Global Analysis

With Friends Like These

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It can be lonely at the top. For the U.S., it’s lonelier than we might have expected.

In a recent piece for The National Interest, Paul Pillar recently argued for a more nuanced approach to the question of U.S. credibility and alliances. Pillar points out something that sometimes needs to be pointed out: the U.S., like any nation, makes alliances when it makes sense for its interests to do so, and does not (or at any rate, for its own sake, should not) pursue alliances when they serve no such interest. “An alliance,” Pillar writes, “does not do the United States any good merely by easing an ally’s worries. The United States is no one’s mother or therapist.”

Indeed it is not. Unfortunately, it does not matter. Easing an ally’s worries may, in fact, be a necessity, if not a benefit.

The U.S.’ relative military and economic power are waning relative to a rising China. Indeed, at least in the short run (over the long run China has troubles of its own that may check its geopolitical rise), the U.S. is going to have to contend with a China that is more assertive, more widely influential, and more powerful than before. The same now applies to Russia as well. In view of all this, and in particular in view of the U.S.’ fecklessness in the face of Russia’s ongoing takeover of Ukraine, U.S. allies have legitimate cause to question the U.S.’ relevance to them, at a time when the U.S. will need to retain its influence over them.

Historically, the way for a global hegemon to deal with a rising challenger was to build a coalition. The problem is that in the nuclear era, this is not really an option anymore – at least, not in the same way. There are at least three reasons for this.

1. We don’t want anyone else to have the power. In the first place, great power war is now something that has to be avoided at nearly any cost, because of the fear of a civilization-destroying nuclear war. As we saw in Ukraine, this means that whichever nuclear state moves to take territory first tends to get to keep it. But an even bigger problem is that, because nuclear weapons are seen as too dangerous to be allowed to proliferate horizontally and wind up in multiple hands, it is not really possible anymore to ask allies to do more. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the eastern European states, Saudi Arabia, and other states currently protected by U.S. alliances, guarantees, or soft assurances are all quite capable of defending themselves. Forced to do so, many of these states would choose to build nuclear arsenals; indeed, this is one of the few ways in which a state can meet a nuclear rival on equal terms and deter it. And the threat of a global nuclear arms race keeps the U.S. from telling these states to fend for themselves.

The U.S. historically had to persuade South Korea to abandon a nascent nuclear program; it also (famously, in the past few months) persuaded Ukraine in 1994 to give up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for now-worthless security assurances. More recently, claims by Saudi Arabia that it might have the means to acquire a nuclear arsenal were seen as a ploy to enlist more U.S. aid and reassurance in the wake of the initial nuclear agreements between the U.S. and Iran.

As I have argued, the U.S. really does not protect allies anymore because they cannot protect themselves and cannot be allowed to fall into foreign hands. As often as not, it protects them because they cannot be allowed to protect themselves.

2. Everybody wants something for free. The problem is compounded by another feature of modern life, which is the sorry state of prosperous nations’ finances. The developed world – and this now includes China, ironically – is heir to a number of economic and socioeconomic realities that make it very difficult for it to wage a conventional war, and therefore for modern states – particularly small modern states – to defend themselves.

The states of the developed world have low birthrates, most of them below replacement levels. The geopolitical forecaster George Friedman notes in his book, The Next Hundred Years, that in developed and even developing economies, children are no longer a form of productive investment – having more children does not make one richer, and one might also note that in developed countries, where economic growth is subject to diminishing returns, providing a better future for one’s children requires more and more inputs the richer one already is. As Edward Luttwak has remarked, this makes military conscription a tough political sell and makes even professional militaries casualty-averse.

The developed states are also mired in debt of various kinds – national debts have reached critical levels, private household debt has exploded (in the U.S., it went up from 70 percent of GDP to almost 100 percent between 2001 and 2008 and has fallen back only to 80 percent since), and with aging populations (which will continue over a generation given the aforementioned low birthrates), these states also have soft obligations in the form of pensions, retirement benefits, and even just the moral obligations of private citizens to look after their parents. Most of these states already have, by historic standards, very high levels of taxation and government spending, and despite this (for all of the reasons just discussed) prefer to spend very little money on their militaries; there is therefore not a lot of slack capacity in the system.

The need to ameliorate the effects of the recent recessions, and prevent future ones, has caused governments across the developed world to suppress interest rates, further penalizing saving and investment that could drive future growth. Moreover, as Tyler Cowen has argued in his book The Great Stagnation, once an economy reaches a certain state, within certain constraints, growth slows down in any event as there are fewer available ways to increase inputs – slow growth may be the new normal. The will to build weapons and fight is not what it used to be.

The problem, therefore, is that even if the U.S. could skirt the nuclear proliferation issue and ask its allies to do more to protect themselves, the allies have an incentive to push the cost right back in the opposite direction.

