Is America the Second Rome?- Part Two

by Tom Kando

Abstract:  This article does the following: (1) It shows that the continuities between modern-day Europe and America are in many ways similar to those between Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.   (2) using an organicist theoretical framework, it traces and compares the births,  life spans,  transformations,  similarities,  golden ages, and   (possible) declines of America and Ancient Rome. (3) Based on generational theory, it asks whether future American history is likely to repeat Ancient Roman history, including Roman mistakes.

2. Two Histories: (A) Origins; (B) Timelines/ Life spans; (C) Transformations and Major Milestones;  (D) Additional similarities; (E) Golden Age; (F) Decline and Fluctuations.

According to the “organicist” model in sociology and history, societies are born, grow, transition from one developmental  stage to the next, as do individuals.  They undergo experiences which can be transformative, they  decay and die, as do organisms. (See for example Don Martindale, The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory, and Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History). This paradigm has much to commend it, and it can be used to examine the histories of America and Ancient Rome.
A. Births: The colonization of North America began in earnest with the first English colonists at Jamestown, Virginia  in 1607-10 and at Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620. There had been earlier attempts by other European states, notably Spain and France. The first European to land on current USA territory was Ponce de Leon, who landed  in Florida briefly in 1513. But those events were inconsequential. Let us say that America’s “identity” - as a brand-new, largely Anglo-European society destined to replicate and to magnify many features of Old Europe was planted about four hundred years ago, circa 1615.

Ancient Rome’s origin is well known, both in myth and in reality: The former assigns the foundation of Rome to Romulus and Remus in 753 BC. More factually, historians have since Livy pegged the foundation of the Roman Republic at 509 BC.

B. Life spans:

Historians traditionally select the year 476 AD as the terminal year of the Roman Empire (at least in the West), because that is when the last emperor (Augustulus) was deposed. Thus, the Roman nation-state survived for  nearly ten centuries (985 years), its first half (482 years) as a republic and the second half (503 years) as an empire, perhaps better described as a military plutocracy.

American society is four centuries old. For the first century and a half of its existence (161 years), it was a colony (1615-1776). For the next two and a half centuries (239 years), it has been a Republic (1776-2015).

C. Transformations  and Major Milestones:

As a political unit, Rome experienced two distinct and consecutive stages: (1) Republic; (2) Empire. America also went through two political identities: (1) Colony and (2) Republic.

During their developmental phases, both Rome and America underwent profoundly transformative experiences in the form of all-out wars.

About two and a half centuries after its birth, Rome went through the Punic Wars, a series of three wars spread over a period of 118 years (264-146 BC). As Bourne explains (see Frank C. Bourne, A History of the Romans), the Punic wars shaped Rome’s character forever after: From a rugged, inward-looking, self-sufficient, self-reliant agrarian society, Rome became an expansionist, colonial and militaristic state whose prosperity increasingly depended on the exploitation of an ever growing empire, yet a civilization which at the same time exported progress, stability and peace to a growing segment of the world - the Pax Romana. The Punic wars had been a life-and-death struggle against Carthage, the other major Mediterranean power then. At times Rome’s very survival was in the balance, for example during the thirteen years of Hannibal’s depredations (218-203 BC) all across Italy. In Bourne’s words, “the wages of success (against Carthage) set the military momentum” in motion (pp. 145 a.f.).

America’s crucible is less obvious. Many will argue that the Civil War (1961-1865) was that transformative event. That is not clear to me. The Civil War occurred two and a half centuries into the new society’s life, eighty five years after it acquired its independence. I am not sure how it changed the character of the new land.

In my view, the conflicts that shaped America indelibly and for better or for worse are the two World Wars. Beginning in 1914 and ending in 1945, with an armistice providing an interlude of 23 years, this dual world war lasted thirty one years, beginning about three centuries into the life of the new country. This is when America, like Rome after the Punic Wars, transformed itself from a rugged, isolationist, self-sufficient, self-reliant, agrarian society into an expansionist and militarized state which assumed the mantel of its colonial predecessors.

Unlike Rome, America did not engage in the wholesale plunder of its defeated enemies or of its allies. In fact, it began to EXPORT massive amounts of its own wealth in order to rebuild the world.

However, there were commonalities with post-war  Rome: The mantel which America  inherited  from its European colonial predecessors was twofold. Exploitative colonialism was only one aspect. The other was what Rudyard Kipling may have meant with his clumsy and famous “white man’s burden” poem, i.e. the“lifting up” of those parts of the world that need lifting up.

By assuming at least this part of the mantel of “Western responsibility,” America transformed itself

permanently into the world’s policeman, its go-to-guy, the world’s “indispensable power.” In the Middle East, the US replaced Britain as the arbiter of oil-related conflicts and later all other conflicts as well. In Indochina, America replaced France, in Indonesia  it  filled the vacuum left by the departing Dutch, and so forth. None of this could be achieved without a massive and permanent metamorphosis into a garrison state. In a piece I wrote for our blog a couple of years ago, I showed that, if you include the Cold War, America Has Been at Peace for 11 Years out of the Past 72 Years.
In other words, since the beginning of the Second World War, the country has been engaged in hot wars for 47% of the time, and it has been on a war footing for 85% of the time, thereby fulfilling Orwell’s nightmare.

Just as the Punic Wars made Rome into what it became and remained to its dying days, so World Wars One and Two altered America and gave it its present and permanent character. Both regimes’ raison d’etre became, forever, protecting the status quo and safeguarding world stability through armed strength - the Pax Romana two thousand years ago, the Pax Americana today.

