Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
despite having lost and suffered so much, Athens still had the resources to lead an alliance,
even as the adventure in Sicily would prove to be the turning point in the Peloponnesian
War, which Athens lost.
There also is the larger example of the decline of Rome, detailed in 1976 by Edward N.
Luttwak in his topic
The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century
A.D. to the Third
. Luttwak's method is, rather than to talk about decline in general, to dis-
cuss it in terms of Rome's grand strategy. Luttwak identifies three chronological stages of
Roman grand strategy. The first is the Julio-Claudian system, or that of the republican em-
pire, in which the client states that surrounded the empire's Italianate core were sufficiently
impressed with the “totality” of Roman power to carry out the empire's wishes, without the
need of occupation armies. In this stage, diplomacy—not military force—was an active in-
gredient of Roman coercion, even as an overwhelming formation of Roman troops lay in a
“vast circle” around Rome. Because these troops were not needed for the occupation of cli-
ent states, or for territorial defense in any sense, they were, in Luttwak's words, “inherently
mobile and freely redeployable.” Here was power at its zenith, prudently exercised, run
on an economy-of-force principle. A surge capacity was readily available for any military
contingency, and all in the Mediterranean world knew it. Thus everyone feared Rome. One
thinks of Ronald Reagan's America, with a massive buildup of the military that Defense
Secretary Caspar Weinberger was, nevertheless, hell-bent not to use, so as to nurture the
reputation of power without the need for risky adventures. The Antonine system, in place
from the mid-first century to the mid-third, reflected what Luttwak calls the “territorializ-
ation” of the empire: for Rome now felt the need to deploy its military everywhere, in the
client states themselves, in order to secure their fealty, and so the economy-of-force prin-
ciple was lost. Nevertheless, the empire was prosperous, and there was widespread, volun-
tary Romanization of the barbarian tribes, “eliminating the last vestiges of nativist disaf-
fection” for the time being. Yet this very Romanization of the empire would over time cre-
ate unity among different tribes, allowing them to band together in common cause against
Rome, for they were now joined in a culture that was still not their own. Think of how
globalization, which in a sense constitutes an Americanization of the world, nevertheless
serves as a vehicle to defy American hegemony. Hence came the third system to consti-
tute Rome's grand strategy: Diocletian's “defense-in-depth,” whereby the border peoples
coalesced into formal confederations able to challenge Rome, and so the state was on the
defensive everywhere, with emergency deployments constant. The surge capacity that even
the second system retained was lost. With its legions at the breaking point, fewer and fewer
feared Rome.
10
Alas, we are in frighteningly familiar territory. Just as Roman power stabilized the Medi-
terranean littoral, the American Navy and Air Force patrol the global commons to the bene-
fit of all, even as this very service—as with Rome's—is taken for granted, and what has lain
