If people could vote with their feet.

A new Gallup poll shows America is still number one.

The United States is the top desired destination country for the 700 million adults who would like to relocate permanently to another country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence.

If 165 million people had their way we could add over 50% more people to the current poplulation of the U.S. over night. And all this talk of America's reputation abroad and such. Hmmmm...right. Bottom line was put nicely by Tony Blair: “A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at…how many want in…and how many want to get out.” We have an idea of how many want out, and usually that's got to be done forceably. How many want in, almost boggles the mind.

A History Channel documentary on Hadrian's Wall

I've been reading Anthony Everitt's new biography about the Roman emperor Hadrian. The book has been very good. Most people recognize the name Hadrian by the great 70 mile long wall named after him in northern Britian. This is an excellent video about the wall. 

Is Adrian Goldsworthy's new book going to be a disappointment?

Over at The Western Experience Mike posted about Adrian Goldsworthy’s new book, How Rome Fell: The Death of a Superpower. As part of Mike’s post he quotes from a review of Goldsworthy’s new book by Brandon Crocker in The American Spectator. It was interesting post and got me thinking.

Why the Roman Empire fell, collapsed or really just slowly dissolved is a fascinating question. There have been a number of fine scholars and writers who’ve tried to answer it. But with the exception of a few authors (I won’t say who for now), the answers we get are interesting but usually unsatisfying. Goldsworthy’s thesis, if I’m to believe Brandon Crocker’s review, appears to fit into this category.

First, in the preface to his book, Goldsworthy says comparisons between the Roman Empire and America have little value because the contexts of the times are so different. The contexts are clearly different but the historical forces (economic, social, political, strategic and military) at play do have something to tell us about the behavior of Empires. And America is an Empire in all but name. Studying past Empires does give you some workable idea or pattern as to how Empires will react or behave when pushed by similar historical forces.

Secondly, Goldsworthy does not blame the fall of the Roman Empire on the Germanic invasions but rather on the later emperors and the vast bureaucracies they built to protect themselves. Crocker writes:

The problem, as Goldsworthy views it, was that by the end of the second century, the façade of republican government, which Augustus so carefully endeavored to preserve, had largely been stripped away (entirely so, by the time of Diocletian at the end of the third century). Though the Senate never had much power during the early empire, emperors knew that any challengers they may face would likely come from the senatorial class. Based in Rome, and in constant contact with the Senate, emperors understood the issues of state, and could keep tabs on potential dissent. By distancing themselves from the Senate and Rome, setting up new imperial residences in places like Trier, Milan, and Ravenna, creating vast bureaucracies of court officials, for the purpose of protecting themselves from imperial rivals, and constantly conducting military campaigns in person so as to keep military commanders from gaining too much popularity and favor with the army, the result was, in fact, a system that guaranteed incessant plotting, purges, warfare, and inefficiency.

The later emperors, according to Goldsworthy, allowed the interests of the state to become secondary to their own. To quote Goldsworthy:

At a basic level the emperors and government officials of the Late Roman Empire had forgotten what the empire was for. The wider interests of the state […] were secondary to their own personal success and survival. […] There had been plenty of selfish and corrupt individuals in earlier periods of Roman history, just as there have been in all other societies. The difference was that by the late empire it was difficult for them to behave in any other way.

Interesting. I have a few points:

1. First a point of history. The “façade of republican government” had not been “stripped away” entirely by the time of Diocletian. Nerva, Trajan (who enacted reforms) and Hadrian all, in some form, tried to restore a semblance of the emperor as Princeps—the first citizen. It was Trajan who made peace with the “Stoic opposition” in the Senate, stopped the executions, the terrorizing, and tried to restore its function as an advisory council. I’ll have to retain final judgment until after I read the book but this historical point, if Crocker is accurate, is simply not true.