D. Additional  Similarities:

Similarities between Rome’s and America’s transformations go further: 

!         Just like Rome, America switched  from military conscription to a professional  army, thereby severing military policy from popular sentiment (which was still  manifest during the Vietnam War).

 

!         An even more worrisome similarity is the growing economic inequality which occurred in Rome after the second century and which has been  taking place in America over the past half century. Earlier, both Rome and America  had moved towards  economic justice. During the second century BC, the Gracchi  brothers tried to push land reform through the Senate. However, they were both assassinated, and that was the end of Rome’s lone experiment in socialism. Similarly, the Great Depression of the 1930s ushered an era of progressive and egalitarian policies, under the leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt.  By the 1970s, this trend  had  come to an end.  Scott McNall’s forthcoming book, The Problem of Social Inequality offers a brilliant analysis of this trend, its consequences if it continues unabated, and possible remedies.

!         Another  economic weakness from which Rome suffered increasingly  and which  America is increasingly repeating,  is the inability to  produce goods competitively and to export enough merchandise to balance its trade.  The US’  current account deficit has been the largest in the world for decades, often amounting to $40 billion or $50 billion per month, or half a trillion per year.

!         The other deficit is that of government spending. As it ruined Rome, so it threatens to ruin America. Rome’s effort to reign in the central government’s growing deficit consisted of ever more onerous and uncollectible taxes. In the US, the focus is on cutting back  the safety net and social programs which benefit not merely the indigent population but also the middle class. This is  likely to cause further damage to the economy. As Keynes explained long ago, reducing the purchasing power of the population is precisely the wrong remedy.

!         Related to the economic trends just listed is  growing COMPLEXITY: In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a fascinating book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, which I review on this blog (Joseph Tainter: Part One). Tainter not only argues that societies can succumb to their increasingly unwieldy complexity, but Ancient Rome is his very prototype, and his argument  is uncannily similar to mine, as he uses the Roman analogy as a warning to contemporary America. Furthermore, as Scott McNall argues convincingly in his forthcoming The Problem of Social Inequality, growing inequality CAUSES growing complexity, as more and more resources are required to maintain and to enforce inequality. This was demonstrated by the  desperate efforts of late Roman regimes’ such as Diocletian’s to stem the decline by imposing  ever more onerous levels of bureaucracy. The question, again, is to what extent  the US is at risk of following the same course.

E. Golden Ages:

However, both Rome and America experienced long periods of peace, prosperity and stability.

As  Edward Gibbon famously wrote, “If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.” (Edward Gibbon, quoted in Frank C. Bourne, A History of the Romans).

What Gibbon describes here is a “Golden Age.” Agreeing with Gibbon, I would just peg the start of Rome’s Golden Age at 27 BC - when Octavian, after defeating Anthony at Actium (31 BC), became Augustus and set Rome on course for its long era of peace, unity, security and prosperity.

Rome’s Golden Age ended with the death of Marcus Aurelius and the accession of Commodus, in 180. It had lasted 207 years.

Table One Shows the timeline of Ancient Rome from 27 BC to 180 AD.

                Table One. A Golden Age: Timeline of Ancient Rome from 27 BC to 180 AD

Emperors	Good Years			Bad Years
	begin	end	number of years	begin	end	number of years
Augustus	27 bc	14 ad	41
Tiberius	14	37	23
Caligula				37	41	4
Claudius	41	54	13
Nero, etc.				54	69	15
Vespasian	69	79	10
Titus	79	81	2
Domitian				81	96	15
Nerva	96	98	2
Trajan	98	117	19
Hadrian	117	138	21
Antoninus Pius	138	161	23
Marcus Aurelius	161	180	19
Total			173			34

Similarly, America’s era of peace, unity, security and growing affluence began after the Civil War, in 1865.

So far, America’s Golden Age has lasted  a century and a half, with a couple of hiatuses. In my view, these hiatuses were NOT the two world wars. These wars only served to fortify America and to accelerate its ascendency to global political and economic hegemony.

On the other hand, by 1965, the country was entering a period of turbulence, instability, military defeat (Vietnam), and disunity which has lasted to this day, abating only temporarily. The country’s polarization between right and left has become permanent, with a dominant left during the cultural revolution begun in the 1960s, and the rightward reaction gaining strength thereafter.

Table Two  Shows the timeline of America  from 1865 to 2015

                       Table Two. A Golden Age: Timeline of America  from 1865 to 2015

	Good Years			Bad Years
Presidents	begin	end	number of years	begin	end	number of years
Andrew Johnson through Kennedy	1865	1965	100
LBJ; Nixon				1965	1975	10
Ford through George W. Bush	1975	2007	32
Obama				2007	2010	3
Obama	2010	2015	5
Total			137			13

F. Decline, and Fluctuations:

After its Golden Age, Rome began a slow decline that lasted nearly three centuries and ended in final collapse in 476. The decline was not relentless. There were ups and downs. Much of the third century was a crisis. However, from 270 well into the fourth century, emperors such as Aurelian and Diocletian succeeded in stabilizing and reversing the decline.

Similarly, as Table Two shows, America is experiencing the alternation of positive and negative periods in its history. All societies do, of course, as do all individuals. Whether or not America entered a long-term period of decline in 1965 cannot be said. In fact, I have classified a majority of the years since then as positive (thirty seven years out of fifty).

Rome’s Golden Age lasted more than two centuries. It may well be that America’s will last another half century too, well into the second half of the 21^st century...

..or longer, or shorter: I don’t have a crystal ball. Nor is there anything scientifically fixed about specific numbers of years required for various forms of social change to occur.....except perhaps for an  intriguing hypothesis based on generational theory, which I discuss in the next section of this article.

© Tom Kando 2015

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