America's WAT (War Against Terror) was a subject of discussion at the Foundation for Economic Education conference I attended in Las Vegas.
"We have to pursue this thing," said a panelist, or words to that effect. Speaking for what may well be a majority view, he suggested that "the U.S. should launch pre-emptive strikes at Iraq…Syria…and even China!"
The logic was impeccable. These countries may want to do us harm. We have the means to stop them. What's standing in our way? Not much.
"Beginning in 1899," explains Gary North, "the United States has steadily replaced Europe in the expensive, risky business of empire. Our carrier fleet patrols the world's seas. Now we have become the primary target of hatred and revenge. People don't like to be pushed around by foreigners, whether in Greece in the era of the Athenian League, or today."
By 431 BC, Athens had become a empire, with subject states throughout the Aegean. In that year, on some pretext I can't recall, the first Peloponnesian War began – between Athens and its allies… and Sparta.
Pericles decided that the best offense was a good defense. He brought the Athenians within the city's walls – hoping that the enemy would exhaust in futile attacks.
But bubonic plague broke out in the besieged city and killed a quarter of the population – including Pericles. Thence, a nephew of Pericles, Alcibiades, stirred the Athenians to an offensive campaign. A great armada was assembled – to attack Syracuse, a city in Sicily allied with Athens' foes.
The campaign was a complete disaster. The armada was destroyed and the army sold into slavery. Sensing a shift in the wind, other Greek city-states broke with Athens and went over to Sparta. In 405, the remaining ships in the Athenian fleet were captured at the battle of Aegospotami. Not long after, Athens' walls were breached and the city became a vassal state to Sparta.
We recall this history of the Peloponnesian Wars because Athens was probably the first empire in the western world. Since America seems lured to empire, what happened to Athens might be of interest.
In early April, the International Herald Tribune reported that it is now respectable to describe the U.S. as an empire.
"Today," said the IHT, "America is no more superpower or hegemon, but a full blown empire in the Roman and British sense."
"No country has been as dominant culturally, economically technological and militarily in the history of the world since the Roman Empire." adds columnist Charles Krauthammer
But Paul Kennedy goes further, pointing out that the imbalance is even greater than in the Roman era. "The Roman Empire stretched further afield, " he points out, "but there was a another great empire in Persia and a larger one in China."
Today China is no competition. It is just another country on America's hit list.
Being a citizen of a Great Empire is not all bad. Most people incline their chins a degree skyward at the mere thought of it. And minding other peoples' business can be distracting and entertaining…as evidenced by the editorial pages of the world's newspapers.
But since American liberty is being sacrificed to the security needs of maintaining an empire, we can't help but wonder – is it worth it?
For an answer, we turn to Marc Faber who addressed the subject in a recent issue of his excellent, Boom, Gloom and Doom Report.
Faber gives us a passage from Robert Kaplan's book: Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos:
"Our future leaders could do worse than be praised for their tenacity, their penetrating intellects and their ability to bring prosperity to distant part of the world under America's soft imperial influence. The more successful our foreign policy, the more leverage American will have in the world. Thus, the more likely that future historians will look back on the 21st century United States as an empire as well as a republic, however different from that of Roman and every other empire throughout history."
Even after 227 years, dear reader, America's stock continues to rise. That it has gotten dangerously high has been the subject of the last few of our Daily Reckonings.
The modest republic of 1776 has become the great power of 2002 – with pretentions to empire than need no longer be denied. That its citizens will not be freer is understood. But will they not be richer under an empire than they would have been under a humble republic? Will they be safer? Will they be happier?
If so, pity the poor Swiss. In their mountain fastnesses, they have only had themselves to boss around…and only their own pastures, lakes and peaks to amuse their eyes…and only their own industries to provide employment and sustenance. And their poor armed forces! Imagine the boredom…the tedious waiting for someone to attack. What glory is there in defense? Oh, for a foreign adventure…!
But would the Swiss really be better off if they, too, had an empire to run?
All of the available evidence – from history – suggests an answer: no. If the past is any guide, early military successes are inevitably followed by humiliating defeats. Financial progress is always trailed by national bankruptcy and the destruction of the currency. And the good sense of a decent people is soon replaced by a malign megalomania which brings the whole bunch to complete ruin.
But who cares? It is not for us to know the future…or to prescribe it. Instead, we get out our field glasses and prepare to watch the spectacle.
A great empire is to the world of geo-politics what a great bubble is to the world of economics. It is attractive at the outset…but a catastrophe eventually. We know of no exceptions.
After the battle of Pydna in 168, Rome became the leading empire of the western world. Here, we turn back to Marc Faber for his description of the Roman Empire.
“Until the rule of Augustus (who was installed as the first ruler of the Roman Empire in 27 BC), the Romans only used pure gold and silver coins. In order to finance his vast infrastructure expenditures, Augustus ordered that government-owned mines in Spain and France should be exploited 24 hours a day, a measure which increased the money supply significantly and also led to rising prices. (It is estimated that between 27 BC and 6 BC, prices in Rome doubled.) In the second half of his reign (6 BC to AD 14), Augustus reduced coinage drastically, as he recognized that the expanded money supply had led to the rise in prices.
“Upon his death in AD 14, his stepson Tiberius, whom Augustus had married off to his colorful daughter Julia (who pursued a very successful career of nymphomania), was installed as emperor. Under Tiberius, the rate of new coinage was far inferior to that during Augustus’s reign, which inevitably led to a real scarcity of money in the empire, but, at the same time, to a vast surplus in the coffers of the royal treasury (fiscus). Thus, when Tiberius was assassinated in AD 37, he left his successor, the insane Caligula, 700 million denarii in the royal treasury – about 30 times the sum Augustus had left.
“Caligula, whose spending had been lavish and necessitated the expropriation of the properties of a number of wealthy families he falsely accused of plotting against him, was then succeeded by the equally mad Claudius, and upon his death by Nero. By then, the accumulated fiscal surpluses of Rome had been spent and the large trade deficits Rome maintained with its colonies led Nero to debase Rome’s currency. In AD 64, he proclaimed that henceforth the aureus would be 10% lighter in weight. So, whereas in the past, 41 aurei had been minted from one pound of gold, the ratio now become 45 aurei to a pound of gold.
“Nero then tried to force the re-minting of the old coinage, debasing in the process the aureus by 10% and the denarius by 25%, but this was only partially successful because the well-to-do either hid their wealth or emigrated to remote provinces where they hid from the Roman tax collectors. “However, Nero had set a precedent. Between his being deposed in AD 68 and the sacking of Rome in the second half of the 5th century by the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Vandals, a succession of emperors continued the practice of increasing the supply of money in the empire by debasing the denarius, which in the end only had a 0.02% silver content!”
Fighting terrorism in the Roman era was expensive – as it is today. Rome became dependent on imported capital and imported goods – just as America is today. But Rome must have had its own Alano Greenspanus – for each new emergency was met with more cash…just as it is today.
Were the Romans better off for it?
May 16, 2002