2. Creating “vast bureaucracies” would not seem, in itself, a probable reason for the fall of the Empire. A large bureaucracy would have been needed to control and administer such a large Empire. In fact, it could be argued that the lack of sound bureaucratic structure crippled the later Roman Republic. The rivalries, power grabs, curruption, and backstabbing are typical byproducts of bureacracies. Anyone who works in government can attest to this. As Goldsworthy admits, the earlier Romans had plenty of selfish and corrupt individuals (magistrates), just as the later Roman’s had. More so, I don’t think there’s enough evidence to say the later Romans were any more self-interested and corrupt than the earlier Romans. To read the books of Livy and Tacitus and the rest really confirms that as the case. Of course there's the point of orginality too. If vast bereaucracies is the main reason for the fall of the Roman Empire, then I'm not impressed by the insight.  

I’ve ordered Goldsworthy’s book and hope to read it soon. Again, I'll save final judgment until I've read it for myself. But if Crocker’s review rings true then I’ll be returning to this blog to say how disappointed I was with, arguably, Goldsworthy’s most important book to date. Of course I may read the whole book and realize a simple answer is really all there is to this mystery.

Battle of Zama Documentary

An amateur documentary of the 2nd Punic War and the Battle of Zama. Very well done!

From the Archive: How the Roman's defeated an insurgency

Ruins of a Roman Fort in North Africa

(This is a post I wrote back in August of 2007 while the debate over the surge in Iraq was in full swing)

The year was 19 A.D., in the Roman province of Africa (at that time, the area in and around modern Tunisia). A Numidian leader, and a former--a deserter actually--Roman auxiliary commander, by the name of Tacfarinas, had started a rebellion. “His followers were vagabonds and marauders who came for loot,” according to Tacitus. Tacfarinas convinced other North African tribes to join him against the Roman overlords. Tacfarinus trained--in Roman tactics, of course--an elite guard force for his main camp, and deployed a hit-and-run raiding force to roam the countryside, harassing Roman loyalist, pillaging and terrorizing. His insurgency began what Tacitus called a "long war" for the Romans.

Eventually, Tacfarinas foolishly allowed himself to be lured into a full scale battle with the Roman army. Fools rush in, and so did Tacfarinas. The Numidian battle line was quickly shattered and routed by the Roman infantries highly disciplined and machine-like advance. Tacfarinas would survive the battle and escape. The Roman governor did not pursue Tacfarinas. Not long after the battle, the Governor, Marcus Furius Camillius, was recalled by the emperor and awarded an honorary triumph. However, these celebrations were a bit premature.

The following year Tacfarinas resumed hostilities. But he had learned this time. Squaring off, in the open with a Roman legion, had been a foolish mistake. He would now stick to hit-and-run raiding tactics. Tacfarinas would avoid large scale engagements and seek to engage smaller Roman garrisons and patrols, while simultaneously terrorizing Roman loyalists in the province.

Tacfarinas invested a Roman fort near the river Pagyda, and began a siege. The garrison commander was a Roman named Decrius. He was the paragon of an aristocratic Roman legionary officer: a no non-sense man with a contempt for death and an almost febrile dedication to duty and the preservation of honor. Decrius considered the siege, by the enemy troops, a disgrace. So he ordered his battalion to form up in battle formation outside the front gate of the fort, in the open.

Unfortunately, once the fight began, Decrius’s troops succumb to the overwhelming enemy numbers. They broke and began falling back in disorder. Decrius cursed the centurions (sergeant-majors), for letting Roman soldiers run from irregulars and deserters. Decrius, as expected, already badly wounded, preferred death to dishonor, so he hurled himself into the enemy line and died fighting.

The fort held out, but the Roman governor, Lucius Apronius, the successor of Camillus, was concerned with the disgraceful conduct of the Roman soldiers under Decrius. He invoked the ancient Roman punishment of “decimation.” The battalion was ordered to draw lots. Every tenth man was flogged to death. The severity worked. When the same troops of Tacfarinas laid siege to the fort at Mala, a detachment of only 500 old Roman soldiers quickly routed it.

Tacfarinas would continually reassess his tactics against the superior Romans. As Roman armies advanced toward him, Tacfarinas would give ground while harassing the Roman van guard. Tacfarinas’s men remained fluid. As Tacitus reports, “Giving away under pressure and then attacking from the rear.” Guerilla warfare was not new to the Romans. It was a form of warfare that lacked the heroic opportunities of conventional war, however, so developing counter tactics had not been a priority for the honor seeking Romans. Eventually the pursing Roman army would again push Tacfarinas so far out into the desert that he would disappear. The Romans would not pursue and, again, withdrew to their interior forts.

