America should look to Byzantium, not Rome

[JGolomb]

Very interesting editorial here. I have no real historical understanding of Byzantium, but I thought I'd toss this to the community to see what folks thought of this. The piece feels a little lightweight to me.

 

Take Me Back to Constantinople

Economic crisis, mounting national debt, excessive foreign commitments -- this is no way to run an empire. America needs serious strategic counseling. And fast. It has never been Rome, and to adopt its strategies no -- its ruthless expansion of empire, domination of foreign peoples, and bone-crushing brand of total war -- would only hasten America's decline. Better instead to look to the empire's eastern incarnation: Byzantium, which outlasted its Roman predecessor by eight centuries. It is the lessons of Byzantine grand strategy that America must rediscover today.

 

Fortunately, the Byzantines are far easier to learn from than the Romans, who left virtually no written legacy of their strategy and tactics, just textual fragments and one bookish compilation by Vegetius, who knew little about statecraft or war. The Byzantines, however, wrote it all down -- their techniques of persuasion, intelligence gathering, strategic thinking, tactical doctrines, and operational methods. All of this is laid out clearly in a series of surviving Byzantine military manuals and a major guidebook on statecraft.

 

I've spent the past two decades poring over these texts to compile a study of Byzantine grand strategy. The United States would do well to heed the following seven lessons if it wishes to remain a great power:

 

I. Avoid war by every possible means, in all possible circumstances, but always act as if war might start at any time. Train intensively and be ready for battle at all times -- but do not be eager to fight. The highest purpose of combat readiness is to reduce the probability of having to fight.

 

II. Gather intelligence on the enemy and his mentality, and monitor his actions continuously. Efforts to do so by all possible means might not be very productive, but they are seldom wasted.

 

III. Campaign vigorously, both offensively and defensively, but avoid battles, especially large-scale battles, except in very favorable circumstances. Don't think like the Romans, who viewed persuasion as just an adjunct to force. Instead, employ force in the smallest possible doses to help persuade the persuadable and harm those not yet amenable to persuasion.

 

IV. Replace the battle of attrition and occupation of countries with maneuver warfare -- lightning strikes and offensive raids to disrupt enemies, followed by rapid withdrawals. The object is not to destroy your enemies, because they can become tomorrow's allies. A multiplicity of enemies can be less of a threat than just one, so long as they can be persuaded to attack one another.

 

V. Strive to end wars successfully by recruiting allies to change the balance of power. Diplomacy is even more important during war than peace. Reject, as the Byzantines did, the foolish aphorism that when the guns speak, diplomats fall silent. The most useful allies are those nearest to the enemy, for they know how best to fight his forces.

 

VI. Subversion is the cheapest path to victory. So cheap, in fact, as compared with the costs and risks of battle, that it must always be attempted, even with the most seemingly irreconcilable enemies. Remember: Even religious fanatics can be bribed, as the Byzantines were some of the first to discover, because zealots can be quite creative in inventing religious justifications for betraying their own cause ("since the ultimate victory of Islam is inevitable anyway

Edited November 5, 2009 by JGolomb

[Ursus]

Nice broad theories: no particulars as applied to today's world.

 

Anyway, what Luttwak fails to recognize is that - for better or for worse (and mostly for worse) - American foreign policy has always been guided as much by its ideology as by realpolitik. The above outline, while certainly logical, is far too cold and uninspiring for the masses to support. I can't see Obama trying to sell Byzantine strategy.

Edited November 5, 2009 by Ursus

[JGolomb]

Nice broad theories: no particulars as applied to today's world.

I'm glad you wrote that - exactly what I thought after reading the editorial. Notice that he's got a book out on the Byzantine Grand Strategy, so presumably he knows his stuff, it's just not tied to anything real in the format above.

[sylla]

Offending post deleted

[Kosmo]

Nice. The "byzantines" were sometimes very successful in diplomacy and they fought an enormous number of enemies but I doubt that the US can apply their ways for ideological and practical reasons.

[northofpeers]

One point missing is that Byzantium was, for the most part, in a constant state of decline.

 

I don't think that America would wish to follow a model that failed. I would rather follow the model of expansion and give up any idea that the borders are fixed. The fixing of the borders is usually the point we look at where the decline of Rome began. The borders I talk of could be real, economic or whatever a nation can do to expand its sphere of influence.

 

Byzantium did little to expand its sphere of influence and allowed itself to be influenced by others through policies of appeasement in a vain attempt to preserve itself. In the end the Eastern Empire was in name only and through a trackable line of emperors. The Constatine idea of Byzantium had died many centuries before.