3. People have other options. The hard truth is that, at least in the short run, for many U.S. allies, when faced with a choice between accepting another great power’s influence and putting up the funds to thwart it, paying for a stronger defense actually looks like the worse option.

Many U.S. allies are in fact ambivalent about belonging to a U.S.-led coalition, the more so now that the ideological conflict of the Cold War is over and there is less reason to pick a side. France historically (ever since De Gaulle) has held reservations regarding its participation in NATO operations in the event of a war, and is not part of NATO’s integrated military command structure. Virtually all of the U.S.’ European allies, each for their own reasons, spend below the 2 percent of GDP required for NATO membership on defense; Germany, most notably, has had to wrestle with post-World War Two war guilt and pacifism, and since World War Two has never been enthusiastic about maintaining, much less deploying, powerful armed forces. Since the Cold War all of the European states have become heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, to the point that trying to suspend gas purchases from Russia over Ukraine (or a few well-placed artillery shells in that conflict) would trigger a global financial crisis. Oddly enough, they seem to prefer it this way; even Poland, close to the front lines in any confrontation between Russia and the West, recently proposed a collective bargaining arrangement among EU states for Russian gas, which, while theoretically a move to strengthen European states as a bloc against Russia, in fact means a conscious choice to maintain an extremely close economic tie. Changing this state of affairs would require an expensive (again) construction effort to build liquefied natural gas facilities, something no one is in any hurry to do. Anyone who wants the EU states to step up to deter future Russian aggression against the Baltics or elsewhere should pay heed.

Nor is Europe the only area where such ambivalence is found. In the Middle East, as Pillar himself notes, Saudi Arabia has been quite happy, while protected by U.S. security assurances, to promulgate a noxious brand of Islam throughout the Islamic world that is widely seen to encourage the kind of extremism the U.S. wishes to suppress. In east Asia, South Korea is in the historically anomalous position of being joined by the U.S. security umbrella to its historic colonizer and enemy, Japan, against China, with which Koreans have a much more complex historical relationship. Taiwan, which has never formally declared independence from China, is now heavily tied economically to the Chinese mainland.

This kind of middle-of-the-road posture is all the easier to sustain now that there is that much less to fight over. The end of the Cold War eliminated a lot of the ideological reasons for remaining in the U.S.’ camp – whatever one thinks of Putin’s Russia or modern China, it is fair to say that the differences between them and the U.S. are quite muted compared to what they were, say, thirty years ago. U.S. allies are therefore in a better position to shop for larger powers with whom to align.

Although it is not fashionable to say so, and although such matters are admittedly complex, one way to look at the U.S. alliance network is that it involves a set of payments by the U.S. to remain in its coalition rather than join a balancing coalition against it. For this reason, it is difficult to ask U.S. allies to do much of anything at all – their contribution is that they do not join a rival team.

Welcome to the post-2008 great power game

Despite Pillar’s assertions to the contrary, with so little at stake ideologically, there is in fact a greater risk now of U.S. allies defecting or acting against U.S. interests than at any point in the past. One might say that in fact such a process may be underway in some places. The lack of interest in Europe in containing Russian expansionism in Ukraine, which would continue even if the U.S. were to alter its own policy, is merely a case in point. If nothing else, U.S. allies have an incentive to demand more and contribute less.

One can argue that this is merely a reversion to the norm, and that the U.S. must make the best of it. The age in which the U.S. had most of the Eurasian landmass in its camp was probably not meant to last forever. And if, as may turn out to be the case, the U.S. is not in a position any longer to retain the support of all of its allies, it might be better for it to focus on the relationships it considers most vital, and pay what is necessary. This requires, in part, a recognition that keeping certain states out of rival camps and out of trouble that could involve the U.S. may be an end in itself.

The world is in the midst of its first post-Cold War power transition. The guidelines for it are simple: there is less to fight over and less disagreement on ideology, the dominant power is still very skittish about allowing new nuclear states to come about, and everyone is broke. The U.S. is in particular going to face some tough choices as it decides how to pay its bills domestically while remaining on top internationally – or decides between them. New coalitions, and new nuclear powers, might well emerge.

Let the games begin.

Martin Skold is currently pursuing his PhD in international relations at the University of St. Andrews, with a dissertation analyzing the political strategies of states engaged in long-term security competition.

Asia-Pacific, Capability Analysis, Future Tech, Future War

China’s Conventional Strikes against the U.S. Homeland

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Bruce Sugden brings us this dour scenario, representing the last of our “Sacking of Rome” series.    