But, of course, in 21 A.D Tafaranis would again reemerge on the scene. This time the new Roman governor, Quintus Junius Blaesus, would be prepared. He had an advanced mind in strategy and tactics. He probably anticipated a renewed insurgency war with Tacfarinas, so he was prepared. Tacfarinas, foolishly, sent the Roman emperor Tiberius a letter demanding land or promising “endless war.” Tiberius scoffed at the letter from "a deserter and brigand." Tiberius ordered Blaesus to dispose of Tacfarinas.

To win, insurgents must at least have the passive cooperation of the local population. Blaesus seems to have understood this. He also understood the supreme importance of psychological warfare. So instead of ravaging the countryside, causing the population to flee, which was expected, Blaesus would appeal to the population's sense of being tired of war. Blaesus would not offer fire and sword, he would extend a full pardon to all people who came forward and surrendered their weapons to the local Roman garrison.

This was not what Tacfarinas expected. He was caught off guard. His army was made up of locals, and they were now abandoning him to make peace with the Romans. Tacfarinas would take his loyal troops and continue the insurgency. His tactics would be to operate in small independent groups, avoiding open battle and setting ambushes. Sound familiar. Insurgency tactics have not changed much in 2 thousand years.

Blaesus understood the fluid dynamic of insurgency war. He would divide his army into at least 3 separate independent divisions, each composed of smaller tactical fighting units. Each division was a assigned a tactical operating area and target within Tacfarinas’s army. These 3 divisions would slowly advance across a wide front, in unison, pushing Tacfarinas out toward the desert, again. But this time, Blaesus’s legions would deploy forward units to block strategic routes of escape and to provide protection for allied communities from punitive raids by Tacfarinas’s troops. Blaesus would not allow Tacfarinas to use terror as a weapon to punish the locals for cooperating with the Romans. I guess we could say the Romans were engaged in an early form of "winning hearts and minds."

The key to Blaesus’s success was the building of forward operating bases; a chain of frontier forts. And providing desert combat training to legionaries assigned to these bases. Unlike other governor-generals, Blaesus did not intend to withdrawal once he had pushed Tacfarinas into the desert. Blaesus’s troops would not withdrawal once the campaigning season had come to an end. What ground he had crossed and taken in combat he would not allow back into enemy hands. From these forward operating bases, Tacitus says Blaesus “kept Tacfarinas in a constant state of movement.” Unlike before, Tacfarinas would not have time to regroup, rest or gather material. Blaesus intended to punch until Tacfarinas was down and counted out. Tacfarinas would now be hunted--constantly. There was a good chance Tafarinas would have been defeated then, but no. Blaesus was recalled and given the laurels of victory by Tiberius before Blaesus could really say the insurgency had been defeated. The mission was not accomplished.

Finally in 24 A.D Tacitus reports: “This year at last freed Rome from the long war with the Numidian Tacfarinas.” Three previous governor-generals had been taken from the war before final victory was assured. The prize of real victory would go to the new Roman governor Publius Cornelius Dolabella. He would use Blaesus’s tactics with one added, highly important feature. Dolabella would have good intelligence. Dolabella got word that Tacfarinas and his troops were stationed near an old half-ruined fort at Auzea. Dolabella dispatch a fast moving force that arrived in the middle of the night near Auzea. At dawn Dolabella’s forces attacked the totally unaware camp of Tacfarinas. Tacitus writes, “they (the Numidians) had no weapons, order or plan and were dragged to death or captivity like sheep.” Tacfarinas was cornered during the fight and killed.

And thus ended the insurgency war in the Roman province of Africa in 24 A.D.

What general obeservations about insurgency war can be taken from Rome's war with Tacfarinas? The following are my immediate thoughts.

1. Guerrilla wars are long term fights. Just think of Northern Ireland as one example. Don’t think, because you have won a great battle you have won the long war. Don’t declare “mission accomplished,” until your strategic goals have been achieved. The war with Tacfarinas took 7 years and only ended suddenly because of a piece of good intelligence.

