The Warmaster
29-04-2005, 22:14
The Nature Of Power
“Four things greater than all things are:
Women and Horses and Power and War.”
-Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Ballad of the King’s Jest’, 1892.
Since the very first human being came into existence, man has desired power. There are many ways in which power manifests itself: money, strength, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, authority, and many more. One could argue, perhaps, that the Christian story of original sin is a byproduct of the desire for power. Perhaps the seed of resentment was already in Eve’s heart as she bit from the fruit of the forbidden tree. Mortals envy the limitless power of a god. If Eve is mortal, then logically it follows that she is envious of either Adam, who is, ironically, her creator, not the other way around, or Jehovah himself. As the serpent assured her, the fruit unlocked the world to her. What price was Paradise to pay for our intelligence, and therefore, our ascent?
Right now the human race is overwhelmingly powerful. If the President were to wake up one day and decide that the world had to be destroyed, on his whim a single nation could poison the planet such that only shambling half-human irradiated monstrosities would be left in a century. That and the cockroaches. This incredible potency is the product of our sentience. Orson Scott Card, in his novel Ender’s Shadow, includes a Russian scientist as a character. This man has been exiled for forbidden work on the human genome, specifically, tampering with limits on human intelligence. He says that there were the two trees in Eden: the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life. If we had taken from the tree of life, we would be immortal but horrifically retarded. He believes that the less intelligent we are, the longer our lives. However, our choice of knowledge has given us, for example, a survival instinct. We now know that it is “good” to postpone death, and in Card’s scientist’s view, now are too stupid to realize that our continued postponement of death makes us even stupider.
Our sentience has given us everything. It also has made as aware that there must always be government, something to rule us, because it is a fact that a nation cannot know what to do on its own. People have always desired to concentrate power, because pwoer is the currency which buys all souls and everyone wants it. Countless governments have arisen through the millennia. However, trying to count these, let alone describing them, would be an impossible task. This work will deal only with governments that are examples of certain themes: Soviet Russia, the United States, Rome, and Nazi Germany. Also, it will deal with modes of government. As an aside to the reader: I am not a historian. There was no real research done on any of these so forgive any brevity. Without further ado, a short history of the Roman people.
The city of Rome was founded according to legend by Romulus in 753 BC, first king of the kingdom of the same name as the city. There were seven kings in all, from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus, who in 509 BC was banished by Lucius Junius Brutus, after Superbus raped Lucrecia, a wealthy woman and a respected Roman. After this Romans became paranoid of anyone who had too highly concentrated political power, and formed a republic. The territory of Rome was ruled by the Senate, who were in turn overseen by two consuls. Other offices included Quaestor, Aedile, Censor, and Pontifex Maximus. Noble families in Rome vied for prestige and power. Meanwhile, many things happened externally as well. King Pyrrhus of Epirus invaded Rome, and, at Asculum, the phalanx came face-to-face with the Roman Legions. Although Pyrrhus technically won, in the long term he lost far too many men for it to be a victory worth having, giving rise to the term pyrrhic victory. Spartacus, a gladiator, led a slave revolt and came within an inch of conquering Rome. However, it was not to be and he was eventually killed. His men were crucified along the Appian Way, Rome’s main road, from Tarentum to Rome, with one man every tenth of a mile. At Pydna the Roman legions invaded Greece and destroyed the phalanx, the main bastion of Hellenic military power. In hindsight, it had to happen; the phalanx derives its strength from its tight formation, yet this makes it difficult to cross rough territory or to make tight turns. Furthermore, the phalanx can only face front. The best way to destroy a phalanx is to engage from the front with another phalanx. Normally this would merely be a pushing contest until one side fell back. However, cavalry can easily outflank the slow phalanx and crash into it from behind, possibly routing it with the sheer impact.
Pydna was the beginning of the end for Greece. Rome continued to expand; Gaul was conquered for a time, but it broke free of the Roman yoke later on. The Romans also snatched up Asia Minor when the Seleucids invaded. The Seleucids lost, and the Romans demanded Asia Minor, hostages, and a huge sum of money to relent from subjugating their entire (considerable) territory. So the Roman Republic gradually became a great power.
However, they were also vying for control of the Mediterranean Sea, which was currently controlled by Carthage, the great mercantile power. Conflict over the Mediterranean erupted in the First Punic War. There were two more uprisings of Carthage, and two more Punic Wars. From 264 to 241 BC the powers fought until finally at the end of the Third Punic War, Scipio Africanus defeated the legendary Hannibal Barca at Zama. One must understand that Hannibal was brilliant but not invincible. It was said of him that “Hannibal knew how to gain a victory but not to use it.”Scipio then pressed on to Carthage. When it fell, he burned it to the ground, destroyed anything left standing, then planted salts in the area so nothing could grow there. He remarked to a subordinate as he watched Carthage burn that he was afraid that the same fate would one day befall Rome. After Carthage’s defeat, Rome became master of the Mediterranean, and on any maps from then on, the Mediterranean was labeled ‘Mare Nostrum’, or ‘our sea’.
To understand why Rome was so successful, one must look mostly at its legions. Early Republican Legions consisted of three main lines of battle. In the front would be the hastati, younger men who could not pay for advanced armor and weaponry. They were armed with javelins, called pila, which they would hurl at enemies and then engage with the gladius, or short sword. The second line was made of principes, heavy infantry who had the money to buy good armor and had seen battle before. They also used the pila and gladius. Finally, the third line was triarii, spearmen who could easily deal with any cavalry and were useful against infantry as well. They did not use pila, but did have swords for close combat. Skirmishers, called velites, and archers, called sagitarii, would screen the main force and harass enemy formations. Cavalry, called equites, often served as the reserve.
In 107 BC Gaius Marius reorganized the Roman Legions. He removed property restrictions, set up a pension system, and generally professionalized the system. While the concept of three main lines of battle were kept, they were made up of Legionary Cohorts, heavy infantry, auxilia spearmen, and light auxilia javelin throwers. These reforms improved the system greatly, and domestic defense was upgraded when Emperor Augustus established the Praetorian Cohort and the Urban Cohort to protect the Emperor and the city, respectively.
Just as importantly, the Romans believed they were destined to be conquerors. They had the will and determination to rule the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and they did. It was when this will faltered that Roman expansion, and later security, ceased.
But historically, soon one of Rome’s greatest leaders, and one of the greatest generals of all time was due to be born. Gaius Julius Caesar, the man who singlehandedly became ruler of the in-name-only Republic. He was born to the Julii in 100 BC and was destined for great things. He was once captured by pirates. When he overheard them discussing his ransom, twenty soldiers’ wages for a year, he scornfully told them to ask for more than twice what they had planned, to reflect his worth. He was arrogant indeed, but with good reason. When he was returned to his family, he hunted the pirates down and killed them, calmly crucifying them all.
He became Pontifex Maximus, chief priest and administrator of the Vestal Virgins in 63 BC. Eventually the Senate gave him Farther Spain as his administration. In 59 BC Caesar became consul. In 58 BC Caesar used his popularity with the mob to gain the provinces of Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul. When the governor of Transalpine Gaul died the same year, Caesar took that too. He marched to conquer the rest of Gaul, and arrogantly wrote in 57 BC that he had brought peace to it. Soon a revolution led by the Arverni tribe and Vercingetorix specifically erupted and lasted for five years. In 49 BC Caesar was rich and powerful, and decided to take Rome itself. He crossed the Rubicon with his army, and captured all of Italy and cornered rival Pompey’s troops in Spain that same year. Pompey was killed by Egyptians, and when Caesar arrived there in 48 BC he was presented with Pompey’s head. Caesar was not satisfied, however, and abducted Ptolemy XIII and attacked Alexandria. He lost the battle, but in March 47 BC, Caesar won the war. He proceeded to crush Pontus, and then returned to Rome. Victorious generals received triumphs to glorify them. They would ride through the city in a vast parade, while a priest whispered in the general’s ear: “Remember, you are only a man.” Caesar received four triumphs, one for Gaul, one for Egypt, one for Pontus, and one for Africa.
Caesar was made master of the Roman world, which he had expanded greatly. However, Marcus Crassus, perhaps the richest man in history, had been killed in a campaign against Parthia in 53 BC, and Pompey was dead. He was the sole dictator of Rome, and this made him many enemies. Foreseeing this, he staged a ceremony on the Lupercal in Rome, where Marcus Antonius, also known as Antony, offered him a king’s crown thrice. He refused, saying, “Jupiter alone is King of the Romans.” While this was of course a lie-Caesar’s character is one of vast ambition-the ceremony was necessary, but it fooled none of his greatest foes, the Senators, including the legendary Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar is warned by a prophet to “beware the Ides of March!” He spurned the warning, yet allegedly in early March of 44 BC, birds flew into the curia, or Senate house, and shredded laurel leaves, which were a symbol of Caesar’s. Caesar sacrificed a pig with no heart, a terrible omen. Calpurnia, his wife, dreamed that she held him as he died of stab wounds. On the morning of 44 BC, Calpurnia told Caesar of her dream and pled with him not to go to the Senate that day. The plotters, wondering where he was, sent Decimus Brutus to coax Caesar to the Senate. He agreed, and at that moment a bust of him smashed in the hallway of his house. A Greek, Artemidorus, tried to warn Caesar, but the dictator paid no attention and Caesar was stabbed to death at the foot of a statue of Pompey, his old enemy.