With its precision-strike complex, the United States has conducted conventional strikes on enemy homelands without fear of an in-kind response. Foreign military developments, however, might soon enable enemy long-range conventional strikes against the U.S. homeland. China’s January 2014 test of a hypersonic vehicle, which was boosted by an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), suggests that it has designs on deploying a long-range conventional strike capability akin to the U.S. prompt global strike development effort.[1] If China pushes forward with deployment of a robust long-range conventional strike capability, within 20 years Americans could expect to see the U.S. homeland come under kinetic attack as a result of U.S. intervention in a conflict in the western Pacific region. With conventional power projection capabilities of its own and a secure second-strike nuclear force, China might replace the United States as the preponderant power in East Asia.

The implication of Chinese long-range strike is that U.S. military assets and supporting infrastructure in the deep rear, an area that is for the most part undefended, will be vulnerable to enemy conventional strikes—a vulnerability that U.S. forces have not had to deal with since the Second World War. Furthermore, China would be tempted to leverage its long-range strike capabilities against vital non-military assets, such as power generation facilities and network junctions, major port facilities, and factories that would produce munitions and parts to sustain a protracted U.S. military campaign. The American people and the U.S. government will have to prepare themselves for a type of warfare that they have never experienced before.

Emerging Character of the Precision-Strike Regime

            What we have become familiar with in the conduct of conventional precision-strike warfare since 1991 has been the U.S. use of force in major combat operations. The U.S. precision-strike complex is a battle network, or system, of intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors designed to detect and track enemy forces and facilities, weapons systems to deliver munitions over extended range (e.g., bombers from the U.S. homeland) with high accuracy, and connectivity to command, control, communications, and computers (C4) organized to compress the time span between detection of a target and engagement of that target.[2] Since the 1990s weapons delivery accuracies have been enhanced by linking the guidance systems with a space-based positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) system.

            China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has studied the employment of the U.S. precision-strike complex and has been building its own for years. Since the 1990s, China has been increasing the number of deployed short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, many of which U.S. observers tend to believe are armed with conventional warheads.[3] China has also been improving the accuracies of its missiles by linking many of them to its space-based PNT system, Beidou. In addition, the PLA has been deploying several types of land-attack and anti-ship cruise missile systems.[4] These weapons systems are part of a layered defense approach that the PLA has adopted to keep foreign military forces, mainly U.S. forces, outside of China’s sphere of interest.

There are indications that China is expanding its precision-strike complex to reach targets further away from Chinese territory and waters. First, as the most recent DOD report on Chinese military power notes, China is developing an intermediate-range (roughly 3,000-5,000 kilometers) ballistic missile that could reach targets in the Second Island Chain, such as U.S. military facilities on Guam, and might also be capable of striking mobile targets at sea, such as U.S. aircraft carriers.[5] Second, the PLA Air Force has developed the H-6K bomber, which might have a combat radius of up to 3,500 kilometers and be able to carry up to six land-attack cruise missiles.[6] Third, as mentioned above, China has tested a hypersonic vehicle using an ICBM.

China’s Interest in Hypersonic Vehicles

            In the previous decade, one American observer of the Chinese military noted that the Chinese defense industry was showing interest in developing long-range precision strike capabilities, including intercontinental-range hypersonic cruise missiles.[7] Drawing from Chinese open-source literature, Lora Saalman believes that “China is developing such systems not simply to bolster its regional defense capabilities at home, but also to erode advantages of potential adversaries abroad, whether ballistic missile defense or other systems.”[8] Moreover, compared with the Chinese literature on kinetic intercept technologies, with “high-precision and high-speed weaponry, the Chinese vision is becoming much clearer, much faster. Beyond speed of acquisition, the fact that nearly one-half of the Chinese studies reviewed cover long-range systems and research low-earth orbit, near space, ballistic trajectories, and reentry vehicles suggests that China’s hypersonic, high-precision, boost-glide systems will also be increasingly long in range.”[9]

            China’s attraction to hypersonic technologies seems to be related to U.S. missile defenses.[10] As many U.S. experts have believed since the 1960s, when the United States first conducted research and development on hypersonic vehicles, such delivery systems provide the speed and maneuverability to circumvent missile defenses.[11] These characteristics enable hypersonic vehicles to complicate missile tracking and engagement radar systems’ attempts to obtain a firing solution for interceptors.

How a Future U.S.-China Conflict Might Unfold

            Although we cannot be certain about how a future military conflict between the United States and China might develop, the ongoing debate over the U.S. Air-Sea Battle concept suggests that alternative approaches to employing U.S. military force against China could persuade the Chinese leadership to order conventional strikes against targets in the U.S. homeland. On the one hand, in response to PLA aggression in the East or South China Seas, an aggressive forward U.S. military posture would include conventional strikes against targets on the Chinese mainland, such as air defense systems, airfields and missile operating locations from which PLA attacks originated, C4 and sensor nodes linked to PLA precision-strike systems, and PLA Navy (PLAN) facilities and ships.[12] These strikes would threaten to weaken PLA military capabilities and raise the ire of the Chinese public and leadership. Even assuming that China opened hostilities with conventional missile strikes against U.S. forces at sea and on U.S. and allied territories (Guam and Japan, respectively) to forestall operations against the PLA, the Chinese public and the PLA might pressure the leadership to respond with similar strikes against the U.S. homeland.