2. Don't give up ground you’ve taken. If you push insurgents out, keep them out. Blaesus’s forward operating forts kept Tacfarinas out of the province and on the move. It denied him rest, resources, manpower and materials. Unfortunately Blaesus was removed before he could finish Tacfarinas off.

The current U. S. troop surge strategy in Iraq is an attempt to hold ground taken, like Blaesus's forts. General Patreaus’s idea, like Blausus’s, is to clear out insurgents and then keep them out. The idea sounds simple and common sensible, and it is. The problem is that it is expensive, manpower intensive, and time consuming.

3. Win the hearts and minds of the population by protecting them from the violence of your enemy. Insurgents must have the cooperation of the population to operate effectively. If you drive the insurgents out and the locals help you with information, then you must protect them from the revenge of your enemies. If you leave, the insurgents will be back to punish those who helped you. There really is no neutrality in war.

4. Use tactics that adapt to the changing dynamics of enemy. Of course this observation may encompass all the others but it's worth saying. You might think this is obvious, but it's not. Military commanders are by nature conservative and usually slow to adapt. Insurgents fight a net war, their fighters are grouped in independent cells deployed across a undefined front. Along with Blaesus's forts, he organized and deployed his Roman forces in such a way that directly countered the fluidity of the enemy along the undefined battle front.

There are many examples in Roman military history we can learn from. I chose this example because I’ve been rereading Tacitus’s Annals of Imperial Rome and felt the story worth posting.

I hope you finding it interesting too.

Excellent report by the Kagans on Afghan strategy.

How Not to Defeat al Qaeda: To win in Afghanistan requires troops on the ground. By Frederick W. Kagan & Kimberly Kagan.

Recommendations for your reading pleasure

For those classical history followers there's been two biographies recently released you might want to pick up. I'm currently reading Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome by Anthony Everitt. I also picked up a copy of Frank McLynn's new biography of Marcus Aurelius.

From the Archive: The genius of Tacitus

Frequently, I stop by the bookstore and browse through the books neatly stacked on the tables. It is a meditative experience. My eyes slowly scan titles, book covers and authors. I thumb through books that look interesting, stopping to read passages to see if the author’s prose pulls me in. I am looking for what most readers look for in a good book: to be emotionally or intellectually captivated. That is, to be temporarily taken up into the author’s world.

The writer who can provoke our imagination, call up images, speak to us, truly communes with us. The ancient Greeks had a name for this process, they called it anazographesis, or “picturing” in English. As the great English writer Joseph Conrad said, “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel -- it is, before all, to make you see. That -- and no more, and it is everything.” Words that should be the mantra of every dedicated writer.

There are, of course, many authors who live up to the Conradian task. But for me, there is one author I return to over and over consistently to commune with, and that is the Roman historian Tacitus. His works are best described by Penguin as “history as fact, rhetoric, psychology and art.” Thomas Jefferson considered Tacitus “the first writer in the world without a single exception. His book is a compound of history and morality of which we have no other example.” Michael Grant’s translation of The Annals of Imperial Rome is superb, it reads like a modern historical novel. The Histories, Agricola and The Germania, also have excellent translations available.

I return to the pages of Tacitus because there, through the power of Tacitus’s storytelling, I feel the vastness and grandeur of the Roman achievement. Characters and events come alive in the theater of the imagination. There are villains and high placed scoundrels in his story. There are imperial wars involving hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Tacitus’s description of Rome’s "punitive" wars (a very Roman idea) in Germany are unforgettable. But amongst these stories of blood-soaked earth, Tacitus also tells a story of heroes and selfless personal sacrifice in the service of higher ideals. His story is of the rise of empire and the people and peoples who made it. Made all the more great because of the limitations they struggle under.

Even in translation Tacitus’s words ring with a poetic vividness. Here’s just a sampling: (I'm sorry I couldn't resist the personal observations to go along with some)

“At last, for lack of truth, Galba yielded to the consensus of error."---haven't you every felt this way at a meeting?

“He had the qualifications to be a ruler--if only he had not ruled"---If you have ever worked in Washington D.C. you'd really understand the irony of this quote.