Civil war followed. Octavian, Caesar’s nephew, worked with Marcus Antonius to hunt down Brutus and bring him to justice. After he died, they turned on each other, thus continuing the civil war. Octavian’s legions defeated Antonius’s at every turn, and in desperation Antony fled to Egypt. At the battle of Actium, the Egyptian and Roman navies clashed. When Rome won, both Antonius and his famed lover, Cleopatra, committed suicide.
Octavian was now the ruler of Rome. It is said of him that he found Rome a city of bricks and turned it to marble, a testament to his public works projects. Under him, Rome entered a golden age. However, the Senate still stubbornly insisted on pretending it had some power, and did not grant Octavian dictatorial status, at least not in name. But when the Senate told him that he had too much power, he pretended to be concerned and announced he would resign. Frightened that a worse leader or a more ambitious one would seize the throne, the Senate conferred on him titles like “the divine Augustus”, and he became emperor of the newly formed Roman Empire.
The Empire continued to expand, but over time the Romans began to hit obstacles. In 9 AD, a man named Quintus Varus was leading an army through the now-infamous Teutoberg Forest. Betrayed by a chief he was using as a guide, the Roman forces were ambushed and slaughtered. Many legionary standards were captured by the Germans, and just as many generals committed suicide. Varus escaped to Rome, where the furious Emperor Augustus said his now-famous words, “Varus, give me back my legions.” This marked forever that not only were the Romans beatable, they could be utterly annihilated. The Germanic tribes were never conquered by Rome, and in fact were ultimately responsible for the destruction of the city. Meanwhile, both the emperors Trajan and Septimius Severus suffered stinging defeats against the city of Hatra, in the Middle Eastern desert. In 54 BC, the Parthians there had destroyed Marcus Crassus, and then as well as the later Roman invasions, the desert did much of the fighting for them. Picture the hopeless situation of the legions; marching for days across hundreds of miles of desert, in full armor, with little or no water, towing huge siege engines and with a long train of impedimenta, or baggage. They arrived at Hatra to find that the wells around the city had been drained into the city’s reservoirs. Suffering of incredible thirst, they might attack only to be repulsed by bizarre Eastern weapons that the Romans could not face, such as lumps of pitch that burned and could not be put out, or the devastating tactic called the Parthian shot. Hordes of horse archers might ride out, launching a devastating volley of arrows. As the Romans pursued them, they would turn in their saddles and fire another shot, called the Parthian shot.
It must be said that this is a perfect example of how useless conventional warfare is against a foe like the Easterners, and how difficult it is to fight when out of one’s element. The Romans were used to Mediterranean climate, having enough water, and perhaps most importantly, fighting an enemy hand-to-hand, as an army. They were not prepared to face swarms of nimble cavalry. Similarly, the British forces in America were well-disciplined and professional, and devastating in their mode of combat, so the minutemen vanished into the forests and used guerilla warfare to deadly effect. Napoleon’s forces in Spain in the Peninsular War were met by Spanish guerrillas, which was the origin of the term. These armies were all very disciplined, and would follow their commander anywhere, even into a fierce artillery barrage, and all fought in a European style. Considering the effectiveness of the Roman fighting style, the genius of Napoleon, and the precision of the British musketeers, they were very difficult to fight and vanquish in their own environment. Now imagine Napoleon in Russia, dying of the Russian winter, losing men to raids by Russian Cossacks. Indeed, Russia is extremely difficult for any enemy to invade, much less conquer, because of its willingness to deprive itself to destroy one’s enemy, the vast size of the country, and what the tsar called “General Winter.” Even modern armies are no match for the omnipotent winter. The point is that even the Roman armies, invincible in the fair climate of Europe, where enemies are tangible and water can easily be found, are novices when it comes to fighting in the desert. The Parthians, on the other hand, had lived there for centuries, and knew exactly how to fight there. Imagine the laughter on the walls of Hatra when they saw these Roman idiots, in metal armor, carrying these silly wooden towers and dragging enough baggage to build a city, never mind conquer one. Two lessons must be learned from these three examples: Guerrillas cannot be fought by conventional means. One must use betrayal, deception, and extermination to even mount a defense and Even the most powerful army is useless when out of its element.
The Romans vanquished, the Parthians returned to their lifestyle, but it must be said that the any professional army, especially the Roman army, tends to excel at long-term campaigns where less professional armies do not. Weakened by the wars, the Parthians could not withstand sustained pressure, especially given their lack of a strong central government. Eventually they were overthrown and conquered by the Persians.
This put an end to the expansion of the Roman Empire, and now problems began to reveal themselves. Now that the Romans were no longer fighting to be the best, they were content to idle and watch provinces stew with resentment. Laziness and apathy took their toll, and the mighty legions began increasingly to be replaced by mercenaries. In an effort to balance the decay of Western Europe, Emperor Diocletian split the empire into two halves, eat and west. Constantine the Great built the Eastern capital at Constantinople, and moved many treasures from Rome there. A good thing, because in 401 the Visigoth king Alaric betrayed Rome and invaded Italy, sacking the Eternal City in 410, which had been unconquered for 800 years. Finally, in 476, Romulus Augustulus was overthrown, last Emperor of the world’s greatest power, the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire fell because they relaxed. That is the bane of any power. You must never take it for granted that you should rule the world. Vigilance is the price of freedom. One also must realize that eventually one must pull back. Alexander went too far. Caesar went too far. Napoleon went too far. Hitler went too far. The Romans did a remarkably good job of preservation of their territory, mainly because there were few people in their history who were likely to constantly attack and conquer other areas. On the other hand, they were killed by apathy. It was too successful, not to mention that their leadership, except for some strong emperors, got mostly worse after the death of Augustus. Some of this was due to the machinations of the Praetorian Guard; they were known to assassinate emperors. After the death of Commodus, they even held a formal auction for the post of emperor and suitably intimidated the winner to keep him under their control. Eventually Constantine disbanded them, recognizing the danger they posed.
The next history for study is that of Nazi Germany. After World War One, the German people were shattered. The Allies had forced them to pay $33 billion in reparations, which, after the devastation wreaked on Germany, the government, known as the Weimar Republic, could no longer pay. Still, the Allies exacted their toll. Further, the millions of German soldiers that had been serving on the front returned, hungry and unemployed, to find work, and they looked in vain. The Germans had marginally recovered when the Great Depression hit. Inflation skyrocketed, until a whole basket of Deutschemarks were needed to buy a loaf of bread. The Allies, desperate for money, continued to demand their reparation costs, which now was certainly beyond the ability of Germany to pay. One-fourth of the German people was unemployed.
Adolf Hitler had served in World War One, and like the entire German people, he was ashamed and enraged that they had been so humiliated. He joined the Nazis, which at the time was little more than a street gang, and using his charisma and powerful speeches, propelled the Nazi Party into the spotlight. Hitler was eventually sent to jail after being caught trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle”. It can also be translated as “My Dream” or any number of other things. It blasted Jews and Communists, blaming them for Germany’s spectacular defeat, and when Hitler was released, he continued his work in the Nazi Party. One night, the Reichstag, or Parliament building, burned down (suspiciously), and a man identified as a Communist was arrested. Hitler used this to give himself dictatorial powers. He appealed greatly to the German people, to their wounded pride, and he promised that Germany would rise from the ashes, the phoenix from the flames. The problem was, it did. The German grudge helped greatly, but Hitler made unemployment rates plummet. The German economy got back on its feet, and before long it rivaled the greatest powers in the world.
Germany wanted much of its old territory back. He annexed Austria, militarized the Rhineland, and demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler, of course, was not satisfied, and in September 1939, Germans invaded Poland. The Polish were hopelessly outmatched, and were easily conquered. Stalin’s Russians also invaded in the east. The Nazis and Soviets had made a pact called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and basically maintained a cautious neutrality between the two enemies, and also divided Poland between the two. Hitler’s troops then stormed over the Low Countries, evading the bulk of France’s defenses at the Maginot Line, and conquered France. He made the French sign their terms of surrender in the same railcar that the Allies had made the Germans sign their surrender in 22 years ago. That same year, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to raid southern Britain, to soften the British up for an invasion. However, the Luftwaffe’s failure to destroy key sites, such as radar stations and important airfields, allowed the British to maintain a 2:1 kill ratio by the end of the ‘Battle of Britain’. With the RAF still operating, Hitler called off his plans for invasion. Here, in my opinion, is where Hitler made perhaps his greatest mistake. He began to amass troops in Eastern Europe for an invasion of the Soviet Union. As I will explain later, that invasion was an utter catastrophe. In my opinion, Hitler should have kept his troops in Western Europe. I will give my reasoning later.
In 1941 the war for Northern Africa took on importance. General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, led a campaign to capture Egypt. When it stalled because of a lack of men and supplies, the Allies took the initiative. Gradually pushing the Germans back, they eventually recaptured North Africa and invaded Sicily. The German forces were now in trouble. The poorly fortified Italian peninsula was under threat, with the Afrika Korps in ruins and dozens of divisions fighting for their lives in Soviet Russia. Fortress Europe was in danger of being breached, as indeed it was to be. The Allies invaded southern Italy, and fought their way up the peninsula to the Po Valley and captured Rome. Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, was killed later by German troops. However, halfway up the peninsula, the advance began to slow as supplies were moved to Britain to assemble for the Normandy landing.