            A less aggressive U.S. military posture, on the other hand, such as implementation of a distant blockade, would focus military resources on choking off China’s importation of energy supplies and denying PLA forces access to the air and seas within the First Island Chain.[13] While this approach might play to the asymmetric advantages of the U.S. military over the PLA, the threat of being cut off from its seaborne energy supplies over an extended period of time might convince Beijing that it needed to reach out and touch the United States in ways that might quickly persuade it to end the blockade.

Targets of Chinese Long-Range Conventional Strikes

            Although many recent PLA doctrinal writings point to the use of conventional ballistic missiles in missions to support combat operations by PLA ground, air, naval, and information operations units, a stand-alone missile campaign could be designed to conduct selective strikes against critical targets.[14] Ron Christman believes that the “goals of such a warning strike would be to display China’s military strength and determination to prevent an ongoing war from escalating, to protect Chinese targets, to limit damage from an adversary’s attack, or to coerce the enemy into yielding to Chinese interests.”[15]

            The PLA’s ideal targets might include low density/high demand military assets, major power generation sites, key economic and political centers, and war-supporting industry.[16] More specifically, with U.S. forces conducting strikes against PLA assets on mainland China, sinking PLAN ships at sea, and blocking energy shipments to China, PLA military planners might be tempted to strike particular fixed targets to weaken U.S. power projection and political will: Whiteman Air Force Base, home of the B-2A bombers; naval facilities and pierside aircraft carriers at San Diego and Kitsap; facilities and pierside submarines at Bangor; space launch facilities at Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral; Lockheed Martin’s joint air-to-surface stand-off missile (JASSM) factory in Troy, Alabama; Travis Air Force Base, where many transport aircraft are based; and major oil refineries in Texas to squeeze the U.S. economy.

Effects of Conventional Strikes against the U.S. Homeland

            It is plausible that Chinese conventional precision strikes against targets in the U.S. homeland would set in train several operational and strategic effects. First, scarce military resources could be damaged and rendered inoperable for significant periods of time, or destroyed. Whether at Whiteman Air Force Base or the west coast naval bases, such losses would impair the conduct of U.S. operations against China. Furthermore, damaged or destroyed munitions factories, logistics nodes, and space launch facilities would undermine the ability of the U.S. military to conduct a protracted war by replenishing forward-deployed forces and replacing lost equipment. The U.S. military might have to re-deploy significant numbers of forces from other regions, such as Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Second, the American people, if they believed that fighting in East Asia was not worth the cost of attacks against the homeland, might turn against the war effort and the politicians that supported it. Even if a majority of Americans were to remain steadfast in support of the war, however, public opinion would not protect critical assets from being struck by Chinese conventional precision strikes.

Third, the operational effects might sow doubt in the minds of U.S. allies about the survivability and effectiveness of the U.S. power projection chain, while American protests in the streets against the U.S. government would undermine allies’ confidence in the resolve of the United States. If the allies judged that the United States lacked the capability or the will to wage war across the Pacific Ocean against China, then they might accommodate China and cut military ties with the United States. The loss of these military alliances, moreover, could result in the disintegration of the international order that the United States has built and sustained with military might for decades.[17]

Fourth, facing damage from strikes against the homeland and perhaps lacking the conventional military means to defend its allies and achieve its war aims, the United States might have to choose between defeat in East Asia or escalation to the use of nuclear weapons to fulfill its security guarantees. U.S. nuclear strikes, of course, might elicit a Chinese nuclear response.

Measures to Mitigate the Effects of Conventional Strikes

            Three approaches come to mind that might mitigate the effects of conventional strikes and, perhaps, dissuade China from expending weapons against the U.S. homeland. The development of less costly but more advanced missile defense technologies that could be deployed in large quantities could protect critical assets. The technologies might remain beyond our grasp, however. Directed energy weapons, for example, would still need to find and track the incoming target for an extended period of time, and then maintain the laser beam on one point on the target to burn through it.[18]

            If missile guidance systems remained tied to space-based PNT in the 2030s, then ground-based jammers might be able to divert incoming hypersonic vehicles off course. Without accurate weapons delivery, the conventional warheads would be less effective against even soft targets. Future onboard navigation systems, however, might enable precise weapons deliveries that would be unaffected by jamming.[19]

            The final and possibly most effective approach takes a page from China’s playbook: disperse and bury key assets and provide hardened, overhead protection for parked aircraft and pierside ships.[20] Because burying some facilities would be cost prohibitive, another protective measure might be to construct hardened shelters (including top covers) around surface installations like industrial infrastructure and munitions factories (though this measure might be cost prohibitive as well).

