A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the similarities between the Late Roman Empire and the United States of America, and how all signs point to the US going through a steady decline mirroring that of the Rome. The article focused heavily on the myriad of problems that have afflicted both nations, but offered no real solutions beyond a vague mention of the democratic nature of the United States. This will likely be the first of several articles discussing potential solutions to the downward trend in general and to its component problems in detail.
To start with, let’s talk about culture.
If you ask any person on the street what caused the Roman Empire to collapse, a good number of them are likely to point the finger at barbarian invasion. Savages from beyond the borders of civilization swept in and pillaged Rome! The Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Lombards, Huns…brutish peoples driven by greed and bloodlust. These mass migrations brought the Roman Empire to its knees. In the previous article I enumerated this mass influx as one of the markers of decline, but not for the reasons listed above.
The above description overshoots the mark by a good deal. The “barbarian” tribes that “invaded” the Empire in its waning years were far from the bloodthirsty savages that historians once painted them as. Their migrations across Roman borders were caused by changes beyond anyone’s control, specifically in the Earth’s climate. Just as Rome began to starve as the North African breadbasket dried up, the peoples north of the border, in what the Romans called Germania, were faced with a sudden increase in the severity of winter. Frost took their crops and starvation took their families. In the midst of this chaos, they were faced with another threat; nomadic tribes from Central Asia began radiating outwards in search of better grazing grounds, displacing the people in their way. These new refugees then did the same, pushing out other groups in a domino effect of migrations. The tribes that crossed the Roman borders were not warriors or invaders, they were starving farmers with nowhere left to turn.
To them, the guarded frontiers of the Empire seemed to be the high walls of paradise.
So why, then, did I list these migrations as a contributing factor to the Roman decline? These frightened refugees certainly didn’t dismantle the Empire themselves, did they? No, they didn’t. The Romans tore their own Empire apart in their attempts to deal with the new arrivals. To understand this, you have to understand what it meant to be “Roman”.
From the very earliest days of the Republic, back when the Italian peninsula had been fragmented between many different groups, Roman expansion was bolstered by an innate belief that to be Roman was to be superior to others. This nigh-xenophobic attitude spurred the subjugation of so-called “barbarians”, and fueled the drive of conquest that is needed to create an empire. And here is where we come to the point of this article. One of the primary contributing factors to the Roman collapse was mass migration, not because the new arrivals were invaders, but because the Empire refused to absorb them into the fold. Here is where we can see excellent parallels with the modern world. Like several modern European states, the Roman Empire practically tore itself to pieces trying to keep the migrating tribes out, first stretching its already-overextended military past the breaking point, then welcoming the migrants under terrible living conditions, then reneging on prior deals and trying to wipe out the barbarians again. This repeated seesaw of poor decisions only served to increase the friction between the barbarians and their new neighbors, and, eventually, friction turned to violence.
“But Sam,” I can imagine you saying, “Didn’t you say this article was going to offer solutions?” Fear not, dear reader, I’m getting there. The solution to this problem already exists, and it is one of the several factors that say to me that the United States is better equipped to reverse the decline than Rome ever was. The US has a tradition of multiculturalism. Immigration and assimilation are central to our history, and one of our most treasured ideals is that of universal acceptance. America is a nation defined by diversity. It has been our greatest strength. From the population growth immigration provided in the 1800s to the great figures that fled Europe in the 1930s and 1940s to the Space Race itself, our multicultural existence has shown itself to be the steel backbone of the nation.
This is in direct contrast to the Roman Empire’s policy of subjugating inferior races. The closest the Empire ever came to multiculturalism was in the use of auxiliary regiments in the legions, bands of non-Roman soldiers with specialties in different areas that complemented the general power of the legion, as well as providing cheap, unimportant bodies to throw at the enemy.
Simply by our nature as a multicultural society, the United States is better prepared to deal with the ongoing refugee crisis than almost any other country in history, with perhaps the exceptions of the Muslim Golden Age Caliphates and the Mongol Empire. This is why the increasingly common isolationist attitude of the American public is so worrying. By turning our backs on the migrant crisis and sealing our borders, we are unintentionally following the footsteps of our fallen predecessor.
The United States is the world’s greatest, and indeed, only, superpower. We are the heirs of Rome in many ways, and if the current decline is allowed to continue unabated the world will almost certainly be plunged into a second Dark Age. But if we take every step we can and use all of our strengths to combat the coming collapse, we will have succeeded where Rome failed.