The success of Allied intelligence agents was responsible for many of the elements of the success of D-Day. To start with, the Germans thought it was somewhere else entirely, distracted by an Allied double agent. Also, the American troops in the assault would have found it much harder to be transported to Britain had the British cipher-cracking experts at Bletchley Park, including the brilliant Alan Turing, cracked the Kreigsmarine, or Navy, Enigma machine, in addition to the German Army Enigma. The Enigma was designed in the 1920's, and used rotating wheels to encode a message nearly impossible to crack at the time, because of the staggering number of possibilities. The Germans knew this and trusted in its superiority to any codebreaker. This allowed the British to intercept messages with impunity, since the Germans could not believe the Allies had cracked the ‘unbreakable’ Enigma. So on June 6th, 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, encountering fierce resistance from the Germans. One must imagine the chaos: swarms of Allied troopers wading ashore to be fired on by well-entrenched German machine guns, with huge battleships providing cover fire for the landing. The Germans lost that key battle, and then France was effectively undefended. The Allies freed most of France and pressed on to Germany. 25 divisions of the German army counterattacked in a desperate attempt to halt the advance in the Battle of the Bulge, but they failed. From then on Germany was completely doomed.
Let us go to Russia. In Eastern Europe, Germany massed troops for an invasion which occurred in 1941. Three lines of main assault were distinguishable on a map: one heading for Ukraine and the Caucasian nations, one marching on Leningrad, and a third attacking Moscow. The Red Army initially crumbled, taken by surprise, and after Stalin’s purge, without able commanders. However, Stalin ordered his people to deny the Germans all supplies in a ‘scorched earth’ tactic, meaning the Germans were starving, cold, and tired when they settled into two sieges: one at Stalingrad and one at Leningrad. At Leningrad hundreds of thousands of bombs were dropped in a futile attempt to enter and conquer the city. This was the bloodiest siege in history, and one of the bloodiest battles. But in the south, at Stalingrad, two massive armies, one Soviet, one German, slugged it out over the city of Stalingrad. Stalin was unwilling to let the city fall, not least because it bore his name, and Hitler was unwilling to let the Russians turn back his hugely successful invasion, which had advanced to the Urals. For months the armies fought, poorly supplied. The Russians were as brutal to their troops as they were to the Germans, and the entire city was bombed by German planes. Eventually, however, the Russians managed to surround the Germans and force them to surrender. 200,000 Axis troops were lost with that one action. Over a million casualties were inflicted, the most in history, above the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of the Somme. The Russians, with renewed morale, broke the siege of Leningrad and the Germans fought the Russians in a last attempt to keep their advance, at the Battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history. The attempt failed, and along with it the German invasion. This spelled disaster for Germany.
The invasion of Russia, codenamed OPERATION: BARBAROSSA was a disaster. Millions of German troops were marched into the freezing cold of Russia. Did Hitler seriously think that Stalin would submit by the onset of winter? Winter in Russia is a deadly weapon, and a tactic that no invader can ignore, especially given the scorched earth tactic, which while it caused the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens, took a horrible toll on the Germans. Secondly, supposing the Germans did conquer Russia, with what troops would they hold such vast areas? The need for lebensraum aside, there were not enough troops to hold Europe and such a huge portion of Asia. Another facet of the disaster, and one that does not apply exclusively to the Soviet invasion, is that Germany was always on the offensive. Many conquerors have learned that one cannot simply attack over and over again, there must be time to consolidate one’s holdings. Perhaps if the Nazis had done this, they would have been able to overcome the stubborn Soviet resistance. Perhaps I speak with the perfect vision of hindsight, but the results speak for themselves: the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany began then, in 1944, when German troops stepped over the border in Poland.
Tens of thousands of men had been lost, men which Germany could not replace. Once again, the best young men of Germany, an entire generation, had been destroyed. You cannot estimate the cost of losing a generation. The Germans fell back to Germany, with the Russians hounding them through Eastern Europe, the Allies marching up Italy and into mainland Europe, and with (although Hitler didn’t know it) D-Day, Operation Overlord, in the works, ready to enter France. Germany was fighting a war on two fronts, the curse of German geography. It was about to fight on three.
Normandy was the death knell. If any skeptics had believed the Germans could hold off the Russians and the Allies, they had to capitulate with the opening of yet another front. The German Army simply could not do it, and as has been said earlier, the Allies invaded Germany in early 1945. After meeting Soviet troops at the Elbe River, the Soviets captured the city with the Allies days away, famously planting the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and on May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered.
But the Americans at least had been fighting another war all this time. Tensions with the Empire of Japan had been slowly rising, and the Japanese were eager to expand their empire by any means necessary. There were plans among the Japanese high command to attack the United States, and indeed that happened. On December 7, 1941, “a day which will live in infamy”, Japanese carrier-based Zero fighters crippled the US Navy with a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A state of war had not been declared at the time, and so the attack was considered dishonorably sudden and ruthless.
The Admiral in charge of the Japanese fleet was compulsively punctual, and he had instructed the Japanese ambassador to deliver the declaration of war at about the same time that the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Technically this would be acceptable, but a delay forced the ambassador to hand it in after the US Navy had already been attacked.
However, the Japanese vastly underestimated the productive capacity of the United States and the resolve of its military. They had foolishly provoked a larger nation with a better industrial capacity, and they paid the price later. Although Japanese forces took over Wake Island, the Philippines, and other US-held territories in the Pacific in early 1942, the US Navy confronted them at the Battle of the Coral Sea. For the first time the Japanese assault had been held back Later the island of Guadalcanal was liberated by US Marines, a foothold for further operations in the Pacific. The Japanese Fleet attacked the US again at Midway Island, which was a disastrous mistake. The US had cracked the Japanese Purple cipher, and knew as soon as the Japanese themselves did where they would strike. Fighting for three days, the Navy sank four Japanese carriers while losing one of its own. This immediately put the Japanese back on the defensive. The US military, however, now had to face the prospect of capturing myriads of islands defended by relentless Japanese soldiers who would sooner die than surrender. To reduce US losses, the Marines invaded only the islands that were important to the war effort and brought the military closer to Japan. This strategy, however, was messy; one Japanese warlord from the war refused to surrender for decades after Japan did. Despite this, it worked, saving the US thousands of lives by simply avoiding islands that were not strictly necessary to the war effort.
In 1944 the US Navy planned to retake the Philippines. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, the Philippines were won back and much of Japan’s remaining hope was burned away. In 1945 the Japanese introduced kamikaze, or ‘divine wind’ tactics: the strategy of crashing a bomb-laden plane into a warship. Many ships were sunk or damaged by this tactic but it came too late to influence the outcome of the war. The Navy and Marines continued to advance, at high cost, and soon they were within bombing reach of Japan. On one bombing raid Tokyo was firebombed, killing more people than the atomic bomb and destroying over a quarter of the city. The US began to discuss the possibility of invading Japan.
It was obvious from experience that the Japanese would not surrender. Civilians were made to take self-defense courses, and projected casualties were in excess of a million American troops. Luckily, there was an alternative: the Manhattan Project. This top-secret research toward the development of the nuclear bomb was to be the device that would end the great war. When it was tested in New Mexico, it exceeded all expectations, vaporizing the metal tower on which it stood, and turning the sand for hundreds of yards into glass. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head physicist, misquoted the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu holy text. He said, “I am become death, the destroyer of all things.” Although that is not the actual text of the Bhagavad Gita, it is perhaps even more morbid, and true. The government delivered an ultimatum to the Japanese promising terrible destruction if they did not receive an official surrender. They did not, and the military dropped the first atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, after which Japan finally surrendered.
Nazi Germany made a few mistakes: they were always on the offensive, they spent their best troops, they invaded Soviet Russian without adequate preparation, and they failed to eradicate their most important targets. It is that simple. However, such mistakes were possibly if not probably attributable to Hitler, and if, for example, Erwin Rommel had controlled military matters then the war might have gone quite differently.
The United States’ history truly begins with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775. At Lexington and Concord, militiamen took up arms to halt the British. Word of the success at Concord spread and hope grew that Britain could be defeated. The Continental Army was formed, with General George Washington at its head. In 1776, the rebelling states declared independence from Great Britain. The date of the publication of the Declaration of Independence was July 4, now an American national holiday. This document formed the United States of America. With the aid of France, solicited by Benjamin Franklin, the United States militia trapped the British at Yorktown and the main part of the British army surrendered. The United States had challenged the most powerful empire of the age and won, and was now a fledgling state. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 gave America all the land up to the Mississippi River.
In 1787, American leaders and diplomats from the loosely allied states joined to write the Constitution of the United States. It established the governmental structure of the country, and combined the states that signed it into one nation. From the initial signing state, Delaware, to the state that formed a majority, New Hampshire, and later all thirteen colonies, a new nation had been formed.
To raise funds and pay off the huge debts the war had incurred, the government taxed many things, including whiskey. A collection of farmers made a motley rebellion against the new nation in light of this development, but were put down by a militia. This proved the government could handle crises.
In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold the vast Louisiana Territory to the United States, reasoning that he didn’t need it and that he ended up getting $15 million for the whole thing, a great deal for the United States. Thomas Jefferson, the president at the time, admitted that he had stretched the Constitution “till it cracked.”
A fiery group in the US government called the War Hawks began to stir up trouble in the nation at around 1809. British ships were impressing US sailors and interfering with much-needed US trade. In 1812, the War of 1812 broke out with Britain. The early war gave little advantage to either side, but in 1814 the British captured Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, and burned government buildings like the Capitol. However, this galvanized large numbers of volunteers to join the army, and the Treaty of Ghent marked British surrender, and it was signed December of 1814.
