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Roma Quarta et Terra Nostra:
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It has become fashionable among international relations scholars to draw parallels between America’s current position in the world and imperial Rome’s position in the Mediterranean world. However, the parallels run much deeper than the current distribution of military power in the aftermath of the Cold War. At the time that the United States gained its independence, it was the most extensive republic seen since the Roman republic. From the first, American political institutions emulated those of republican Rome. We have a Senate, of course. We also have two consuls (the president and vice-president), and our House of Representatives, being the "people’s house," performs many of the same functions as the various comitiae in republican Rome. We have consciously emulated republican Rome in our political symbols; the fasces, the symbol of the Roman magistrates’ authority, adorns the interior of the Capitol, as does Bellona, the goddess of war. Also, the design of American public buildings has traditionally been based on Roman architecture. Yes, certainly, America is a new Rome. It was raised from birth to be that. But we must be mindful that there have been other Novae Romae in the past, and indeed, one of them may still be still with us. Constantinople was founded as Roma Secunda, and after Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, imperial Russia, ruled by Caesars (czars), styled itself Roma Tertia. Following the 73-year Soviet interlude, it may be that Russia will gravitate back to its historic identity as Roma Tertia, but this time as a republic, hopefully. So, America is a new Rome, not the new Rome. In a sense we are Roma Quarta, in another sense we are the second Rome of the West, as Russia is the second Rome of the East. Will our Romanitas be an element of common ground should Russia, still a country of vast natural resources and a well-educated population, re-emerge as a strong entity? The emergence of America as the unchallenged global military power adds to the debate over the future of the Westphalian nation-state system. This debate already rages in the context of globalization: the increasing porosity of national borders to economic activity. Additionally, the military dimension has profound implications for the future of the concept of national sovereignty. In the American interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, justified by the Bush doctrine of preemption, we may be seeing the seeds of a trend in which national sovereignty comes to mean only what Washington DC says it means, and that some countries will have it and some will not. As Rome spread its influence throughout the Mediterranean, it made treaties with some countries, recognizing them as socii et amici (allies and friends), and conquered others, incorporating them as provinciae. But whether conquered enemies or valued friends, these countries eventually came to share the same status as the distinction insensibly blurred over the centuries. Perhaps this was an inevitable result both of predominant Roman military power and the economic integration of the Mediterranean (an ancient era of "globalization"). Are similar trends present today? When "sovereignty" is handed back to Iraq later this year, just how "sovereign" will it be? Indeed, to what extent have Germany, Japan, and Italy, our enemies of the Second World War, been "sovereign" allies and friends during the past 60 years, and to what extent have they been American protectorates? As these distinctions blur, as American power and influence extend around the world, the distinction between America and the world blurs, and the distinction between domestic and foreign policy blurs. It all becomes terra nostra, our world. Indeed, there have been recent calls to open the presidency to naturalized citizens. America’s preponderant economic and military position in the world also has profound implications here at home. As Rome spread its military and economic power throughout the Mediterranean, the senatorial and equestrian orders profited immensely, while increasing numbers of dispossessed citizens migrated to Rome to join the dependent class of capite censi. Today, income inequality in America has reached a level not seen since the Gilded Age of the 1920s. In Rome, the increasingly unequal distribution of wealth went hand in hand with the increasing concentration of political power among a few opulent gentes. These economic and political forces ultimately extinguished the Roman republic, collapsing it into an autocracy. Will America, as the global hegemon, come to be ruled by its own Caesars, or will American polity be able to maintain its liberal and democratic character? While the US may be the latest in the series of hegemonic powers, it must also be recognized that the character of its imperialism is distinctly different from that of its predecessors. Because of its more liberal, urban, middle-class character at the end of the 19th century, the acquisition of Cuba and the Philippines brought on a profound identity crisis. Even fervent imperialists as Theodore Roosevelt and William Randolph Hearst, who wanted the US to assume its place among the great (and therefore colonial) powers of the Earth, eventually came to realize that the war to put down Philippine independence was a mistake, and that the subjugation of foreign peoples would inevitably corrupt the American character. Because it is a liberal democracy, and because it operates in a world that is trending toward increasing numbers of liberal democracies, a world more integrated by international institutions, transnational organizations, global communication, and trade, in most cases it need not exercise hard power, and, indeed, it has many incentives not to. This process of systemic integration on a global scale necessarily means that the world is no longer as anarchic as realists have traditionally viewed it. Thus, pluralists and institutionalists are closer to the mark in regarding America’s preeminent position in the world as characterized more by the exercise of soft power. Because the world as a whole has yet to arrive at Francis Fukuyama’s (actually an update on G. W. F. Hegel’s) "End of History," realism may from time to time inform our dealings with illiberal regimes who are still stuck in History. But, if there is indeed an end of History and if we are traveling the path toward it, as we go down that road, the realist view becomes a vista that is receding into history. The complex interdependence of the 21st century world, the approaching limits of the world economy’s ability to extract and exploit resources, and the advance of technology, necessarily mean that American hegemony is on a different trajectory from history’s other empires. Historical parallels are intriguing and instructive, but should not be drawn too strongly. As international relations scholars, our challenge is to distinguish between the historical trends that are repeating to some extent, and new social and technological forces that are driving us in unforeseen directions. Yet to identify our enemies as "terrorists" is possibly to lead us down a path of eternal war that we call Pax Americana, for Rome always had "the barbarian threat" to justify its militarism.
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