            This preliminary discussion suggests that cost-effective remedies are infeasible over the next few years, yet the threat of distant conventional military operations extending to the U.S. homeland will likely continue to grow. Therefore, more comprehensive analysis of active and passive defenses as well as other forms of damage limitation is needed to enable senior leaders to make prudent investment decisions on defense and homeland security preparedness against the backdrop of a potential conflict between the United States and China.

Bruce Sugden is a defense analyst at Scitor Corporation in Arlington, Virginia. His opinions are his own and do not represent those of his employer or clients. He thanks Matthew Hallex for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this essay.

 

[1] On China’s January 2014 test of a hypersonic vehicle, see Benjamin Shreer, “The Strategic Implications of China’s Hypersonic Missile Test,” The Strategist, The Australian Strategic Policy Institute Blog, January 28, 2014; on the U.S. prompt global strike initiative, see Bruce M. Sugden, “Speed Kills: Analyzing the Deployment of Conventional Ballistic Missiles,” International Security, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2009), pp. 113-146.

[2] For a broad overview of the evolving precision-strike regime, see Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth and Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus, 140, No. 3 (Summer 2011), pp. 45-57.

[3] Ron Christman, “Conventional Missions for China’s Second Artillery Corps: Doctrine, Training, and Escalation Control Issues,” in Andrew S. Erickson and Lyle J. Goldstein, eds., Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2011), pp. 307-327.

[4] Dennis Gormley, Andrew S. Erickson, and Jingdong Yuan, “China’s Cruise Missiles: Flying Fast Under the Public’s Radar,” The National Interest web page, May 12, 2014.

[5] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, 2014), p. 40.

[6] Ibid., p. 9; and Zachary Keck, “Can China’s New Strategic Bomber Reach Hawaii?” The Diplomat, August 13, 2013.

[7] Mark Stokes, China’s Evolving Conventional Strategic Strike Capability: The Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Challenge to U.S. Maritime Operations in the Western Pacific and Beyond (Arlington, Va.: Project 2049 Institute, September 14, 2009), pp. 33-34.

[8] Lora Saalman, “Prompt Global Strike: China and the Spear,” Independent Faculty Research (Honolulu, Hi.: Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, April 2014), p. 12.

[9] Ibid., p. 14.

[10] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, p. 30.

[11] William Yengst, Lightning Bolts: First Maneuvering Reentry Vehicles (Mustang, Okla.: Tate Publishing & Enterprises, LLC, 2010), pp. 111-125.

[12] Jonathan Greenert and Mark Welsh, “Breaking the Kill Chain,” Foreign Policy, 16 May 2013; and Department of Defense, Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC) Version 1.0, January 17, 2012, p. 16.

[13] T.X. Hammes, “Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy,” Infinity Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring 2012), pp. 10-14.

[14] Christman, “Conventional Missions for China’s Second Artillery Corps,” pp. 318-319.

[15] Ibid., p. 319.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Stephen G. Brooks, G. John Ikenberry, and William C. Wohlforth, “Lean Forward: In Defense of American Engagement,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Jan-Feb 2013), p. 130.

[18] Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., “The Limits Of Lasers: Missile Defense At Speed Of Light,” Breaking Defense, May 30, 2014.

[19] Sam Jones, “MoD’s ‘Quantum Compass’ Offers Potential to Replace GPS,” Financial Times, May 14, 2014.

[20] Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, p. 29.

History, Strategic Outlook

Lessons from the Late Roman Army

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Our “Sacking of Rome series continues” with a sixth installment!

The unfamiliar face of the late Roman Army (Photo courtesy of Britannia).

By Steven Wills

Most popular portrayals of the Roman Army focus on the collapse of the Republic, as in the HBO “Rome” series, or the classical “high” empire as illustrated by the Russell Crowe epic “Gladiator”.  In contrast to these theatrical efforts is the period of the  so-called “late” Roman Empire of 220 A.D. to the 600’s. It offers significant lessons in how not to manage the army of a great power. While there are many possible causes for the downfall of the Roman Empire and resultant Dark Ages, military historians generally agree that three specific actions of Roman elites in the late Empire specifically contributed to the Empire’s eventual collapse. Cutting the retirement benefits of a small professional force in favor of smaller taxes for the elite and greater benefits for the masses served only to weaken the desire of Roman citizens to serve.  When the Roman citizenry would not join in the numbers required to protect the Empire, Roman elites turned to conscription, which produced only disgruntled recruits, and mass recruitment of barbarian tribes such as the Goths, Visigoths and Vandals. These tribesmen could be paid less and did not require expansive pensions as an incentive to serve. The so-called “barbarization” of the Roman Army seriously weakened its core values, made it more likely to rebel against Roman authority, and ultimately brought disaster to the gates of Rome itself in 410 A.D. These three mistakes in the management of the late Roman Imperial Army should serve as a powerful warning to American elites seeking inexpensive solutions to the maintenance of American military power. While some military spending can always be reduced, a great power that seeks very low-cost solutions does so at its own peril.