The 1800's rolled on, as people began to move westward towards the Pacific Ocean. Not all of them settled in the coast, but many left the East Coast to seek a better life, not unlike the movement that had started the colonization of America in the first place. However, by far the most important issue in the 1800's was the issue of slavery. Abolitionists protested slavery, calling it barbaric and saying it violated each person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Southern slaveowners, who depended on slaves to produce the crops their economy relied on, replied that slaves were property, not people, and rights did not apply to them.
Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser” made two compromises in 1820 and 1850 that merely postponed the inevitable clash. In fact, these two may have helped bring about the War Between the States, or Civil War, by their flawed nature. It was not possible in this case to please both sides.
In 1861, Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The North had much more industrial, military, and economic strength, but the troops of the Confederate States of America, as the 11 rebellious states had come to be called, fought valiantly to keep their territory intact. The North called for the capture of Richmond, the Southern capital, the blockade of Southern states to starve them into submission, and the capture of the Mississippi River. The South planned to hold their own territory and capture Washington, DC.
It is interesting to note that most American history texts refer to this conflict as the Civil War. This is not factually correct. A civil war is a rebellion. The Confederate States of America formally declared their independence from the Union and thus were another nation, not a faction of the United States, just as that same Union declared independence from Britain. The difference is that the British, who viewed it as a rebellion, lost and the Americans, calling their cause a fight for their nation, won. The South lost and the North won, so it is referred to by the Northern view of the Civil War.
I do not believe in slavery. It is morally wrong. But the South was fighting the more just cause. Consider that the Southern economy relied on slavery. If that source of labor had been removed, chaos would have ensued, and not just in the South. Also, Northerners said that the states were not allowed to leave the Union. A democratic government, whose claim to authority is that the states and people accept that authority, and the members are forbidden to resign when the states and the people wish it? Stupid. Then again, the North could hardly let the South leave. Anyway, this is a perfect example of “the winners write the history books”.
The South held its own in the early war. But when General Robert E. Lee, a brilliant man, invaded Northern territory, both times he was beaten back. At the second occasion, the Battle of Gettysburg, the offensive capability of the South was ruined and on the same day that the South lost that key battle, the major fort and port of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, fell. In 1864, the Union General, Grant, led his men in a bloody, wasteful, and crude campaign to conquer the South. Grant won by sheer weight of numbers, and thousands of troops died for it. Lee was surrounded. Georgia had been devastated by General Sherman, who had razed Atlanta and Savannah, and on May 26, 18665, Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War, or the War Between the States.
The Reconstruction followed, during which the Southern economy got back on its feet while occupied by Union troops. Between 1866 and 1870, all the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. However, the white-supremacist culture did not die there, and continued for decades.
In the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of immigrants swelled the workforce, and industry flourished. However, progressive human-rights workers protested the tiny wages and inadequate housing the immigrants were given. Later, laws preventing monopolies and trusts were passed. America’s rich natural resources helped fuel the Revolution.
Time passed, and Europe grew uneasy with the MAIN acronym: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. These combined into a potent factor for war, and indeed, in 1914, with the almost-failed assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, war did break out. However, defensive technology was more advanced than offensive technology, and a stalemate was reached for years. Battles like the Somme and Ypres took huge casualties, because the only way to break the trenches, defended with machine guns, was to swarm the enemy in such numbers that even the numerous machine guns could not slaughter them all. It was a brutal, inhumane war, in which poison gas and tanks were both used for the first time.
In 1915, German submarines sank the ship Lusitania without warning, killing 128 Americans. Over this and other German abuses, Americans raised great protests. In 1917, America declared war on Germany. However, in 1917 Russia withdrew from the war because of the success of the Communist Revolution there. The troops fighting on the Eastern front hurried to the Western Front, where Germany made a last effort to break the Allied lines. It almost succeeded. Germany got within 50 miles of Paris, but were turned back. This was the end. Germans were starving and rebellious, and in 1918, Germany surrendered and the German Kaiser fled to the Netherlands.
The 20's were a time of extravagance and prosperity in America. Traditions were challenged, and slogans like “Everyone Ought To Be Rich” were everywhere. The stock market prices were continually dropping. However, on Black Thursday in October, prices dipped sharply. After a brief recovery, they plummeted. On October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday, $9 billion dollars were lost as prices dropped to rock-bottom levels.
For years most of America was poor, and huge numbers of unemployed people roamed the streets. People wondered if laissez-faire capitalism, the great experiment, had failed. But in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president. Using his presidential powers to the utmost and spending huge amounts, he managed to initiate programs that eventually got the United States back on its feet. But the true recovery happened in World War II, where millions joined factories and shipyards to win the war of production.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the only remaining superpower nations. America had an advantage: the nuclear bomb. However, within a few years, Soviets stole a prototype of one of the two bombs dropped on Japan and produced bombs of their own. A nuclear showdown had begun. The only way to stop a nuclear war was to make sure there was no need for it and that you had more warheads than the other.
America thrived after the war. The industrial boom was working wonders for the economy, and our military was the peacekeeper of the world, occupying much of Germany, a sector of Berlin, and Japan. This role was to continue for decades and indeed goes on today. Everything became our business. In 1953, Josef Stalin died, the man who had more blood on his hands than perhaps anyone in history. He was succeeded by Nikita Kruschev, a man who believed utterly that communism would eventually crush capitalism forever.
In 1950 the US got involved in the Korean War. Communist North Koreans invaded the democratic South. Fearing the loss of an ally and the spread of communism, the US pushed the North Koreans back until China, fearing US troops so near it, also got involved, on the side of the North Koreans. A truce was reached and the DMZ of Korea is one of the most dangerous places on earth, with mines as common as blades of grass and thousands of soldiers on both sides in a decades-long stare-down.
Another example of US involvement is the Vietnam War. In the 1960's military advisors were sent to the nation of South Vietnam, but soon it threatened to collapse under pressure from North Vietnamese Communists. To stop the spread of communism, hundreds of thousands of American troops were sent to Vietnam. The place was a death trap, and one where Americans learned the same painful lesson the Romans did at Hatra, which I mentioned earlier: nobody can fight out of their element. The guerrilla Vietcong slaughtered American troops. Desperately, Americans resorted to chemicals like napalm to destroy the foliage in which Vietcong hid. The war was incredibly unpopular, and eventually US troops withdrew, in 1973, beaten and ashamed. South Vietnam fell in 1975.
America was still the superpower, but the Cold War was drawing on and Americans were rocked by doubt. They had just lost a war decisively for the first time and had no idea how to handle it. Also, President Nixon was involved in the Watergate scandal, where criminals working for him broke into the Democratic Party headquarters and tapped their phones. This made many people lose faith in the government.
Ronald Reagan helped to fix this. He was elected in 1981, and he was a man who believed firmly in black-and-white ideas of good and evil. To him, the Soviet Union was an evil empire and the United States the champion of all that was right. He made stirring patriotic speeches about this, and united Americans against the USSR.
What few realized at the time was that the Soviet Union was tottering, drained, as America would be, by the long arms race to build more and more nuclear weapons, and it was failing. Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Politburo from 1985 to 1991, knew this and was willing to end the long Cold War. At Geneva, Switzerland and Reykjavik, Iceland, the two met to make peace. They formed a personal friendship over the years, and friendly relations continued into the presidency of George Bush. During the Gulf War, Soviet diplomats did their best to maintain peace and hold back outrage at Iraqi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, Israel, and others.
In 1991 high-ranking Soviet officials staged a coup which failed, but Boris Yeltsin got the political credit for stopping it. On December 21, 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States was formed out of the USSR, and on Christmas Day, Gorbachev resigned. The United States was now the only nuclear superpower.
In this role it was easy to assume the role of peacekeeper, the champion of democracy and freedom around the world. But killing the USSR released many small but potentially threatening dangers. For example, the US arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan led to the Taliban’s formation and the prominence of Osama bin Laden in that region. Terrorism in general was the biggest security concern for the US in the 1990's, and continues to be a major issue today.
The problem with US foreign policy is that no one nation has the resources or the right to be the policeman of the world, toppling corrupt regimes and installing democracy. I admit the US invasion of Iraq had at least one beneficial point in that it toppled Saddam Hussein. I remember the day that the news reported his capture by US troops. But it has bogged US forces down fighting a thousand brush fires that threaten the entire country. It will be very difficult to install a working democracy in that region. Besides, democracy is not the only government that works, and is not always the best for the people.
The Greek city-state of Athens, during the Classical Period, was greater than any other, except perhaps Sparta, and that only in a military sense. Its colonies were legion. But these colonies came to resent the Athenian democracy, because they still had no real control over their affairs and, more importantly, it wasn’t theirs. People might even choose their own dictatorship over a foreign democracy. Ahem. Pay attention, US government.
But this should not be a rant about US foreign policy. As we all know, on 9/11/01, Osama bin Laden’s followers crashed three planes into two different targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It stirred up public outrage, fear, and hatred. A flood of racism toward people who appeared Arabic was experienced by many, and the US became the scourge of terrorism, and it remains in that mode today.
The American government can be hypocritical; they are politicians, and thus they manipulate and use propaganda to an extent, but this is only to be expected. Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” This is largely true. No government is perfect, but the United States democracy is exquisite and I don’t know of any better. Yes, perhaps in Europe, but I am still happy with America. One must simply learn the lesson of Athens, and know that it isn’t necessary to make the world full of democracy by force.
“Four things greater than all things are:
Women and Horses and Power and War.”
-Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Ballad of the King’s Jest’, 1892.
