Are We Rome?

by Cullen Murphy

  an official triumph through the streets: Peter J. Holliday, “Roman Triumphal Painting: Its Function, Development, and Reception,” Art Bulletin 79, no. i (March 1997), pp. 130–147.

  quintessential Washington text: Ramsay MacMullen, “Roman Elite Motivation: Three Questions,” Past and Present 88 (1980), pp. 8–16.

  an “in-box imperium”: Millar, Emperor in the Roman World, pp. 203–272.

  57 personally selected bombing targets: Dallek, Lyndon B. Johnson, p. 223.

  failed military rescue mission: Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah, pp. 397–468; Richard Benedetto, “For the Most Part, Bush Lets Military Do Its Job,” USA Today, January 23, 1991.

  vast political databases: Todd S. Purdum, “Karl Rove’s Split Personality,” Vanity Fair, December 2006.

  58 resistance to multilateral arrangements: A list of multilateral initiatives that the United States has either rejected or declined to comply with fully in recent years can be found at www.ieer.org/reports/treaties/factsht.html.

  most recent federal budget: Thom Shanker, “In Bill’s Fine Print, $20 Million to Celebrate Victory in the War,” New York Times, October 4, 2006.

  after the last emperor was deposed: Brown, World of Late Antiquity, p. 131.

  2. THE LEGIONS

  59 “Valens was overjoyed”: Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History, 31.4.6.

  “I would go further”: Max Boot, “Defend America, Become American,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2005.

  Bagram has yielded glassware: “A Virtual Catalogue of the Begram Ivory and Bone Carvings,” Electronic Cultural Atlas (ecai.org/begramweb/), an initiative headed by Jeanette Zernenke. See in particular Sanjyot Mehendale, “Begram: New Perspectives on the Ivory and Bone Carvings,” doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2005.

  60 Bagram today is an outpost: For details about Bagram Air Base, see Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, pp. 196–202; Michael R. Gordon, “Securing Base, U.S. Makes Its Brawn Blend In,” New York Times, December 3, 2001; Bruce Rolfsen, “Comfort Is a Relative Term in Afghanistan,” Air Force Times, August 29, 2005; “Afghanistan—Bagram Airbase,” GlobalSecurity.org.

  naturalization ceremonies have been held: Tiffany Evans, “23 Service-members in Afghanistan Become U.S. Citizens,” Armed Forces Press Service, July 29, 2005.

  celebrities from the United States: Susan Dominus, “Not Bob Hope’s U.S.O.,” New York Times Magazine, November 13, 2005; Tamara Jones, “The U.S.O.’s Handshake Squad,” Washington Post, December 24, 2005.

  61 A single company, Kellogg Brown & Root: KBR’s role is explained in numerous sources, including Web sites at the Pentagon (www.amc.army.mil/logcap/WhoWhere1.html) and the Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org/wow/bio.aspx?act=pro&ddlC=31), and in a Frontline documentary (www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/view/).

  more than a thousand fast-food restaurants: Testimony by Kathryn G. Frost, commander, Army and Air Force Exchange Service, before the House Armed Services Committee, Subcommittee on Military Personnel, April 7, 2005.

  an American correspondent . . . writes: Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, p. 197.

  62 Vindolanda’s moats and ditches: For this and other general information about Vindolanda, see Bowman, Life and Letters; Birley, Garrison Life.

  no idea what will come out of the ground: Interview with Robin Birley, Vindolanda, December 2005.

  63 they had proved unreliable: Birley, Garrison Life, pp. 41–48.

  Their bitter anthem: From Auden, “Twelve Songs,” Collected Poems, p. 143.

  Fly over the Syrian desert: Kennedy and Riley, Rome’s Desert Frontier, passim.

  to amuse the troops: Trajan’s action is cited in C. E. Manning, “Acting and Nero’s Conception of the Principate,” Greece & Rome 22, no. 2 (October 1975), pp. 164–175.

  64 delicate bits of writing: Bowman, Life and Letters, pp. 9–19; Birley, Garrison Life, pp. 15–40.

  “Octavius to his brother”: Birley, Garrison Life, pp. 114–116; Bowman, Life and Letters, pp. 136–137.

  “Nails for boots”: Cited in R.S.O. Tomlin, “The Vindolanda Writing Tablets,” Britannia 27 (1996), pp. 459–463; Birley, Garrison Life, pp. 114, 85.

  a Latin epithet: Birley, Garrison Life, p. 95.

  “I am surprised”: Ibid., p. 107.