The Roman Army began providing pensions to retiring soldiers during the fall of the Roman Republic in the late first century B.C. Competing Roman leaders such as Julius Caesar, his great rival Pompey Magnus, Caesar’s nephew Octavian, later known as Augustus Caesar, and his famous opponent Marc Antony all offered grand incentives to retain the loyalty of their soldiers. These promises often included financial rewards, exemption from taxes and grants of land from captured enemy territory. Augustus Caesar continued this practice  when he consolidated power in the first century A.D. and became virtual dictator of the Empire under the title of Princeps (first citizen).  Augustus reduced the Roman Army to a voluntary, professional force of approximately 150,000 active duty soldiers and a similar number of auxiliary troops.  A soldier who served 20-25  years of active military service (accounts vary) would be eligible for the honesto missio, or honorable discharge from military service. Similar benefits were provided for soldiers disabled in the line of duty and unable to return to service. The soldier was provided an exemption from Roman taxes, a plot of land and appropriate work animals, and often a job in the imperial administration of the territory in which they settled. Roman veterans could be recalled to active duty in case of emergency and often provided a reliable, loyal citizenry in newly conquered territories. As the Empire grew, successive leaders, now styled as Emperors widened the veteran benefits until the mid third century A.D. After this troubled period of revolts, barbarian attacks and economic downturn and collapse, Roman authorities gradually reduced pensions and lengthened the period of active service necessary to receive full credit for service. This appears to have been done to reduce taxes for wealthy Romans living in the provinces.  Record are fragmentary from the later empire, but at some point in the third century A.D., bronze tablets replaced parchment documents as official evidence of service due to the inability of veterans to get the benefits they deserved. In addition, the empire’s policy of “bread and circuses” (generous food benefits and cheap entertainment) seemed a much better deal for the average lower class Roman citizen rather than increasingly dangerous and unrewarded services in the late Roman Army. As a result of these changes it would appear that the average lower class Roman citizen, the historical pool for legionary recruitment was much less inclined to a military career.

Bronze Roman Army pension document (diploma)

As Roman citizen recruitment failed to provide enough troops to protect an increasingly threatened Empire, Roman elites turned to conscription and barbarian recruitment. Conscripts were often ineffective and actively avoided reporting for duty. Some maimed themselves to ensure they would be found unfit for service. Recruitment of barbarians however offered a low cost solution to the manpower drain on the Roman Army. German tribes fleeing from the vicious Huns were desperate for sanctuary within the Empire and Roman officials equally needed soldiers to resist invasions. They negotiated with tribal chiefs for the military service of whole tribes in return for farmland for the tribe within Roman borders. Unfortunately, unscrupulous Roman officials were happy to defraud the tribesmen of their promised land, or commit them into combat situations where the highest casualties resulted. Such actions bred intense distrust and contributed to a uneasy co-existence of Roman and tribesman within the empire’s borders.

Artist conception of a 5th century A.D. Visigoth warrior.

The Romans further weakened their “barbarized” Army by neglecting the “Romanization” of the new recruits. Since the city on the Tiber River first mounted military operations, it actively absorbed new soldiers from the ranks of its enemies. These new recruits were not only trained in Roman ways of war, but were culturally and constitutionally converted into Roman citizens. They eagerly embraced Roman baths, aqueducts, regular salaries,  and other aspects of Roman law and culture. While such a procedure was effective with small groups of new soldiers, whole tribes of new barbarian recruits actively resisted Romanization. Roman officials were either unable or frankly too lazy or disinterested to continue this long-running successful process. Instead, the Roman Army was “barbarized” and became more German than Roman. The rigorous individual and team training that had been the hallmark of Roman arms for centuries was allowed to degrade in order to more easily employ the cheaper barbarian forces.  The tribal contingents’  loyalties often swung between imperial employers and barbarian roots and culture. The Roman elite’s disdain for this force caused further tension and when the tribes were denied pay and food, they actively rebelled. This rebellion brought the Visigoth leader Alaric to the gates of Rome in 410 A.D. seeking food and payment for prior military service. When Roman elites refused, common people in Rome, fearing a long siege and starvation, opened the gates of the city to Alaric and his men. Then in turn sacked the city and destroyed or stole countless  works of art. They also seized most of the city’s gold and silver. The Western half of the Roman Empire never recovered from this disaster. It lingered on with greater barbarian influence until tribesmen deposed the last Western Roman Emperor Romulus Augustulus in 476 A.D. The Eastern Empire had suffered a similar devastating defeat at the hands of Goths in 378 A.D. Rather than continue to accept barbarian recruits, it purged its army of tribesmen and returned to traditional Roman methods of training. In contrast with the west, this Eastern Empire endured for nearly another 1000 years. In summation, the Roman attempt to employ cheap alternatives for defense was an unmitigated disaster.