Since the very first human being came into existence, man has desired power. There are many ways in which power manifests itself: money, strength, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, authority, and many more. One could argue, perhaps, that the Christian story of original sin is a byproduct of the desire for power. Perhaps the seed of resentment was already in Eve’s heart as she bit from the fruit of the forbidden tree. Mortals envy the limitless power of a god. If Eve is mortal, then logically it follows that she is envious of either Adam, who is, ironically, her creator, not the other way around, or Jehovah himself. As the serpent assured her, the fruit unlocked the world to her. What price was Paradise to pay for our intelligence, and therefore, our ascent?
Right now the human race is overwhelmingly powerful. If the President were to wake up one day and decide that the world had to be destroyed, on his whim a single nation could poison the planet such that only shambling half-human irradiated monstrosities would be left in a century. That and the cockroaches. This incredible potency is the product of our sentience. Orson Scott Card, in his novel Ender’s Shadow, includes a Russian scientist as a character. This man has been exiled for forbidden work on the human genome, specifically, tampering with limits on human intelligence. He says that there were the two trees in Eden: the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life. If we had taken from the tree of life, we would be immortal but horrifically retarded. He believes that the less intelligent we are, the longer our lives. However, our choice of knowledge has given us, for example, a survival instinct. We now know that it is “good” to postpone death, and in Card’s scientist’s view, now are too stupid to realize that our continued postponement of death makes us even stupider.
Our sentience has given us everything. It also has made as aware that there must always be government, something to rule us, because it is a fact that a nation cannot know what to do on its own. People have always desired to concentrate power, because pwoer is the currency which buys all souls and everyone wants it. Countless governments have arisen through the millennia. However, trying to count these, let alone describing them, would be an impossible task. This work will deal only with governments that are examples of certain themes: Soviet Russia, the United States, Rome, and Nazi Germany. Also, it will deal with modes of government. As an aside to the reader: I am not a historian. There was no real research done on any of these so forgive any brevity. Without further ado, a short history of the Roman people.
The city of Rome was founded according to legend by Romulus in 753 BC, first king of the kingdom of the same name as the city. There were seven kings in all, from Romulus to Tarquinius Superbus, who in 509 BC was banished by Lucius Junius Brutus, after Superbus raped Lucrecia, a wealthy woman and a respected Roman. After this Romans became paranoid of anyone who had too highly concentrated political power, and formed a republic. The territory of Rome was ruled by the Senate, who were in turn overseen by two consuls. Other offices included Quaestor, Aedile, Censor, and Pontifex Maximus. Noble families in Rome vied for prestige and power. Meanwhile, many things happened externally as well. King Pyrrhus of Epirus invaded Rome, and, at Asculum, the phalanx came face-to-face with the Roman Legions. Although Pyrrhus technically won, in the long term he lost far too many men for it to be a victory worth having, giving rise to the term pyrrhic victory. Spartacus, a gladiator, led a slave revolt and came within an inch of conquering Rome. However, it was not to be and he was eventually killed. His men were crucified along the Appian Way, Rome’s main road, from Tarentum to Rome, with one man every tenth of a mile. At Pydna the Roman legions invaded Greece and destroyed the phalanx, the main bastion of Hellenic military power. In hindsight, it had to happen; the phalanx derives its strength from its tight formation, yet this makes it difficult to cross rough territory or to make tight turns. Furthermore, the phalanx can only face front. The best way to destroy a phalanx is to engage from the front with another phalanx. Normally this would merely be a pushing contest until one side fell back. However, cavalry can easily outflank the slow phalanx and crash into it from behind, possibly routing it with the sheer impact.
Pydna was the beginning of the end for Greece. Rome continued to expand; Gaul was conquered for a time, but it broke free of the Roman yoke later on. The Romans also snatched up Asia Minor when the Seleucids invaded. The Seleucids lost, and the Romans demanded Asia Minor, hostages, and a huge sum of money to relent from subjugating their entire (considerable) territory. So the Roman Republic gradually became a great power.
However, they were also vying for control of the Mediterranean Sea, which was currently controlled by Carthage, the great mercantile power. Conflict over the Mediterranean erupted in the First Punic War. There were two more uprisings of Carthage, and two more Punic Wars. From 264 to 241 BC the powers fought until finally at the end of the Third Punic War, Scipio Africanus defeated the legendary Hannibal Barca at Zama. One must understand that Hannibal was brilliant but not invincible. It was said of him that “Hannibal knew how to gain a victory but not to use it.”Scipio then pressed on to Carthage. When it fell, he burned it to the ground, destroyed anything left standing, then planted salts in the area so nothing could grow there. He remarked to a subordinate as he watched Carthage burn that he was afraid that the same fate would one day befall Rome. After Carthage’s defeat, Rome became master of the Mediterranean, and on any maps from then on, the Mediterranean was labeled ‘Mare Nostrum’, or ‘our sea’.
To understand why Rome was so successful, one must look mostly at its legions. Early Republican Legions consisted of three main lines of battle. In the front would be the hastati, younger men who could not pay for advanced armor and weaponry. They were armed with javelins, called pila, which they would hurl at enemies and then engage with the gladius, or short sword. The second line was made of principes, heavy infantry who had the money to buy good armor and had seen battle before. They also used the pila and gladius. Finally, the third line was triarii, spearmen who could easily deal with any cavalry and were useful against infantry as well. They did not use pila, but did have swords for close combat. Skirmishers, called velites, and archers, called sagitarii, would screen the main force and harass enemy formations. Cavalry, called equites, often served as the reserve.
In 107 BC Gaius Marius reorganized the Roman Legions. He removed property restrictions, set up a pension system, and generally professionalized the system. While the concept of three main lines of battle were kept, they were made up of Legionary Cohorts, heavy infantry, auxilia spearmen, and light auxilia javelin throwers. These reforms improved the system greatly, and domestic defense was upgraded when Emperor Augustus established the Praetorian Cohort and the Urban Cohort to protect the Emperor and the city, respectively.
Just as importantly, the Romans believed they were destined to be conquerors. They had the will and determination to rule the greatest empire the world had ever seen, and they did. It was when this will faltered that Roman expansion, and later security, ceased.
But historically, soon one of Rome’s greatest leaders, and one of the greatest generals of all time was due to be born. Gaius Julius Caesar, the man who singlehandedly became ruler of the in-name-only Republic. He was born to the Julii in 100 BC and was destined for great things. He was once captured by pirates. When he overheard them discussing his ransom, twenty soldiers’ wages for a year, he scornfully told them to ask for more than twice what they had planned, to reflect his worth. He was arrogant indeed, but with good reason. When he was returned to his family, he hunted the pirates down and killed them, calmly crucifying them all.
He became Pontifex Maximus, chief priest and administrator of the Vestal Virgins in 63 BC. Eventually the Senate gave him Farther Spain as his administration. In 59 BC Caesar became consul. In 58 BC Caesar used his popularity with the mob to gain the provinces of Illyricum and Cisalpine Gaul. When the governor of Transalpine Gaul died the same year, Caesar took that too. He marched to conquer the rest of Gaul, and arrogantly wrote in 57 BC that he had brought peace to it. Soon a revolution led by the Arverni tribe and Vercingetorix specifically erupted and lasted for five years. In 49 BC Caesar was rich and powerful, and decided to take Rome itself. He crossed the Rubicon with his army, and captured all of Italy and cornered rival Pompey’s troops in Spain that same year. Pompey was killed by Egyptians, and when Caesar arrived there in 48 BC he was presented with Pompey’s head. Caesar was not satisfied, however, and abducted Ptolemy XIII and attacked Alexandria. He lost the battle, but in March 47 BC, Caesar won the war. He proceeded to crush Pontus, and then returned to Rome. Victorious generals received triumphs to glorify them. They would ride through the city in a vast parade, while a priest whispered in the general’s ear: “Remember, you are only a man.” Caesar received four triumphs, one for Gaul, one for Egypt, one for Pontus, and one for Africa.
Caesar was made master of the Roman world, which he had expanded greatly. However, Marcus Crassus, perhaps the richest man in history, had been killed in a campaign against Parthia in 53 BC, and Pompey was dead. He was the sole dictator of Rome, and this made him many enemies. Foreseeing this, he staged a ceremony on the Lupercal in Rome, where Marcus Antonius, also known as Antony, offered him a king’s crown thrice. He refused, saying, “Jupiter alone is King of the Romans.” While this was of course a lie-Caesar’s character is one of vast ambition-the ceremony was necessary, but it fooled none of his greatest foes, the Senators, including the legendary Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius. In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Caesar is warned by a prophet to “beware the Ides of March!” He spurned the warning, yet allegedly in early March of 44 BC, birds flew into the curia, or Senate house, and shredded laurel leaves, which were a symbol of Caesar’s. Caesar sacrificed a pig with no heart, a terrible omen. Calpurnia, his wife, dreamed that she held him as he died of stab wounds. On the morning of 44 BC, Calpurnia told Caesar of her dream and pled with him not to go to the Senate that day. The plotters, wondering where he was, sent Decimus Brutus to coax Caesar to the Senate. He agreed, and at that moment a bust of him smashed in the hallway of his house. A Greek, Artemidorus, tried to warn Caesar, but the dictator paid no attention and Caesar was stabbed to death at the foot of a statue of Pompey, his old enemy.
Civil war followed. Octavian, Caesar’s nephew, worked with Marcus Antonius to hunt down Brutus and bring him to justice. After he died, they turned on each other, thus continuing the civil war. Octavian’s legions defeated Antonius’s at every turn, and in desperation Antony fled to Egypt. At the battle of Actium, the Egyptian and Roman navies clashed. When Rome won, both Antonius and his famed lover, Cleopatra, committed suicide.
