I’ve been struck, watching the steady stream of ISIS air strike footage released via U.S. Central Command these past few days, by the precision and global reach of the power on display. I’m sure this is exactly the message the U.S. military is trying to convey – but that doesn’t make it any less true. There really is no analogue to U.S. military capability in modern history. You have to wind the clock back – way back – to find an appropriate comparison.
What makes the current air campaign impressive or unique? Consider that the United States has now launched dozens of orchestrated, simultaneous attacks on ISIS hard targets across Syria, a region 6,754 miles away. It’s done so primarily via the USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group, an armada of carriers, cruisers, and destroyers that no other military in the world can match.
We maintain eleven such formations.
Damon Linker (an old professor!) puts this in perspective:
How would we feel, I wonder, if we lived in a world in which another country was so powerful that it could inflict military pain on any nation, including us, with impunity? Without an act of imagination, we can’t even begin to answer that question — because we are the only nation in that position, or even close to it. Russia, our nearest rival, may be flexing its muscles in Ukraine. But as with all of Russia’s post-Soviet military adventures, this one is taking place right next door. The United States, by contrast, hasn’t fought a war with a neighboring power since the mid-19th century, and it regularly (as in, every few years) starts wars many thousands of miles from its territory. In this sense at least, America truly is an exceptional nation.
The deterrent power of this capability is obvious. The American military remains many years – decades – ahead of any conceivable peer competitor. This superiority runs the gamut from technology to doctrine to training and logistical coordination.It’s little wonder, then, that the United States’ enemies are so reluctant to confront us in a stand-up fight, nor why all other nations’ war planners build their forces with one eye always on America.
Has this sort of situation existed before?
Yes, in fact, but a long time back. More than two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire possessed a very similar sort of military superiority and power projection capability. The “known world” was a good deal smaller and the length of mobilization took a good deal longer, but the basic concept was the same.
Rome’s military would ultimately grow strong enough to play a significant role in shaping the political, economic, and cultural development of early western civilization. As I wrote a few years ago:
Roman power recognized no easy limits. According to Greg Woolf, “Romans did not conceive of the world as a mosaic of sovereign territories, and thought in terms of peoples and places rather than states and spaces, connected not so much by frontiers and international law as by routes and a variety of relationships with Rome.” This contemporary analysis is echoed by the stark language of a much older one…In the words of fourth-century AD statesman Symmachus, “For who does not equate the judgment of our emperors with that of the entire world?”
The implications of this view are astounding, creating a situation in which Rome could conceivably view any disturbance – in any location – as a direct threat to the survival of the Roman state. In fact, this is much the method by which the Roman peace functioned. A challenge to Roman power might meet with initial success (the legions were scarce and often scattered), yet such action set the agitator beneath a sword of Damocles. Slow and unfailingly, Rome would gather her legions to exact reprisal and avenge her injury a hundred-fold. The hammer blow might take years to fall, yet few could doubt the end result: Roman retaliation was one of the terrible certainties of the ancient world. Given the remarkable range of actions which could spark this punitive response, it is little wonder that some tribes sent embassies to Rome to offer premptive surrenders, often begging the emperor to accept their subordinate position.
There are obvious differences between the dispositions of the two powers (and there better be, with two millenia of liberal political evolution separating them!). Where Rome recognized only two sorts of people in the world – “us” and “not us” – the U.S. maintains a vast and sophisticated diplomatic apparatus, investing an immense amount of effort in multinational partnership and international institutions.
Moreover, where Romans were eager to expand their suzerainty to new regions, Americans have been very reluctant to take even temporary administrative control of the territories they deploy to, particularly from the 20th century onward.
For the vast historical gulf between them, however, it’s the similarities between America and Rome that have kept bouncing through my head these past few days. In both cases, their militaries are without equal, able to strike anywhere and beat anyone. In both cases, too, their martial capabilities help frame the rules by which world affairs are conducted.
If another actor (a tribe; a nation) does something too far beyond the pale, it can expect reprisal. Back then, it was the Parthians or the Berbers or the Germans. Today, it’s ISIS.
Most significantly, in both cases, the gravest threats to government and citizens’ well-being aren’t external factors, but rather internal ones. The go-anywhere, do-anything Roman military wasn’t done in by a superior adversary – it was degraded and destroyed by a bad spending-to-debt ratio and harmful political institutions.
Poke your head in the average Capitol Hill hearing, and you’re likely to come away with a sense of déjà vu.
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