What can the United States learn from the example of the late Roman Empire? First, the maintenance of a professional force requires a generous pension system in order to maintain a steady supply of proficient recruits. According to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in 2011, only 7-11% of  all military personnel complete 20 or more years of service and become eligible for a pension. Given that only 1% of Americans even serve in uniform, is a well funded U.S. military pension system such a great price to ensure a steady supply of recruits to serve the military needs to the Republic?  Reduced benefits may convince many Americans, as it did Romans, that long-term military service is not worth the low pay and arduous conditions involved to attain an increasingly modest pension.

Distributing smaller benefit amounts to a wider percentage of the active duty force, or worse yet, paying larger benefits only to those who served in combat will likely weaken the force cohesion and generate needless class struggle within the ranks. The Romans attempted similar measures by paying barbarians less than purely Roman forces and price was a loss of cohesiveness and team-building within the ranks.  In addition, rather than weld the fighting forces together in the shared experience of American culture, the services emphasize their differences by an over-emphasis on cultural diversity. The Romans Army of the high empire was extremely diverse and fielded units recruited from the British Isles to the deserts of Syria. It accommodated dozens of faiths and creeds within the shared Roman experience without the need to over-emphasize their differences. This successful system endured for centuries and served to insulate the legions from purely nationalistic strife.

The experience of the late Roman Army has much to offer the United States in the present. A professional military force needs a healthy pension structure.  Post service benefits are essential to the retention of a moderate-sized group of highly trained professionals necessary to wage modern war.  It is unwise to ignore the traditional sources of voluntary recruitment in search of lower-cost military solutions.  Finally, the shared experience of voluntary service to a strong national ideal united disparate nationalities within each Roman legion. Discarding this unifying, albeit expensive construct in favor of larger numbers of low cost conscripts and barbarians served only to hasten the empire’s end. The United States would do well to consider the fate of the late Roman Army as it seeks low cost, effective substitutes for current defense expenditures. In the end, a nation gets either what it pays or refuses to pay for in maintenance of national security.

Steve Wills is a retired surface warfare officer and a PhD candidate in military history at Ohio University. His focus areas are modern U.S. naval and military reorganization efforts and British naval strategy and policy from 1889-1941. 

History, Strategic Outlook

And If We Became the Barbarians…

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The “Sacking of Rome” series continues with this fifth installment.

Much is made of the imagery of barbarians storming the gates of Rome. It conjures the picture of masses of foreign hordes bursting over the walls and crashing through the gatehouse, razing a great city to the ground and subjecting its people to horrible torment, slavery and death. Today we can perhaps wonder whether Slavic or Asiatic armies can overwhelm a crumbling Western alliance, subduing Western Europe, the United States and our allies in Asia, achieving decisive victory. While this may make for popular filmmaking (see “Red Dawn” – the original, not the awful remake), it is hardly likely.

 

Consider the etymology of the word “barbarian.” The ancient Greek word, “barbaros,” literally meant “non-Greek,” and was used to describe any foreigner, which to the Greeks would include such advanced civilizations as the Egyptians and Persians as well as the uncivilized tribes they came into contact with. Its direct antonym is “polites,” Greek for “citizen” and where we get our words “polity” and “politics.” To be a barbarian meant more than just being uncivilized, it meant that you were not a citizen. The word would become a pejorative used by the Greeks to even describe other Greeks, suggesting they were not worthy of citizenship, and the responsibilities that would come with it. This would be an important distinction from the word “subject,” used to describe an individual who is subjected to the rule by elites, such as feudal subjects.

 

No one better understood these distinctions than Alexis de Tocqueville, who in his magisterial overview of the American polity Democracy in America[i] identified the mores, or the “habits of mind” that served to protect the political liberties that mid-19th Century Americans enjoyed. These mores and habits can be best thought of today as “the whole moral and intellectual state of the people,” or our national character. He observed that institutions such as our political order – republican democracy – as well as the rule of law, religion, family and private associations (what Edmund Burke would call “little platoons”) created a network of self-reinforcing pillars that permitted the continued growth of freedom and served as America’s greatest source of national power.

