W.J. Astore
With all these generals being called out of retirement to serve as Donald Trump’s “civilian” advisers, whether it’s General James “Mad Dog” Mattis as Secretary of Defense or General Mike Flynn (the real mad dog) as National Security Adviser, it’s difficult to envision the American empire being shrunk anytime soon. The U.S. military is overcommitted around the world, attenuating its strength even as the American taxpayer foots the bill to the tune of over $600 billion a year, not including nuclear weapons, veterans affairs, interest on the national debt related to war and defense spending, and so on.
With its endless wars and global adventurism, the U.S. is slowly bankrupting itself even as President-elect Trump promises higher military spending and more toughness abroad. Imperial over-commitment, for the historically-minded, recalls the fate of the Roman empire. Many moons ago, the classicist Steven Willett wrote the following words to me, words that America’s militarists and imperialists would be wise to read – and heed:
My personal concern is the misallocation of our resources in futile wars and global military hegemony. We are acting under the false belief that the military can and should be used as a foreign policy tool. The end of US militarism is bankruptcy. I agree with [Andrew] Bacevich’s recommendation that the US cut military spending 6% a year for 10 years. The result would be a robust defensive military with more freed-up resources for infrastructure, education, research and alternative energy. Our so-called defense budget is a massive example of what economists call an opportunity cost.
The US is now about where Rome was in the third to fourth centuries. In his magisterial study “The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic, and Administrative Survey,” A. H. M. Jones shows what a drain the army was on the [economy of Rome]. By the third to fifth centuries, the army numbered about 650,000 scattered along the limes and stationed at central strategic locations. It took most of the state’s revenues, which had long been declining as the economy in the west declined. And even that 650,000 was far too small for adequate defense of the [Roman] empire.
General Mattis, described as a “warrior-monk” with a reputation for a close study of military history, perhaps understands some of this. But can he rein in the American empire and decrease U.S. military spending? The prospects seem grim.
Trying to be strong everywhere is a recipe for being weak when and where it counts. Under the five good emperors, Rome was able to balance imperial ambition with domestic vitality. Any chance Donald Trump is going to be a “good” emperor, a Marcus Aurelius, a man of wisdom? Early signs are unpromising, to say the least.
Of course, America is supposed to be a democracy. We’re supposed to look back to the Roman Republic, not its empire. We’re supposed to be committed to a limited military of citizen-soldiers who are eager to shed their armor and weapons and return to the plow, like Cincinnatus — or George Washington. We’re not supposed to worship warriors and violence.
Imperial decline and cultural decadence march together in step. Under Trump, it appears they’ll soon be marching in lockstep at double-time. Grim times, indeed.
“To entrust affairs of state absolutely to any man is quite incompatible with the maintenance of liberty; and so it is folly to choose to avoid a small loss by means of the greatest of evils. But the perpetual refrain of those who lust after absolute dominion is, that it is to the essential interest of the commonwealth that its business be secretly transacted, and other like pretenses, which end in the more hateful a slavery, the more they are clothed with a show of utility.” Baruch Spinoza (1670)
Woeful World
Welcome to the World of Woeful
Greetings from the dirt and death
Stay awhile and savor slaughter
Exhale now your final breath
Hear the lies like lurid laughter
Sparkling poison comedy
See the snake-oil salesmen slurring
Pitches for their “remedy”
Pay no heed to bloody bungles
Never once demand to know
Why we still employ the vapid
Expectations set so low
Reach should not exceed the grasping
Crony crooks who count their sums
None should wonder at the wicked
Something that now this way comes
Karma works through all intentions
Bad ones drive the good ones out
So it comes as no surprise when
Ruptured ducklings start to pout
Not the rapture long envisioned
By the ones now left behind
Voting in the kind that robbed them
Hasn’t cured the addled mind
Now betrayed by honest trifles
Factoids joined beneath the ken
Down where lizard language festers
Atavism conquers men
Swayed by dark emotion rampant
Arguing from ignorance
Proving fallacies by dictum
Sophistry beguiles the dunce
No defense through education
Chartered homeschools dummy down
Uncle Jim-Bob’s paranoia:
City slickers come to town
Back through centuries of struggle
Abstract danger always near
Like Caligula on steroids:
Let them hate, just so they fear
Going backwards from prevailing
Onward to beginning soon
To the rear advancing daily
Losing Mars to gain the Moon
Two legs bad and four legs better
Animals all equal now
Pigs and men conspire at cheating
One another any how
Hope abandoned here on entrance
You who would not read the sign
Falsehoods you have swallowed freely
Truth you’ve chosen to malign
Now you’ve got what you had coming
What the duped so often get
Ripped off by the reigning monarch
“Winnings” from a lousy bet
Glad to have you join the party
Here no exit will you find
Woeful World indeed you’ve purchased
With this contract you have signed
Didn’t read the fine print, did you?