Octavian was now the ruler of Rome. It is said of him that he found Rome a city of bricks and turned it to marble, a testament to his public works projects. Under him, Rome entered a golden age. However, the Senate still stubbornly insisted on pretending it had some power, and did not grant Octavian dictatorial status, at least not in name. But when the Senate told him that he had too much power, he pretended to be concerned and announced he would resign. Frightened that a worse leader or a more ambitious one would seize the throne, the Senate conferred on him titles like “the divine Augustus”, and he became emperor of the newly formed Roman Empire.
The Empire continued to expand, but over time the Romans began to hit obstacles. In 9 AD, a man named Quintus Varus was leading an army through the now-infamous Teutoberg Forest. Betrayed by a chief he was using as a guide, the Roman forces were ambushed and slaughtered. Many legionary standards were captured by the Germans, and just as many generals committed suicide. Varus escaped to Rome, where the furious Emperor Augustus said his now-famous words, “Varus, give me back my legions.” This marked forever that not only were the Romans beatable, they could be utterly annihilated. The Germanic tribes were never conquered by Rome, and in fact were ultimately responsible for the destruction of the city. Meanwhile, both the emperors Trajan and Septimius Severus suffered stinging defeats against the city of Hatra, in the Middle Eastern desert. In 54 BC, the Parthians there had destroyed Marcus Crassus, and then as well as the later Roman invasions, the desert did much of the fighting for them. Picture the hopeless situation of the legions; marching for days across hundreds of miles of desert, in full armor, with little or no water, towing huge siege engines and with a long train of impedimenta, or baggage. They arrived at Hatra to find that the wells around the city had been drained into the city’s reservoirs. Suffering of incredible thirst, they might attack only to be repulsed by bizarre Eastern weapons that the Romans could not face, such as lumps of pitch that burned and could not be put out, or the devastating tactic called the Parthian shot. Hordes of horse archers might ride out, launching a devastating volley of arrows. As the Romans pursued them, they would turn in their saddles and fire another shot, called the Parthian shot.
It must be said that this is a perfect example of how useless conventional warfare is against a foe like the Easterners, and how difficult it is to fight when out of one’s element. The Romans were used to Mediterranean climate, having enough water, and perhaps most importantly, fighting an enemy hand-to-hand, as an army. They were not prepared to face swarms of nimble cavalry. Similarly, the British forces in America were well-disciplined and professional, and devastating in their mode of combat, so the minutemen vanished into the forests and used guerilla warfare to deadly effect. Napoleon’s forces in Spain in the Peninsular War were met by Spanish guerrillas, which was the origin of the term. These armies were all very disciplined, and would follow their commander anywhere, even into a fierce artillery barrage, and all fought in a European style. Considering the effectiveness of the Roman fighting style, the genius of Napoleon, and the precision of the British musketeers, they were very difficult to fight and vanquish in their own environment. Now imagine Napoleon in Russia, dying of the Russian winter, losing men to raids by Russian Cossacks. Indeed, Russia is extremely difficult for any enemy to invade, much less conquer, because of its willingness to deprive itself to destroy one’s enemy, the vast size of the country, and what the tsar called “General Winter.” Even modern armies are no match for the omnipotent winter. The point is that even the Roman armies, invincible in the fair climate of Europe, where enemies are tangible and water can easily be found, are novices when it comes to fighting in the desert. The Parthians, on the other hand, had lived there for centuries, and knew exactly how to fight there. Imagine the laughter on the walls of Hatra when they saw these Roman idiots, in metal armor, carrying these silly wooden towers and dragging enough baggage to build a city, never mind conquer one. Two lessons must be learned from these three examples: Guerrillas cannot be fought by conventional means. One must use betrayal, deception, and extermination to even mount a defense and Even the most powerful army is useless when out of its element.
The Romans vanquished, the Parthians returned to their lifestyle, but it must be said that the any professional army, especially the Roman army, tends to excel at long-term campaigns where less professional armies do not. Weakened by the wars, the Parthians could not withstand sustained pressure, especially given their lack of a strong central government. Eventually they were overthrown and conquered by the Persians.
This put an end to the expansion of the Roman Empire, and now problems began to reveal themselves. Now that the Romans were no longer fighting to be the best, they were content to idle and watch provinces stew with resentment. Laziness and apathy took their toll, and the mighty legions began increasingly to be replaced by mercenaries. In an effort to balance the decay of Western Europe, Emperor Diocletian split the empire into two halves, eat and west. Constantine the Great built the Eastern capital at Constantinople, and moved many treasures from Rome there. A good thing, because in 401 the Visigoth king Alaric betrayed Rome and invaded Italy, sacking the Eternal City in 410, which had been unconquered for 800 years. Finally, in 476, Romulus Augustulus was overthrown, last Emperor of the world’s greatest power, the Roman Empire.
The Roman Empire fell because they relaxed. That is the bane of any power. You must never take it for granted that you should rule the world. Vigilance is the price of freedom. One also must realize that eventually one must pull back. Alexander went too far. Caesar went too far. Napoleon went too far. Hitler went too far. The Romans did a remarkably good job of preservation of their territory, mainly because there were few people in their history who were likely to constantly attack and conquer other areas. On the other hand, they were killed by apathy. It was too successful, not to mention that their leadership, except for some strong emperors, got mostly worse after the death of Augustus. Some of this was due to the machinations of the Praetorian Guard; they were known to assassinate emperors. After the death of Commodus, they even held a formal auction for the post of emperor and suitably intimidated the winner to keep him under their control. Eventually Constantine disbanded them, recognizing the danger they posed.
The next history for study is that of Nazi Germany. After World War One, the German people were shattered. The Allies had forced them to pay $33 billion in reparations, which, after the devastation wreaked on Germany, the government, known as the Weimar Republic, could no longer pay. Still, the Allies exacted their toll. Further, the millions of German soldiers that had been serving on the front returned, hungry and unemployed, to find work, and they looked in vain. The Germans had marginally recovered when the Great Depression hit. Inflation skyrocketed, until a whole basket of Deutschemarks were needed to buy a loaf of bread. The Allies, desperate for money, continued to demand their reparation costs, which now was certainly beyond the ability of Germany to pay. One-fourth of the German people was unemployed.
Adolf Hitler had served in World War One, and like the entire German people, he was ashamed and enraged that they had been so humiliated. He joined the Nazis, which at the time was little more than a street gang, and using his charisma and powerful speeches, propelled the Nazi Party into the spotlight. Hitler was eventually sent to jail after being caught trying to overthrow the Weimar Republic. In jail, he wrote Mein Kampf, or “My Struggle”. It can also be translated as “My Dream” or any number of other things. It blasted Jews and Communists, blaming them for Germany’s spectacular defeat, and when Hitler was released, he continued his work in the Nazi Party. One night, the Reichstag, or Parliament building, burned down (suspiciously), and a man identified as a Communist was arrested. Hitler used this to give himself dictatorial powers. He appealed greatly to the German people, to their wounded pride, and he promised that Germany would rise from the ashes, the phoenix from the flames. The problem was, it did. The German grudge helped greatly, but Hitler made unemployment rates plummet. The German economy got back on its feet, and before long it rivaled the greatest powers in the world.
Germany wanted much of its old territory back. He annexed Austria, militarized the Rhineland, and demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Hitler, of course, was not satisfied, and in September 1939, Germans invaded Poland. The Polish were hopelessly outmatched, and were easily conquered. Stalin’s Russians also invaded in the east. The Nazis and Soviets had made a pact called the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and basically maintained a cautious neutrality between the two enemies, and also divided Poland between the two. Hitler’s troops then stormed over the Low Countries, evading the bulk of France’s defenses at the Maginot Line, and conquered France. He made the French sign their terms of surrender in the same railcar that the Allies had made the Germans sign their surrender in 22 years ago. That same year, Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to raid southern Britain, to soften the British up for an invasion. However, the Luftwaffe’s failure to destroy key sites, such as radar stations and important airfields, allowed the British to maintain a 2:1 kill ratio by the end of the ‘Battle of Britain’. With the RAF still operating, Hitler called off his plans for invasion. Here, in my opinion, is where Hitler made perhaps his greatest mistake. He began to amass troops in Eastern Europe for an invasion of the Soviet Union. As I will explain later, that invasion was an utter catastrophe. In my opinion, Hitler should have kept his troops in Western Europe. I will give my reasoning later.
In 1941 the war for Northern Africa took on importance. General Erwin Rommel, the ‘Desert Fox’, led a campaign to capture Egypt. When it stalled because of a lack of men and supplies, the Allies took the initiative. Gradually pushing the Germans back, they eventually recaptured North Africa and invaded Sicily. The German forces were now in trouble. The poorly fortified Italian peninsula was under threat, with the Afrika Korps in ruins and dozens of divisions fighting for their lives in Soviet Russia. Fortress Europe was in danger of being breached, as indeed it was to be. The Allies invaded southern Italy, and fought their way up the peninsula to the Po Valley and captured Rome. Benito Mussolini, the dictator of Italy, was killed later by German troops. However, halfway up the peninsula, the advance began to slow as supplies were moved to Britain to assemble for the Normandy landing.
