I like these kind of analogies.. and I think it is very good to do analogies and metaphors about the past regarding Rome and Empire. It is good to advance some points of view.. like this one.

But, let's not forget that these are metaphors... so it is better if we study them as such.

So very interesting reading.. but we should alwyas recall that the tribune system and Republican Rome had a completely different universe that we have... no link whatsoever with present notions of state, honour, love or anything you cna think of (most of the so-called roman felling sof lust and honour did not have anything to do with ours.. adn most of the feelings had nothing to do with those "created" centuries later by Shakespeare). from space distribution or the consideration about the public sphere,.. even walking by the street in Rome crowded with more than a half a million people everybody had to talk with anybody they meet...everybody.. the idea of public anonimity was unkown to them.

So it was a completely different universe, with the possible exception of some part of the judicial system and some notions about finding fact via oratory (as the anglo system proposes). Another possible exception is recognition through vicotry,a fter all Cesar comit a genocide in the gali to gain prestige during the Republic... adn that's how he got the head-up in the triumvirate preceding the Empire.

Actually, a case can be made that Empire was more succesful and somehow "democratic" (if you can apply post-enlightenment notions to Rome) during some empire times than during the Republic and , at the same time, during other episodes of the Empire era we find the more despotic and disgusting periods.

So, even we use the metaphor to make the point is good to remember that the key point is that during the Republic there was no extremely dark period (for the ROmans of course) as they existed in the Empire.. just by the mere fact that there was some power sharing and some structured mythological (in the "good" sense of myth as I alwasya use the term) insitutions (like the US consitution)

Having said that... I love the UK comparison .. it is a very good point to make.. closer in time.. closer in symbology... and mythology.

I like it very much.

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Very very interesting article. Of course, one need not recourse to as far back as Rome to consider how a Republic descends into Empire; France has a few similar episodes in her past after all, as does modern Italy (empire not necessarily meaning success in foreign campaigns, after all, as America is proving yet again).

I'd be curious just how much of this "America as Modern Rome" analogy is becoming common wisdom, and realizing that Johnson is using the analogy in a different (and much more apprehensive way) than many other contemporary (albeit mostly American - nothing like patting one's own back after all, and what better way to pat one's own back than by analogizing one's own country to the most powerful and long-lived republic and empire in the history of mankind...)

Many of us will be forgiven for stifling a bit of a laugh. America's "Republic" is barely 200 years old, it has rarely been anything but a tool for facilitating further accumulation of wealth (excluding a brief period from the 1930's to the 1970's) and foreign adventurism (no period to exclude here) so it is somewhat amusing to see these paeans to what America once was as opposed to what those evil people are trying to get it to become.

Let's not lose sight of the fact, for instance, that George Dubya Bush's vision of America is one from the past - the pre-Roosevelt era America (and by Roosevelt I mean Teddy, not Franklin) that was so good to his class, and less so to most other classes. The America, in short, which has obtained for most of her history. "Domestic tyranny" was indeed the order of the day, with the Army regularly brought out to break strikes and kill recalcitrant workers, help steal land (and not just from the autochtones) and engage in imperial adventures abroad as well.

So it is somewhat disingenuous to compare Rome, a proper Republic for 500 years or so before descending into the Empire which eventually would rot, to America, whose Republican credentials have most always been at best spotty.

But if Johnson is set on comparison to the classical period, he could do worse than to cite the Seleucids -at root the product of colonization (and therefore more earnest, if less succesful, colonizers), turned back on its home hellenic base, chronic over-reliance on hard power rather than soft, and hopelessly over-extended. And as a result, far less long-lived than Rome. (And, icing on cake, America finds itself bogged down in precisely the same parts of the world today...)

Don't know if the Seleucids (or the Romans, for that matter) believed their own bullshit as effectively as the Americans though. It is quite possible America comes out, historically, with the highest marks on that score. Silk, sow's ear and all that.

Let's Go Red Wings!

Johnson posted on TPMcafe last week three times. He took the comments from his first post as the basis for his second, etc.

This is a nice change from most pundits who just hold forth with no chance for interaction. You can read the series on the web site, but you will need to go from the bottom up:

http://www.tpmcafe.com/user/21824/recent

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

Long time ago in days of the Cold War such staff would be cheerfully greeted by Soviet propagandists who would appropriate Mr Chalmers facts, theories and speculations without paying any royalties.