 

Tocqueville was quick to point out the vulnerability of a “democratic social state like that of the Americans [to] the establishment of despotism.”[ii] Unlike the time of the ancient emperors of Rome or Persia, where “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control” the despotism that America was particularly vulnerable to “would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them.” He goes on at length to define this form of despotism. As the citizenry begins to “fill their souls” with “small and vulgar pleasures,” it begins to withdraw from the institution that buttress republican democracy, “becoming like a stranger to the destiny of all others.”[iii] The American will “exist only in himself, and for himself alone.” He will elevate the role of the federal government to “take charge of assuring their enjoyments and watching over their fates.” It becomes “absolute, detailed, regular, far-seeing and mild. It would resemble paternal power if, like that, it had for its object to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary, it seeks only to keep them fixed irrevocably in childhood …” The purpose of the government, and the bureaucracy that underlies it is to “willingly work for their happiness, but it wants to be the unique agent and sole arbiter of that [emphasis added]; it provides for their security; foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their principal affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances, can it not take away from them entirely the trouble of thinking and the pain of living?”[iv]

 

In short, Tocqueville is warning not against the rule of tyrants, but of “schoolmasters.”[v] The schoolmaster “does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”[vi]

 

How can this happen? People have two conflicting desires, the “need to be led and the wish to remain free.” We foolishly try to satisfy both at the same time. We demand that the federal government continue to centralize more power and control over the most intimate parts of individual and social life, in tutelage to our schoolmaster, while consoling ourselves “by thinking that [we] had chosen [our] schoolmasters” in our national elections. We become deluded in believing that we have “guaranteed the freedom of individuals well enough when [we] deliver it to the national power.”[vii]

 

A “schoolmaster” form of absolute federal power – commonly known today as the “nanny state” – has profound implications on the character of the American polity. It would be hard to argue that we are not in danger of falling into the soft despotism that Tocqueville warned about before the Civil War. If his warnings are true, then as Americans shed their sense of rugged individualism and self reliance, we would expect to see more dropping out of the workforce, finding it easier to accept wealth transfers from those who still continue to produce. We may find the expansive reach of government into all aspects of private life, from what we consume to our very own health. Even the nature of private and business relations will become matters of the state. Perhaps we will see a growing sense of narcissistic entitlement seep into the public culture and consciousness, eating away at the very mores that Tocqueville lauded as uniquely responsible for our republican democracy. Media, corporate and government elites will align to maintain a hold on that public consciousness (and power over the federal government), fundamentally altering the narrative of “American exceptionalism” so that we consider our nation just one of many, no better and often worse.

 

To the more immediate topic at hand, a nation fixed irrevocably in childhood will begin to face significant obstacles to maintaining the military power and strength necessary to keep its status as a world super power. It would not cease to exist or become absorbed by another country. Instead, it would slowly decline to a position of near irrelevancy, unable and unwilling to affect events on the global stage beyond the perfunctory speech and endless diplomacy. To be a super power is very hard work, and requires not only sacrifice and commitment, but a sincere belief in the mission and purpose of maintaining that status. It requires a nation of adults.

 

There are many potential military “game changers” today, from nuclear rogue states to far reaching anti-ship cruise missiles, anti-satellite weapons, swarm boats, electro-magnetic pulse weapons and cyber attacks that could all be destabilizing and devastating. Changes in military hardware and the strategies and tactics used by our adversaries who employ them are nothing new however. Nor is the ability to adapt to those changes, even after suffering a defeat. Victory in war has more to do with popular will than it does with hardware. Some new “out of the box” strategy, tactic or toy will always be adapted to eventually. Defeat on the battlefield, or even in war, is “transitory” as Clausewitz notes, with the adversary often just biding time until political events can cause him to rectify the situation.

 

The American military is reflective of its population, and as our national character changes, the military will change accordingly, over time and albeit slowly. Nations that choose the path of decline do not maintain a dominant military force. Its power, much like the “habits of mind” that Tocqueville wrote of, will erode if not nurtured and sustained.

 

So, to answer the question of how might the U.S. find itself sacked like ancient Rome should be one of introspection and self-evaluation. I posited a few of the many indicators that, if the great Frenchman’s warnings are true, we should begin to see, perhaps in our own lifetime. No doubt there are others. But the point remains that we probably need not fear potential barbarians at our gates, but turn our attention instead to the barbarians we may become.

Robert “Jake” Bebber is an information warfare officer. He holds a doctorate in public policy from the University of Central Florida. He lives in Millersville, Maryland with his wife, Dana and their son, Vincent. The views expressed here are his own, and do not represent the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of the Navy or the U.S. Cyber Command. He welcomes your comments at jbebber@gmail.com

 

[i] De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. trans. Harvey C. Mandfield and Debra Winthrop. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 2000), 274.

[ii] Op cit, p. 661

[iii] Consider the growth in the use of social media, where the veneer of a Facebook wall post or Tweet has replaced actual human interaction.

[iv] Op cit, p. 662-663.

[v] Op cit p. 662.

[vi] Op cit. p. 663

[vii] Op cit p. 664

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.