The success of Allied intelligence agents was responsible for many of the elements of the success of D-Day. To start with, the Germans thought it was somewhere else entirely, distracted by an Allied double agent. Also, the American troops in the assault would have found it much harder to be transported to Britain had the British cipher-cracking experts at Bletchley Park, including the brilliant Alan Turing, cracked the Kreigsmarine, or Navy, Enigma machine, in addition to the German Army Enigma. The Enigma was designed in the 1920's, and used rotating wheels to encode a message nearly impossible to crack at the time, because of the staggering number of possibilities. The Germans knew this and trusted in its superiority to any codebreaker. This allowed the British to intercept messages with impunity, since the Germans could not believe the Allies had cracked the ‘unbreakable’ Enigma. So on June 6th, 1944, the Allies invaded Normandy, encountering fierce resistance from the Germans. One must imagine the chaos: swarms of Allied troopers wading ashore to be fired on by well-entrenched German machine guns, with huge battleships providing cover fire for the landing. The Germans lost that key battle, and then France was effectively undefended. The Allies freed most of France and pressed on to Germany. 25 divisions of the German army counterattacked in a desperate attempt to halt the advance in the Battle of the Bulge, but they failed. From then on Germany was completely doomed.
Let us go to Russia. In Eastern Europe, Germany massed troops for an invasion which occurred in 1941. Three lines of main assault were distinguishable on a map: one heading for Ukraine and the Caucasian nations, one marching on Leningrad, and a third attacking Moscow. The Red Army initially crumbled, taken by surprise, and after Stalin’s purge, without able commanders. However, Stalin ordered his people to deny the Germans all supplies in a ‘scorched earth’ tactic, meaning the Germans were starving, cold, and tired when they settled into two sieges: one at Stalingrad and one at Leningrad. At Leningrad hundreds of thousands of bombs were dropped in a futile attempt to enter and conquer the city. This was the bloodiest siege in history, and one of the bloodiest battles. But in the south, at Stalingrad, two massive armies, one Soviet, one German, slugged it out over the city of Stalingrad. Stalin was unwilling to let the city fall, not least because it bore his name, and Hitler was unwilling to let the Russians turn back his hugely successful invasion, which had advanced to the Urals. For months the armies fought, poorly supplied. The Russians were as brutal to their troops as they were to the Germans, and the entire city was bombed by German planes. Eventually, however, the Russians managed to surround the Germans and force them to surrender. 200,000 Axis troops were lost with that one action. Over a million casualties were inflicted, the most in history, above the Siege of Leningrad and the Battle of the Somme. The Russians, with renewed morale, broke the siege of Leningrad and the Germans fought the Russians in a last attempt to keep their advance, at the Battle of Kursk, the biggest tank battle in history. The attempt failed, and along with it the German invasion. This spelled disaster for Germany.
The invasion of Russia, codenamed OPERATION: BARBAROSSA was a disaster. Millions of German troops were marched into the freezing cold of Russia. Did Hitler seriously think that Stalin would submit by the onset of winter? Winter in Russia is a deadly weapon, and a tactic that no invader can ignore, especially given the scorched earth tactic, which while it caused the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens, took a horrible toll on the Germans. Secondly, supposing the Germans did conquer Russia, with what troops would they hold such vast areas? The need for lebensraum aside, there were not enough troops to hold Europe and such a huge portion of Asia. Another facet of the disaster, and one that does not apply exclusively to the Soviet invasion, is that Germany was always on the offensive. Many conquerors have learned that one cannot simply attack over and over again, there must be time to consolidate one’s holdings. Perhaps if the Nazis had done this, they would have been able to overcome the stubborn Soviet resistance. Perhaps I speak with the perfect vision of hindsight, but the results speak for themselves: the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany began then, in 1944, when German troops stepped over the border in Poland.
Tens of thousands of men had been lost, men which Germany could not replace. Once again, the best young men of Germany, an entire generation, had been destroyed. You cannot estimate the cost of losing a generation. The Germans fell back to Germany, with the Russians hounding them through Eastern Europe, the Allies marching up Italy and into mainland Europe, and with (although Hitler didn’t know it) D-Day, Operation Overlord, in the works, ready to enter France. Germany was fighting a war on two fronts, the curse of German geography. It was about to fight on three.
Normandy was the death knell. If any skeptics had believed the Germans could hold off the Russians and the Allies, they had to capitulate with the opening of yet another front. The German Army simply could not do it, and as has been said earlier, the Allies invaded Germany in early 1945. After meeting Soviet troops at the Elbe River, the Soviets captured the city with the Allies days away, famously planting the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag. Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, and on May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered.
But the Americans at least had been fighting another war all this time. Tensions with the Empire of Japan had been slowly rising, and the Japanese were eager to expand their empire by any means necessary. There were plans among the Japanese high command to attack the United States, and indeed that happened. On December 7, 1941, “a day which will live in infamy”, Japanese carrier-based Zero fighters crippled the US Navy with a devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. A state of war had not been declared at the time, and so the attack was considered dishonorably sudden and ruthless.
The Admiral in charge of the Japanese fleet was compulsively punctual, and he had instructed the Japanese ambassador to deliver the declaration of war at about the same time that the first bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Technically this would be acceptable, but a delay forced the ambassador to hand it in after the US Navy had already been attacked.
However, the Japanese vastly underestimated the productive capacity of the United States and the resolve of its military. They had foolishly provoked a larger nation with a better industrial capacity, and they paid the price later. Although Japanese forces took over Wake Island, the Philippines, and other US-held territories in the Pacific in early 1942, the US Navy confronted them at the Battle of the Coral Sea. For the first time the Japanese assault had been held back Later the island of Guadalcanal was liberated by US Marines, a foothold for further operations in the Pacific. The Japanese Fleet attacked the US again at Midway Island, which was a disastrous mistake. The US had cracked the Japanese Purple cipher, and knew as soon as the Japanese themselves did where they would strike. Fighting for three days, the Navy sank four Japanese carriers while losing one of its own. This immediately put the Japanese back on the defensive. The US military, however, now had to face the prospect of capturing myriads of islands defended by relentless Japanese soldiers who would sooner die than surrender. To reduce US losses, the Marines invaded only the islands that were important to the war effort and brought the military closer to Japan. This strategy, however, was messy; one Japanese warlord from the war refused to surrender for decades after Japan did. Despite this, it worked, saving the US thousands of lives by simply avoiding islands that were not strictly necessary to the war effort.
In 1944 the US Navy planned to retake the Philippines. At the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, the Philippines were won back and much of Japan’s remaining hope was burned away. In 1945 the Japanese introduced kamikaze, or ‘divine wind’ tactics: the strategy of crashing a bomb-laden plane into a warship. Many ships were sunk or damaged by this tactic but it came too late to influence the outcome of the war. The Navy and Marines continued to advance, at high cost, and soon they were within bombing reach of Japan. On one bombing raid Tokyo was firebombed, killing more people than the atomic bomb and destroying over a quarter of the city. The US began to discuss the possibility of invading Japan.
It was obvious from experience that the Japanese would not surrender. Civilians were made to take self-defense courses, and projected casualties were in excess of a million American troops. Luckily, there was an alternative: the Manhattan Project. This top-secret research toward the development of the nuclear bomb was to be the device that would end the great war. When it was tested in New Mexico, it exceeded all expectations, vaporizing the metal tower on which it stood, and turning the sand for hundreds of yards into glass. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head physicist, misquoted the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu holy text. He said, “I am become death, the destroyer of all things.” Although that is not the actual text of the Bhagavad Gita, it is perhaps even more morbid, and true. The government delivered an ultimatum to the Japanese promising terrible destruction if they did not receive an official surrender. They did not, and the military dropped the first atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, after which Japan finally surrendered.
Nazi Germany made a few mistakes: they were always on the offensive, they spent their best troops, they invaded Soviet Russian without adequate preparation, and they failed to eradicate their most important targets. It is that simple. However, such mistakes were possibly if not probably attributable to Hitler, and if, for example, Erwin Rommel had controlled military matters then the war might have gone quite differently.
The United States’ history truly begins with the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775. At Lexington and Concord, militiamen took up arms to halt the British. Word of the success at Concord spread and hope grew that Britain could be defeated. The Continental Army was formed, with General George Washington at its head. In 1776, the rebelling states declared independence from Great Britain. The date of the publication of the Declaration of Independence was July 4, now an American national holiday. This document formed the United States of America. With the aid of France, solicited by Benjamin Franklin, the United States militia trapped the British at Yorktown and the main part of the British army surrendered. The United States had challenged the most powerful empire of the age and won, and was now a fledgling state. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 gave America all the land up to the Mississippi River.
In 1787, American leaders and diplomats from the loosely allied states joined to write the Constitution of the United States. It established the governmental structure of the country, and combined the states that signed it into one nation. From the initial signing state, Delaware, to the state that formed a majority, New Hampshire, and later all thirteen colonies, a new nation had been formed.
To raise funds and pay off the huge debts the war had incurred, the government taxed many things, including whiskey. A collection of farmers made a motley rebellion against the new nation in light of this development, but were put down by a militia. This proved the government could handle crises.
In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte sold the vast Louisiana Territory to the United States, reasoning that he didn’t need it and that he ended up getting $15 million for the whole thing, a great deal for the United States. Thomas Jefferson, the president at the time, admitted that he had stretched the Constitution “till it cracked.”
A fiery group in the US government called the War Hawks began to stir up trouble in the nation at around 1809. British ships were impressing US sailors and interfering with much-needed US trade. In 1812, the War of 1812 broke out with Britain. The early war gave little advantage to either side, but in 1814 the British captured Washington, DC, the nation’s capital, and burned government buildings like the Capitol. However, this galvanized large numbers of volunteers to join the army, and the Treaty of Ghent marked British surrender, and it was signed December of 1814.
The 1800's rolled on, as people began to move westward towards the Pacific Ocean. Not all of them settled in the coast, but many left the East Coast to seek a better life, not unlike the movement that had started the colonization of America in the first place. However, by far the most important issue in the 1800's was the issue of slavery. Abolitionists protested slavery, calling it barbaric and saying it violated each person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Southern slaveowners, who depended on slaves to produce the crops their economy relied on, replied that slaves were property, not people, and rights did not apply to them.
Henry Clay, the “Great Compromiser” made two compromises in 1820 and 1850 that merely postponed the inevitable clash. In fact, these two may have helped bring about the War Between the States, or Civil War, by their flawed nature. It was not possible in this case to please both sides.
In 1861, Southern troops fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. The North had much more industrial, military, and economic strength, but the troops of the Confederate States of America, as the 11 rebellious states had come to be called, fought valiantly to keep their territory intact. The North called for the capture of Richmond, the Southern capital, the blockade of Southern states to starve them into submission, and the capture of the Mississippi River. The South planned to hold their own territory and capture Washington, DC.
It is interesting to note that most American history texts refer to this conflict as the Civil War. This is not factually correct. A civil war is a rebellion. The Confederate States of America formally declared their independence from the Union and thus were another nation, not a faction of the United States, just as that same Union declared independence from Britain. The difference is that the British, who viewed it as a rebellion, lost and the Americans, calling their cause a fight for their nation, won. The South lost and the North won, so it is referred to by the Northern view of the Civil War.
I do not believe in slavery. It is morally wrong. But the South was fighting the more just cause. Consider that the Southern economy relied on slavery. If that source of labor had been removed, chaos would have ensued, and not just in the South. Also, Northerners said that the states were not allowed to leave the Union. A democratic government, whose claim to authority is that the states and people accept that authority, and the members are forbidden to resign when the states and the people wish it? Stupid. Then again, the North could hardly let the South leave. Anyway, this is a perfect example of “the winners write the history books”.
The South held its own in the early war. But when General Robert E. Lee, a brilliant man, invaded Northern territory, both times he was beaten back. At the second occasion, the Battle of Gettysburg, the offensive capability of the South was ruined and on the same day that the South lost that key battle, the major fort and port of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi River, fell. In 1864, the Union General, Grant, led his men in a bloody, wasteful, and crude campaign to conquer the South. Grant won by sheer weight of numbers, and thousands of troops died for it. Lee was surrounded. Georgia had been devastated by General Sherman, who had razed Atlanta and Savannah, and on May 26, 18665, Lee surrendered, ending the Civil War, or the War Between the States.
The Reconstruction followed, during which the Southern economy got back on its feet while occupied by Union troops. Between 1866 and 1870, all the Confederate states were readmitted to the Union. However, the white-supremacist culture did not die there, and continued for decades.
In the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of immigrants swelled the workforce, and industry flourished. However, progressive human-rights workers protested the tiny wages and inadequate housing the immigrants were given. Later, laws preventing monopolies and trusts were passed. America’s rich natural resources helped fuel the Revolution.
Time passed, and Europe grew uneasy with the MAIN acronym: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. These combined into a potent factor for war, and indeed, in 1914, with the almost-failed assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, war did break out. However, defensive technology was more advanced than offensive technology, and a stalemate was reached for years. Battles like the Somme and Ypres took huge casualties, because the only way to break the trenches, defended with machine guns, was to swarm the enemy in such numbers that even the numerous machine guns could not slaughter them all. It was a brutal, inhumane war, in which poison gas and tanks were both used for the first time.
In 1915, German submarines sank the ship Lusitania without warning, killing 128 Americans. Over this and other German abuses, Americans raised great protests. In 1917, America declared war on Germany. However, in 1917 Russia withdrew from the war because of the success of the Communist Revolution there. The troops fighting on the Eastern front hurried to the Western Front, where Germany made a last effort to break the Allied lines. It almost succeeded. Germany got within 50 miles of Paris, but were turned back. This was the end. Germans were starving and rebellious, and in 1918, Germany surrendered and the German Kaiser fled to the Netherlands.
The 20's were a time of extravagance and prosperity in America. Traditions were challenged, and slogans like “Everyone Ought To Be Rich” were everywhere. The stock market prices were continually dropping. However, on Black Thursday in October, prices dipped sharply. After a brief recovery, they plummeted. On October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday, $9 billion dollars were lost as prices dropped to rock-bottom levels.
For years most of America was poor, and huge numbers of unemployed people roamed the streets. People wondered if laissez-faire capitalism, the great experiment, had failed. But in 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president. Using his presidential powers to the utmost and spending huge amounts, he managed to initiate programs that eventually got the United States back on its feet. But the true recovery happened in World War II, where millions joined factories and shipyards to win the war of production.
After World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union were the only remaining superpower nations. America had an advantage: the nuclear bomb. However, within a few years, Soviets stole a prototype of one of the two bombs dropped on Japan and produced bombs of their own. A nuclear showdown had begun. The only way to stop a nuclear war was to make sure there was no need for it and that you had more warheads than the other.
America thrived after the war. The industrial boom was working wonders for the economy, and our military was the peacekeeper of the world, occupying much of Germany, a sector of Berlin, and Japan. This role was to continue for decades and indeed goes on today. Everything became our business. In 1953, Josef Stalin died, the man who had more blood on his hands than perhaps anyone in history. He was succeeded by Nikita Kruschev, a man who believed utterly that communism would eventually crush capitalism forever.
In 1950 the US got involved in the Korean War. Communist North Koreans invaded the democratic South. Fearing the loss of an ally and the spread of communism, the US pushed the North Koreans back until China, fearing US troops so near it, also got involved, on the side of the North Koreans. A truce was reached and the DMZ of Korea is one of the most dangerous places on earth, with mines as common as blades of grass and thousands of soldiers on both sides in a decades-long stare-down.
Another example of US involvement is the Vietnam War. In the 1960's military advisors were sent to the nation of South Vietnam, but soon it threatened to collapse under pressure from North Vietnamese Communists. To stop the spread of communism, hundreds of thousands of American troops were sent to Vietnam. The place was a death trap, and one where Americans learned the same painful lesson the Romans did at Hatra, which I mentioned earlier: nobody can fight out of their element. The guerrilla Vietcong slaughtered American troops. Desperately, Americans resorted to chemicals like napalm to destroy the foliage in which Vietcong hid. The war was incredibly unpopular, and eventually US troops withdrew, in 1973, beaten and ashamed. South Vietnam fell in 1975.
America was still the superpower, but the Cold War was drawing on and Americans were rocked by doubt. They had just lost a war decisively for the first time and had no idea how to handle it. Also, President Nixon was involved in the Watergate scandal, where criminals working for him broke into the Democratic Party headquarters and tapped their phones. This made many people lose faith in the government.
Ronald Reagan helped to fix this. He was elected in 1981, and he was a man who believed firmly in black-and-white ideas of good and evil. To him, the Soviet Union was an evil empire and the United States the champion of all that was right. He made stirring patriotic speeches about this, and united Americans against the USSR.
What few realized at the time was that the Soviet Union was tottering, drained, as America would be, by the long arms race to build more and more nuclear weapons, and it was failing. Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Politburo from 1985 to 1991, knew this and was willing to end the long Cold War. At Geneva, Switzerland and Reykjavik, Iceland, the two met to make peace. They formed a personal friendship over the years, and friendly relations continued into the presidency of George Bush. During the Gulf War, Soviet diplomats did their best to maintain peace and hold back outrage at Iraqi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia, Israel, and others.
In 1991 high-ranking Soviet officials staged a coup which failed, but Boris Yeltsin got the political credit for stopping it. On December 21, 1991, the Commonwealth of Independent States was formed out of the USSR, and on Christmas Day, Gorbachev resigned. The United States was now the only nuclear superpower.
In this role it was easy to assume the role of peacekeeper, the champion of democracy and freedom around the world. But killing the USSR released many small but potentially threatening dangers. For example, the US arming of the mujaheddin in Afghanistan led to the Taliban’s formation and the prominence of Osama bin Laden in that region. Terrorism in general was the biggest security concern for the US in the 1990's, and continues to be a major issue today.
The problem with US foreign policy is that no one nation has the resources or the right to be the policeman of the world, toppling corrupt regimes and installing democracy. I admit the US invasion of Iraq had at least one beneficial point in that it toppled Saddam Hussein. I remember the day that the news reported his capture by US troops. But it has bogged US forces down fighting a thousand brush fires that threaten the entire country. It will be very difficult to install a working democracy in that region. Besides, democracy is not the only government that works, and is not always the best for the people.
The Greek city-state of Athens, during the Classical Period, was greater than any other, except perhaps Sparta, and that only in a military sense. Its colonies were legion. But these colonies came to resent the Athenian democracy, because they still had no real control over their affairs and, more importantly, it wasn’t theirs. People might even choose their own dictatorship over a foreign democracy. Ahem. Pay attention, US government.
But this should not be a rant about US foreign policy. As we all know, on 9/11/01, Osama bin Laden’s followers crashed three planes into two different targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It stirred up public outrage, fear, and hatred. A flood of racism toward people who appeared Arabic was experienced by many, and the US became the scourge of terrorism, and it remains in that mode today.
The American government can be hypocritical; they are politicians, and thus they manipulate and use propaganda to an extent, but this is only to be expected. Churchill once said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” This is largely true. No government is perfect, but the United States democracy is exquisite and I don’t know of any better. Yes, perhaps in Europe, but I am still happy with America. One must simply learn the lesson of Athens, and know that it isn’t necessary to make the world full of democracy by force.