  “I am beginning to wonder”: Allen Breed, “Internet Letters Tell of Couple’s Heartache During the Iraq War,” Associated Press, January 11, 2004.

  “Be good for Grandma”: Matt Richtel, “A Nation at War: Email,” New York Times, March 23, 2003.

  “Send me some cash”: Bowman, Life and Letters, p. 138.

  “Still no hope in sight”: Allen Breed, “Internet Letters Tell of Couple’s Heartache During the Iraq War,” Associated Press, January 11, 2004.

  “While I am writing”: Birley, Garrison Life, p. 118.

  “I have sent you”: Birley, Roman Documents, p. 19.

  “For the celebration”: Birley, Garrison Life, p. 136.

  “Well, on that happy note”: Evans, “Two Years in Iraq,” Newsday, March 22, 2005.

  “seemingly imperial power”: Joseph Nye, All Things Considered, National Public Radio, March 11, 2002.

  65 when visiting American forces: Quoted in Hugh Honour, “From Here to Eternity,” New York Review of Books, June 13, 1991.

  its level of annual spending: Robert A. Pape, “Soft Balancing Against the United States,” International Security, Summer 2005; Robert S. Dudney, “What It Means to Be number 1,” Air Force, February 2006; Fareed Zakaria, “Our Way,” The New Yorker, October 14, 2002; David Brooks, “Why the U.S. Will Always Be Rich,” New York Times Magazine, June 9, 2002; Emily S. Rosenberg, “Bursting America’s Imperial Bubble,” Chronicle Review, November 3, 2006.

  we provide a security umbrella: John Ikenberry, “Illusions of Empire,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004.

  66 had to squeeze its people hard: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, pp. 136–137; Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 1039; Luttwak, Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 130.

  Perhaps the next stop: William G. Sinnigen, “The Roman Secret Service,” Classical Journal 57, no. 2 (November 1961), pp. 65–72; P. K. Baillie Reynolds, “The Troops Quartered in the Castra Peregrinorum,” Journal of Roman Studies 13 (1923), pp. 168–189.

  67 one of the imperial stud farms: Davies, Service in the Roman Army, pp. 163, 167.

  Next: a tour of the fabricae: Simon James, “The Fabricae: State Arms Factories of the Later Roman Empire,” in Coulston, ed., Military Equipment and the Identity of Roman Soldiers, pp. 257–331.

  than Rome usually possessed: Luttwak, Grand Strategy, p. 2; Maier, Among Empires, p. 71.

  would rank No. 50: Defense Logistics Agency, official history (www.dla.mil/history/history.htm).

  68 In one recent year: Communication from Diana Stewart, public-affairs officer, Defense Supply Center, April 2006.

  a thing of organizational beauty: For an extended account, see William Langewiesche, “Peace Is Hell,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2001.

  turns impressive feats: U.S. Army Special Operations Command; Ann Scott Tyson, “Inside the Army’s Quest for Agility, Speed,” Christian Science Monitor, October 2, 2002.

  the globe-circling Royal Navy: Rodger, Command of the Ocean, pp. 306–307.

  a single Roman legion . . . required: Goldsworthy, Roman Army at War, p. 290.

  criticized for its enormous fuel consumption: Robert Bryce, “Gas Pains,” Atlantic Monthly, May 2005.

  In meat alone: Goldsworthy, Roman Army at War, pp. 292–296.

  a sickle was standard: Ibid., p. 291.

  steady stream of supplies: Michael Fulford, “Territorial Expansion and the Roman Empire,” World Archaeology 23, no. 3 (February 1992), pp. 294–305; José Remesal Rodriguez, “Baetica and Germania: Notes on the Concept of ‘Provincial Interdependence’ in the Roman Empire,” in Erdkamp, Roman Army and the Economy, pp. 293–308.

  69 Excavated Roman latrines: B. A. Knights, Camilla A. Dickson, J. H
. Dickson, and D. J. Breeze, “Evidence Concerning the Roman Military Diet at Bearsdon, Scotland, in the 2nd Century AD,” Journal of Archaeological Science 10 (1983), pp. 139–152; Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 103; Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 81.

  Caesar . . . built a wooden bridge: Caesar, Gallic War, 4.17–19.

  a new riverine fleet: Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p. 104.

  American standards of readiness: James Fallows, “Why Iraq Has No Army,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2005.

  military handbook from the second century: Davies, Service in the Roman Army, p. 103.

  70 an assessment of Roman conditioning: Keppie, Making of the Roman Army, p. 198.

  tightly knit and self-contained: Ramsay MacMullen, “The Legion as a Society,” Historia 33 (1984), pp. 440–456.