Mephistopheles feels proud
Once again his whispered promise
Vanished in a bloody cloud
Iraq-Nam now has you stymied
Having done the dumb deed twice
Seems you thought the dry and damp heat
Had some bearing on your vice
You won’t look into the mirror
You project your ebbs and flows
Others who are not your problem
Can’t save you from what you chose
If we want to stop, we’ll do it
Otherwise we’ll stumble on
Wrecking both ourselves and them who
Will not play our puppet pawn
World of Woeful, what a wonder!
Who but we would waste away
Life and prospects for the future
Now, in our own blind today?
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright 2007
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Paul Kennedy in the introduction to “Rise and Fall of Great Powers”
says:“Great Powers in relative decline instinctively respond by spending more on “security,” and thereby divert potential resources from “investment” and compound their
long-term dilemma.
…wealth is usually needed to underpin military power, and military power is usually needed to acquire and protect wealth. If, however, too large a proportion of the state’s resources is diverted from wealth creation and allocated instead to military purposes,
then that is likely to lead to a weakening of national power over the long-term. In the same way, if a state overextends itself strategically-by, say, the conquest of extensive
territories or the waging of costly wars-it runs the risk that the potential benefits from external expansion may be outweighed by the great expense of it all-a dilemma which
becomes acute of the nation concerned has entered a period of relative economic decline.”
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Thanks. I used to own Kennedy’s book, but can’t find my copy. The quote is telling for the American moment. Trillions wasted on endless wars, with more than half of federal discretionary spending dedicated to the Pentagon. At the same time, “warriors” are America’s new heroes, as if we’re the inheritors of Sparta instead of Athens. Bread and circuses under Trump, which may soon become blood and circuses.
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I like to say that you can always tell when the United States military has lost another war the minute they start calling it “long.” Our generals and their special-snowflake, hothouse-orchid commanders-in-brief persistently claim to have “the finest military ever assembled” and yet they can never finish anything. So, after still more decades of futility and failure, who better to staff an incoming administration than mindless military martinets like Generals Flynn, Mattis, Petraeus, et al. Perhaps they can destroy Fallujah, Iraq, for a third time, since destroying it twice in thirteen years hasn’t seemed to accomplish anything worth mentioning. In other words, lets get ready for yet another round of the U.S. military’s favorite parlor game:
Moron Whack-a-Mule
He wanted so to whack some foe
Just whom it didn’t matter
As long as he could do it free
Then “them” he’d bash and batter
His dad on earth showed little worth
Unlike his “higher” father
Who lived “up there” in empty air
And told him not to bother
With boring fluff like facts and stuff
When big sticks wanted swinging
It seemed way cool to strike and drool,
His martial mantras singing
His country, too, its own horn blew:
Revenge they’d have for little
As long as they had not to pay
Their lips would froth with spittle
They stomped and cheered; they loudly sneered;
They lined up and saluted
No thought arose in verse or prose;
No single lie refuted
It felt so fine to blast a shrine
And “let the lesson” sink in
Our goons then lit a ton of shit
On fire and breathed the stink in
Then started soon the choke and swoon;
As coffins started filling
The shock and awe broke tooth and claw
But left the oil wells drilling
The years pressed on like evil spawn:
The people took to sleeping,
While fetid lies like swarms of flies
Grew fat on wails and weeping
The hole got deep through mission creep
Then deeper with more lying
On down the road the kicked-can load
Grew larger with the dying
The pundits polled, the bankers rolled
The dice on easy credit
With foreign loans to fund the moans
The truth proved cheap to edit
This Whack-A-Mule-or-Moron-Fool
Has mules and morons guessing:
Who does the time for all this crime
While never once confessing?
The U. S. A. went down to stay
The dumb kept getting dumber
The more they chose to take the hose
The more they paid the plumber
But now they vote once more by rote
For candidates selected
By those who paid to get them laid
And like them genuflected
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2008
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It looks like everything that happens was written down in some book. And I had already wondered about which Roman emperor could Donald Trump be the equivalent of. My answer is here:
http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.it/2016/11/which-roman-emperor-would-donald-trump.html
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