“Their courage had been lost along with their liberty.”

“Bolanus…had contrived to win popularity as a substitute for authority.”---you know, playing both sides against the middle.

“Defeat in battle always begins with the eyes.”

“Good men owe their power to their virtues; he was of that worse sort who derive it from their vices.”---some people use all of their skill sets! Unfortunately.

“Clearly he did not understand how we Romans value real power but disdain its vanities.”

“They (the Romans) make a desert and call it peace.”

“How truly the wisest of men used to assert that the souls of despots, if revealed, would show wounds and mutilations--weals left on the spirit, like lash-marks on a body, by cruelty, lust, and malevolence.”

And one of my favorites, “He (Agricola) retained from philosophy the hardest lesson of all, a sense of proportion.”

Of course, I could go on and on with these sort of biting quotes. These short poetic jabs are part of Tacitus’s stock-in-trade. His mind is razor sharp, critical and unrelenting. His histories are written with the storytelling abilities of a novelist, and the analytical skill of a historian-poet and philosopher. Yes, some modern books have the Tacitian quality, but for me they are still mostly imitations. I always seem to return to the original. Tacitus, for me, is like reading Shakespeare. The more you read him, the more astounded you are at his genius.

Some good reads

I've been really busy lately so blogging will be sporadic for a while. Please stop in from time to time.

Here is some interesting reads:

Ted's Last Hurrah:  The authorized version of the Kennedy myth receives one more installment by Andrew Ferguson. Quite the hit job by Ferguson.


Death in Coyoacán: How the long arm of Stalin liquidated Leon Trotsky by Stephen Schwartz. Anytime I read anything about Trotsky it recalls my words from an earlier post:

Trotsky, still in favor in 1918, was likewise the pitiless partner in the Devil duo with Lenin. Trotsky was the general in charge of the Red army at Kazan in August of 1918, where the Whites were putting up a strong resistance. Trotsky, sick of cowardice in his Red army troops, resorted to terror—against his own troops. Machine guns were mounted in the rear of Red army lines. Anyone who failed to advance or ran from the enemy was shot. Trotsky commented, “We must put an end once and for all to the papist-Quaker babble about the sanctity of human life.” And so he did!

Remembering the brave: Sergeant First Class Jared Monti was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor today

Remembering 9/11

Quote of note

This morning's scan of the newspapers brought this good one to mind:

If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.--Mark Twain

Teutoburg Forest: Was it really Rome's Greatest Defeat?

(Teutoburg Forest)

For the Roman history enthusiasts, this September marks the 2000th anniversary of the Battle of Teutoburg Forest. This month two millennia ago the Romans suffered a miserable defeat at the hands of German tribesmen. In 9 AD, the Roman provincial governor, Quintilius Varus, was betrayed by his German allies, and his force of approximately 20,000 legionnaires (3 Legions) plus thousands of camp followers were ambushed and ultimately massacred near Kalkriese hill.

Tony Clunn (originally found the battle field) and Peter Wells have both written interesting books about the battle and archeological finds at the site. My latest read on the battle was Adrian Murdoch’s book, Rome's Greatest Defeat: Massacre in the Teutoburg Forest.

Murdoch’s book is a very good read. I took issue with Murdoch’s title and main thesis, though. The defeat at the Teutoburg Forest was a setback for the Romans. But it was not their greatest defeat. Certainly Hannibal’s crushing defeat at Cannae in 216 BC had greater implications for the Romans. Being defeated by the Germans was a blow, yes, but the defeat at Cannae was an existential threat for the Roman Republic. There would have been no Teutoburg Forest had the Romans not recovered from their defeat at Cannae. Furthermore, the Roman Empire was not “stopped” by the defeat at Kalkreise. There was really no incentive for the Romans to continue subduing Germany. The Germans were resistant to urbanization, and outside of slaves, iron and amber, Germany didn’t offer any other material rewards for the costs. Peter Heather discusses this point in his excellent book, The Fall of the Roma Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians.