  “All professional armies”: Goldsworthy, Roman Army at War, p. 252.

  Roman garrisons were much the same: Ramsay MacMullen, “The Legion as a Society,” Historia 33, no. 4 (1984), pp. 440–456.

  Roman tomb inscription: Simon James, in Coulston, ed., Military Equipment, p. 281.

  the equivalent of Point Blank Body Armor: This is one of several companies that supply the U.S. military with body armor. See DHB Industries Inc. (www.dhbt.com). Also Michael Moss, “Many Missteps Tied to Delay of Armor to Protect Troops,” New York Times, March 7, 2005; Michael Moss, “U.S. Struggling to Get Soldiers Updated Armor,” New York Times, August 14, 2005.

  71 “imperial overstretch”: The classic formulation is in Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. For the specific application to the United States, see pp. 514–535.

  his influential monograph: Luttwak, Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, p. 1. An excellent concise overview of many of the same issues is provided by Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy.

  taken to task: Eliot Cohen, review of The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, by Edward Luttwak, Political Science Quarterly 93, no. 1 (Spring 1978), pp. 174–175.

  great stock in battlefield ferocity: Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, pp. 171–174.

  the influence of “soft” power: The concept is discussed at length in Nye, Paradox of American Power, pp. 8–12.

  72 seating him directly under a U.S. cruise missile: Holbrooke, To End a War, pp. 244–245.

  to encourage a spirit of mature reflection: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 69.9.6

  “proceeding . . . along a path”: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 434.

  these ideas no longer have significant competition: His views were first expressed in a 1989 article in the journal The National Interest but received their fullest expression in Fukuyama, End of History.

  equal measures of Ronald Reagan and Emma Lazarus: Cited in Williams, Romans and Barbarians, p. 85.

  73 The larger goal of American foreign policy: Benjamin Schwarz, “Why America Thinks It Has to Run the World,” Atlantic Monthly, June 1996.

  “consensual empire”: Charles S. Maier, “An American Empire?” Harvard, November/December 2002.

  74 “eggshell strategy”: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, p. 35.

  about twenty-five emperors: Ibid., p. 43.

  The emperor Valerian: Potter, The Roman Empire at Bay, pp. 254–256; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 1, pp. 234–237.

  “our present revenues”: Cassius Dio, Roman History, 52.6.

  75 “The machinery of empire”: Luttwak, Grand Strategy, p. 5.

  three quarters of the . . . research money . . . Half of America’s scientists: Barney Warf and Amy Glasmeier, “Military Spending, the American Economy, and the End of the Cold War,” Economic Geography 69, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 103–106. See also James Galbraith, “The Unbearable Costs of Empire,” American Prospect, November 18, 2002.

  “Every gun that is made”: Quoted in Barney Warf and Amy Glasmeier, “Military Spending, the American Economy, and the End of the Cold War,” Economic Geography 69, no. 2 (April 1993), pp. 103–106.

  it maintains basing rights: Johnson, Sorrows of Empire, p. 4; Kaplan, Imperial Grunts, p. 7.

  76 three hundred military sites: They are listed and described in Bidwell, Roman Forts in Britain.

  a size not reached again: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, p. 1.

  77 at one point during the reign of Tiberius: Tacitus, Annals, 4.5.

  Roman legions anticipated this practice: Keppie, Making of the Roman Army, pp. 205–212.

  “Given the worldwide array”: Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, p. 529.

  too large to be affordable: Walter Goffart, “Rome, Constantinople, and the Barbarians,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (April 1981), pp. 275–306. See also Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 1035.

  78 a concerned Roman citizen: For biographical inferences and historical context, see E. A. Thompson, trans., Roman Reformer, pp. 1–6. See also the introduction by M.WC. Hassall, in Hassall and Ireland, eds., De Rebus Bellicis.

  labor shortages are a problem: Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 1042.

  79 which propel the ship: Thompson, Roman Reformer, p. 119.

  “technologically as backward”: Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 1047.

  Measuring distances: Robert K. Sherk, “Roman Geographical Exploration and Military Maps,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der romanischen Welt, pp. 534–562.

  technology of waterpower: Jones, Later Roman Empire, p. 1048.

  Germans today are number 3: Richard Florida, “The World Is Spiky,” Atlantic Monthly, October 2005.

  the barbarians, not the Romans: Lynn White Jr., “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 15, no. 2 (April 1940), pp. 141–159.

