Review: Rubicon and Sorrows of Empire

6/4/2004

How can history be made relevant to an ahistorical audience? This is an important question when you wish to discuss history with Americans. In an era of strong deep historical currents breaking to the surface and impacting life across the globe, it can only be hoped that history might find relevance and even value in the most blissfully ignorant.

There are two new books, which should be required reading for every American. One is Tom Holland's, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic. The other is Chalmers Johnson's, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic. The events covered in the two books are separated by two thousand years, but they are companion works.

Holland's Rubicon tells the amazing story of the fall of the Roman republic. The story remains one the great events of human history -- a tragedy writ large across the Western pysche.

The story is of great relevance today. The story of a republic that reached unprecedented heights in military and economic power but at its very pinnacle imploded from the weight of empire and wealth. A story lost to our era, but common knowledge to those who founded the American republic.

Eighteen-hundred years passed between the fall of the Roman republic and the birth of the United States. During that time, the concept of self-government almost disappeared from the Western tradition. Yet the American founders resurrected lessons and even institutions from Rome. The Senate for example, or the electoral college modeled on Roman elections, both were used as curbs on popular will, just as the electoral college was used in the year 2000 American presidential election.

The word republic derives from the Latin res publica, which can be simply defined as affairs of the public. Res publica was what the Romans labeled their process of government. The Roman republic was founded around 500 BC when the Romans threw-off their king. The term rex or king would remain political poison in Rome for centuries.

From its small beginnings as a town on the Tiber, in over four centuries Rome would grow to control all of Italy and eventually the lands touching all the Mediterranean. In the last hundred years, after an almost century of struggle, the Romans defeated their arch-rivals the Carthaginians to become the sole economic and military power of their era. It was also at this point that things started to go wrong and a political spiral of corruption and decadence led to Caesar's rise and the republic's fall.

Holland's book does a good job of telling the story of the final years of the republic and painting some of history's most colorful characters. The political thinking and actions of Rome's last years would not seem too out of place in contemporary Washington.

In reaching the top of ancient world power, the republic changed. The economy evolved from one fairly egalitarian comprised 0f yeoman farmers, the equivalent of a Roman middle class, to an economy roiled with large economic disparities, controlled by large landowners who used slave labor. Much of the former middle-class had become economically disenfranchised, but still survived as Rome became the center and chief beneficiary of a thriving “global” trade system.

Politically, Rome became increasingly corrupt. The little republic had become a imperial giant. Roman elections became increasingly nasty and filled with character assassination, while money too often became the deciding factor in election victories. Caesar's first election victory was notorious for the money spent. The republic's political and government institutions were failing.

Culturally the republic had also changed. The values of a hard scrabble, insular, and materially sparse farm culture were replaced by those of an effete, cosmopolitan, imperial capital of unprecedented affluence.

The military power wielded by Rome as the era's lone super power was awesome. However, the military had changed from the days of a citizen army of the old republic to one increasingly professional, comprised of soldiers who had no other economic opportunity, and they were increasingly more loyal to an internal military code and their commanders than they were to the republic.

From the 21st century, it is clear to see the great need for the Roman republic to reform. 18 centuries later, Thomas Jefferson was asked what the Romans could have done to save the republic. His response was they first needed to give up the empire and give the countries back their independence.

However, the thought of serious reform never really occurred to the Romans. In the last decade, the politics of the republic could be divided into two groups. Those such as Cicero and Cato who wished to cling to the old republic and its values, despite the fact that they were in many cases archaic and dysfunctional.

The other group were the radicals best represented by Caesar. The radicals were a rather disparate lot, but with several things in common. First, they placed the lust for personal power and glory above the needs of the republic. Secondly, they used the tools of the empire to destroy the republic.

Chalmers Johnson's, The Sorrows of Empire briefly draws parallels to the last decades of the Roman republic and the present condition of the United States. He reveals to Americans the empire their government has created in the past fifty years and the increasing militarization of American society.

With little hyperbole, Johnson paints the picture of an American empire with bases that ring the globe. A military-industrial complex that has unchallenged influence over the American republic's decision making and the threat posed by an ever increasing militarization of American society.

One of the most important lessons American founders, such as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, learned from Rome were the threats posed to a republic in holding an empire and the inevitable scourge of militarism that accompanies it. George Washington stated in his 1796 farewell that the American people must, “avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

Almost two hundred years later Dwight Eisenhower in his final televised addressed warned, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”

Johnson shows it is no longer a potential for misplaced power, but in fact our liberties and democratic processes are being threatened. His diagnosis is that the same disease that killed the Roman republic now ravages the American body politic.

Johnson imparts the most important lesson contemporary America can take from Rome is the weight of empire will collapse the republic. Militarism became the sword used by Caesar to overthrow the weakened Roman republic and establish Imperial Rome.

The word radical comes from Latin and can be literally defined as “to the root.” In this classical definition, Johnson has written a very radical book. The politics of Johnson books are those of empire and republic. He has done us a service by defining one of the great currents running through world events. He has correctly and straight forwardly asked the American people, do you want a republic or an empire? Make no mistake, you can't have both.

The American people are faced with many of the same choices the people of Rome faced two millennia ago. However, we have the great advantage of precedent. We can see a failing republic needed reform. The question is how do we reform our republic?

America must begin to dismantle the empire of bases ringing the globe. We must begin to cut military spending. We must begin the demilitarization of our society and institutions. We must dismantle the professional army and replace it with a universal draft.

As far as global security, the American people must reject the call of the burgeoning imperial class to be world's “lone super power.” Instead we must embrace the wisdom of the World War II generation that saw a world ravaged by war and began to model a true global civilization.

We need to understand that we are for the first time in the history of our species creating a global society. A civilization in which America will be one of equals. We seek not to conquer. We profess that education not militarization is the key to self-government, and that self-government is the inalienable right of every person on this planet. We do not want nor can we afford to be the world's policeman. We need the world's help to confront the world's problems.

At home our institutions of self-government our in need of reform. After two-hundred years they are showing their age. We must wrest back control of the political process from a few large corporate interests, who have come to look at the American treasury as their private account.

We must begin to create the institutions of self-government for the 21st century and understand that it is our responsibility, each and every citizen, to participate.

Like Rome we are seeing the symptoms of republican deterioration and presently like Rome's last republican generation we lack the imagination and courage for real reform. Our American Caesar may already walk among us.

Today, the citizens of the United States take their republican heritage and their republic for granted. It is time to honor that generation two centuries ago, who brought forth modern self-government. We honor them not with speeches, statues or tributes but with action. We need to revitalize their great experiment and pass forward to future generations, the benefits and virtues of self-government.

Not Caesar, Pompey, Cato, Crassus or even Cicero realized as their generation tore down the failing Roman republic that it would be almost two thousand years before a new era of self-government would rise. Let not our generation be another that extinguishes the light of republican government from human history for generations to come.