I wrote Murdoch to press this point:

I agree with Peter Heather. "It was not the military prowess of the Germani that kept them outside the Empire, but their poverty." Tiberius saw that the Germans weren't worth conquering. A cost-benefit calculation offered little incentive for the Romans to continue conquering the Germans. The Jastorf culture of the Germans was not pliant to urbanization anyway. Of course the merchants pushed forward, much as their modern equivalent the Haliburtoni and Black Wateri, building and investing, trying to keep the money flowing in. But the Romans saw the futility in conquering a race that didn't offer much in return for the effort.

Murdoch had had this debate with Heather before. He’d disagreed. In Murdoch’s view Scotland also offered very little, but Rome “threw itself repeatedly against” its tribesmen. Murdoch writes:

Unsurprisingly although I disagree with some of your points…I have also disagreed with Peter H on the point. The simple retort is Britain, specifically Scotland. The empire threw itself repeatedly against a part of the world that could offer Rome nothing, and was much, much more expensive than Germany to invade for about 150 years.

I had never really considered the comparison of Scotland and Germania. Murdoch’s comparison was an attempt to undermine the idea that Rome’s withdrawal from Germany was based on anything other than military defeat at the Teutoburg Forest. I agreed with Heather. The rewards just weren’t there in Germany. A good comparison is with Spain. The Romans fought a long brutal war there. Big battles and insurgencies raged across that province for decades. A fight that was just as brutal but much longer and more costly than Germany. But Spain had lots of raw materials. It paid to stay and fight in Spain. The Romans stayed. They could have done so in Germany but there was little reward for it.

I relayed Murdoch’s comments to Professor Heather and his reply was excellent:

1. The Romans utterly avenged Teutoburger Wald, destroying Arminius within a decade. Cf. John Drinkwater's recent book on the Alamani, the Cherusci & other Rhine-Weser Germani took over a century to recover from the hammering they took, before they reached the levels of development even among the other frontier Germani. I.e. Rome wasn't in fact defeated militarily.

2. Romans never made really strategic decisions. As Ben Isaac pointed out, campaigning ran out of steam when it ceased to bring in sufficient rewards, so you never see a sudden stop. It was, however, the lack of rewards which made them stop bothering (as they did with Scotland). I also know of no evidence of the Empire 'throwing itself repeatedly' at Scotland.

3. What the traders got was raw materials - slaves, foodstuffs, amber, some iron. There was not much else & that's not the kind of thing Roman rulers wanted in Triumphs. Look now at the kind of stuff in Mary Beard's book on the Roman triumph...

The defeat at the Teutoburg Forest was a setback and a humiliating defeat for the Romans. But it couldn't have been the primary reason for the Romans pulling back to the Rhine. The better answer is that there was no reward so there was no reason to stay. It was more German poverty than German prowess that guided Roman strategic thinking on Germany.

Though I'd argue with some of the opinions expressed here, this is good video history of the battle from a series call Decisive Battles:

New Economist/YouGov poll shows clear support for aggressive interrogations

The Economist has released a new You/Gov poll.

On the question of whether waterboarding or aggressive interrogations are "sometimes justified," a clear majority of Americans (62%) said yes.

The Economist's blog Democracy in America (DOA) had this to say:

Most Americans agree with the former vice-president when it comes to dealing with terrorism suspects. By a wide margin Americans think that waterboarding and other "aggressive" interrogation techniques are sometimes justified. 

On the matter of aggressive interrogations, this poll confirms a proper sense responsibility is still winning out in this debate. Even with all of President Obama's rhetoric against methods he considers torture, a clear majority of the public do not hold his view. And this is a poll taken 8 years out from 9/11. Generally one would think the "anti" postion would have gained more strength as memories fade. One could imagine the support would be well over 80% if there's another successful attack on American soil.

For President Obama this is a real problem. If there's another successful terrorist attack on American soil, I suspect many Americans will have little sympathy with a President whose actions have arguably weakened our national security capabilities. As one DOA blogger put it: President Obama is "just a terrorist attack away from [being assailed]...as weak, feckless and incapable of protecting the country."

Transcript of a shouting match between Obama, Holder, Panetta and Emanuel

A must read. A very funny parody from the latest edition of The Weekly Standard.