  80 wouldn’t have solved the . . . problem: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, p. 59.

  one barbarian recruit: Elton, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, p. 65.

  advancement . . . was rebuffed: Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 216–226.

  “he and his men”: MacMullen, Corruption, p. 204.

  81 number of soldiers with roots in Italy: Webster, Roman Imperial Army, pp. 107–109.

  but after Ammianus Marcellinus: Burns, Barbarians Within the Gates, p. xvi.

  “a society rather sealed off”: Ramsay MacMullen, “The Legion as a Society,” Historia 33, no. 4 (1984), pp. 440–456.

  In his 1957 study: Huntington, Soldier and the State, pp. 143–157, 456–466.

  Princeton graduates in the class of 1956: Data provided by the military sociologist Charles Moskos, of Northwestern University, April 2006.

  82 At a recent convention of recruiters: Ibid.

  Only in the military do white people: Ibid.

  83 “It is no longer enough”: Quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, “The Widening Gap Between the Military and Society,” Atlantic Monthly, July 1997.

  the Roman army grew: Luttwak, Grand Strategy, p. 177; Ferrill, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 41–43.

  One emperor ordered the thumbless ones: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, pp. 46–47.

  “avoiding having to face two major military threats”: Luttwak, Grand Strategy, p. 152. A. R. Hands, “The Fall of the Roman Empire in the West: A Case of Suicide or ‘Force Majeure’?” Greece & Rome 10, no. 2 (October 1963), pp. 153–168.

  84 America no longer possesses: Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt, “Pentagon Weighs Strategy Change to Deter Terror,” New York Times, July 5, 2005.

  hemorrhaging young officers: Thom Shanker, “Young Officers Leaving Army at a High Rate,” New York Times, April 10, 2006.

  severe recruiting shortfalls: William J. Perry, chair, National Security Advisory Group, The U.S. Military: Under Strain, January 2006.

  the pace of rotation: Interview with Thomas E. Ricks, military correspondent for the Washington Post, April 2004. See also Andrew F. Krepinevich, “The Thin Green Line,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 2004; James Fallows, “Why Iraq Has No Army,” Atlantic Monthly, December 2005.

  “a race against time”: Andrew F. Krepinevich, “The Thin Green L
ine,” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, August 2004. See also Lawrence J. Korb, “All-Volunteer Army Shows Signs of Wear,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, February 27, 2005; Lawrence J. Korb, “How to Update the Army’s Reserves,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004; Korb, Reshaping America’s Military.

  modern military classic: Fehrenbach, This Kind of War, p. 290.

  an experiment called Project 100,000: Kelly M. Greenhill, “Don’t Dumb Down the Army,” New York Times, February 17, 2006.

  85 the Pentagon announced last year: Michael Kilian and Deborah Horan, “Enlistment Drought Spurs New Strategies,” Chicago Tribune, March 31, 2005; Army News Service, June 22, 2006.

  To lower the bar even further: “The Army Wants You—Even with Tattoos,” Washington Post, April 3, 2006; Douglas Belkin, “Struggling for Recruits, Army Relaxes Its Rules,” Boston Globe, February 20, 2006.

  “white man’s burden”: Ferguson, Colossus, p. 295.

  least qualified in a decade: Fred Kaplan, “The Dumbing Down of the U.S. Army,” Slate, October 4, 2005.

  86 ordered commanders to reduce high attrition: The memo was published in Slate. See Phillip Carter and Owen West, “Dismissed!” Slate, June 2, 2005.

  “From Pago Pago”: James Brooke, “On Farthest U.S. Shores, Iraq Is a Way to a Dream,” New York Times, July 31, 2005.

  Roman citizenship after twenty-five years: Ferrill, Roman Imperial Grand Strategy, p. 5.

  “We could model a Freedom Legion”: Max Boot, “Defend America, Become American,” Los Angeles Times, June 16, 2005.

  cobbled together an ad hoc Coalition of the Willing: GlobalSecurity.org.

  2,000 monkeys: Dana Milbank, “Many Are Willing but Few Are Able,” Washington Post, March 25, 2003.

  87 “privatized military industry”: Singer, Corporate Warrior, pp. 14–16. See also Avant, Market for Force, pp. 113–138.

  Security at the U.S. Military Academy: Marek Fuchs, “Out of Khaki, into Blue at the Gates of West Point,” New York Times, January 22, 2004; Leslie Wayne, “Security for Homeland, Made in Alaska,” New York Times, August 12, 2004.

  A guard at the gate: Interview with James Fallows, April 2006.

  one component of an international industry: Singer, Corporate Warriors, pp. 3–18.