is, has America’s time come and if so can anything be done to renew it?

Alan Caruba writes a daily blog at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com.

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