Now Soviet Union is history entity replaced by fiercely nationalist Russia, maoist China is being gradually transformed according to ancient treaties, therefore there is no chance of the book to be translated in near future. Some would think - let's leave Americans to discuss whether "the checks and balances of Madisonian Republicanism cannot exist under the almost permanent state of war an empire finds itself in" or can.

What's more interesting is the constant use of history of Roman Empire (I do not count Holy Roman Empire of German nation), the only one durable European empire in ages, as an allusion and inspiration for such writings.

Once I said that the modern West seems to me as reincarnation of ancient Rome and Greece with their economy based on slavery. Of course it was oversimplification - the Western civilization is surely the heir of them but is not merely the new edition.

There were many revolutions and the heir does not resemble his ancestors in numerous ways.

However one thing Western states could not change - geography. Europe is a big peninsular attached to grandios landmass of Asia indented by vast gulfs and internal seas. That's why the West (including America after WWII) had to muscle its ways to precious resources and protect vital communicating lines. That's why militarism (or imperialism) helped the West to become what it is these days in bigger measure than romantic paleoconservatives or madisonian democrats would admit.

Holding sea power is very attractive idea but history teach us that it's vulnerable from inside - when expences on muscle power to protect communications exceed benefits (even potential) marital empire falls apart as cardhouse. That's exactly happened with Roman empire when it was flooded by alien aggresive German tribes running wild.

America has advantage over ancient Rome as she has natural big landmass but overconsumption of natural resources lead her to waging expensive wars overseas without lasting (in historical sense) legacy in invaded countries. It remains to be seen what American leaders upto when the moment of truth will come.

My impression is that the US broke Britain's economic power after the war, which made it impossible for Britain to finance its empire.

The Bretton Woods institutions had not yet been established, and Britain was virtually devoid of liquid international reserves. It was into this virtual economic vacuum that the United States moved to secure subjugation of sterling by the dollar...

What proved so troublesome to the British loan negotiators were the conditions the U.S. Government attached to the loan. Historically speaking, these represent the genesis of the infamous IMF "conditionalities" that have been imposed on debtor countries ever since. It was these negotiations that cast the die. British negotiators gave way on every point critical to its postwar self-interest, each time in exchange for additional U.S. financial assistance. "Not many people in this country", The Economist concluded in 1947 when the totality of British capitulation had become clear, "believe the Communist thesis that it is the deliberate and conscious aim of American policy to ruin Britain and everything that Britain stands for in the world. But the evidence can certainly be read that way. And if every time that aid is extended, conditions are attached which make it impossible for Britain ever to escape the necessity of going back for still more aid, to be obtained with still more self-abasement and on still more crippling terms, then the result will certainly be what the Communists predict...

The United States reverted to its interwar policy of aiding the defeated powers more than its wartime allies. The costs of occupying Germany continued to drain Britain's balance of payment, while Germany's internal debt was cancelled and its economy was free to start anew, unburdened by its indebtedness—the basis for the German miracle of the next quarter-century. Britain was permitted no such miracle. (Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism, 269-272)

So it is simplistic to say, as Chalmers Johnson does, that "the overall thrust of postwar British history is clear: the people of the British Isles chose democracy over imperialism": they were forced to make this "choice" by the new American empire. I like Johnson's writing a lot—I have read his previous two books—but I think that he is better at describing empire than explaining it.

It's funny how the atlanticist editors of the Economist and the FT seem to have forgotten this little bit of their history.

A bomb, H bomb, Minuteman / The names get more attractive
The decisions are made by NATO / The press call it British opinion
-- The Three Johns

It reminds me of Asimov's "Foundation". Somewhere, somebody tells the Mayor of Terminus (in fact President of the Foundation) that, in case the Foundation would try to conquer the Galaxy militarily, it would soon become a dictatorship for the very reasons you mention...

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

The trouble with historical analogies is that one ends up discussing the analogy and not the problem at hand.

Of course the US in not the "same" as Athens, Rome or the UK, but the US is acting as an international bully and is increasingly infringing on civil rights domestically.

So calling attention to how things turned out in the past may bolster one's arguments, but the real effort should be correcting present faults for the sake of those being abused now.

From a procedural point of view the questions are: Is this feasible? Can it be done via democratic processes? Can society avoid civil unrest? What are the best steps to take to achieve the desired goals?

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape