The Scourge of Militarism

The collapse of the Roman republic in 27 BC has significance today for the United States, which took many of its key political principles from its ancient predecessor. Separation of powers, checks and balances, government in accordance with constitutional law, a toleration of slavery, fixed terms in office, all these ideas were influenced by Roman precedents. John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams often read the great Roman political philosopher Cicero and spoke of him as an inspiration to them. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, authors of the Federalist Papers, writing in favor of ratification of the Constitution signed their articles with the name Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul of the Roman republic.

The Roman republic, however, failed to adjust to the unintended consequences of its imperialism, leading to a drastic alteration in its form of government. The militarism that inescapably accompanied Rome's imperial projects slowly undermined its constitution as well as the very considerable political and human rights its citizens enjoyed. The American republic, of course, has not yet collapsed; it is just under considerable strain as the imperial presidency -- and its supporting military legions -- undermine Congress and the courts. However, the Roman outcome -- turning over power to an autocracy backed by military force and welcomed by ordinary citizens because it seemed to bring stability -- suggests what might happen in the years after Bush and his neoconservatives are thrown out of office.

Obviously, there is nothing deterministic about this progression, and many prominent Romans, notably Brutus and Cicero, paid with their lives trying to head it off. But there is something utterly logical about it. Republican checks and balances are simply incompatible with the maintenance of a large empire and a huge standing army. Democratic nations sometimes acquire empires, which they are reluctant to give up because they are a source of wealth and national pride, but as a result their domestic liberties are thereby put at risk.

These not-particularly-original comparisons are inspired by the current situation of the United States, with its empire of well over 725 military bases located in other people's countries; its huge and expensive military establishment demanding ever more pay and ever larger appropriations from a supine and manipulated legislature; unsolved anthrax attacks on senators and newsmen (much like Rome's perennial assassinations); Congress's gutting of the Bill of Rights through the panicky passage of the Patriot Act -- by votes of 76-1 in the Senate and 337 to 79 in the House; and numerous signs that the public is indifferent to what it is about to lose. Many current aspects of our American government suggest a Romanesque fatigue with republican proprieties. After Congress voted in October 2002 to give the president unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he -- and he alone -- deemed it "appropriate," it would be hard to argue that the constitution of 1787 is still the supreme law of the land.

Checks and Balances

My thinking about the last days of republics was partly stimulated this past summer by a new book and an old play. The book is Anthony Everitt's magnificent account of the man who had his head and both hands chopped off for opposing military dictatorship -- "Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician" (Random House, 2001). The play was a modern-dress production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar , seen at San Diego's Old Globe theater. The curtain opened on a huge backdrop of Julius Caesar looking remarkably like any seedy politician with the word "tyrant" scrawled graffiti-style beneath his face in red paint. At play's end, after Octavian's hypocritical comments on the death of Brutus, who was one of the republic's most stalwart supporters ("According to his virtue let us use him. . . ."), the picture of Caesar dropped away, replaced by one of Octavian -- soon to become the self-proclaimed god Augustus Caesar -- in full military uniform and bearing a marked resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger. In fact, Octavian's military rule did not actually follow at once after the suicides of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 BC, and Shakespeare does not say it did. But that is what the play -- and the history -- are all about: Killing Julius Caesar on the Ides of March, 44 BC only prepared the ground for a more ruthless and determined successor.