The story of the Roman Empire’s fall and its relationship with Germanic tribes, the Goths, is unique to its time. However, there is interesting knowledge from its history that can be gained and applied to our current time in places like the Middle East. While obviously not completely similar, history provides us with valuable lessons to be learned from our past to apply in the present day.
The Goths, consisting of two tribes, the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, frequently tried penetrating into the edges of the Roman empire to take advantage of its better quality of life. According to history.com, as years passed, the Huns, nomadic warriors, eventually showed up from Central Asia wiping out the Ostrogoths. Panicked, the Visigoths pleaded to seek refuge in Rome. The Romans accepted them, but under harsh conditions— like forcing each family to give up the male children to fight and act as slaves under the Roman Army. The Romans recognized the Goths as fierce warriors, as they fought against them for years. Once the Romans brought them into the empire, they trained and equipped their once enemy to fight for the Romans against the impending Hun forces. The Visigoths were a major force in the Roman army that built and spread much of the empire's influence throughout Europe, in aspects that exist today in the forms of architecture.
Resentment towards the Romans from the Visigoths after years of harsh treatment— they were treated like dirt in Roman society— led the Visigoths to revolt against the empire. The highly trained Roman forces tried suppressing the Visigoth revolt, outnumbering them by close to 10,000. The Visigoths surprisingly won and destroyed Roman forces killing the emperor in the process, dwindling the Roman army to an ineffective state. This was the end of the Roman empire in Rome, as a Roman in Rome never governed the empire after this battle. The Roman Empire lived on for some time, however in Eastern Europe and prospered under the Visigoths with its capital in Constantinople in modern day Turkey.
The US in some ways isn't so different from Rome, in that the world’s most powerful Army follows orders to spread American ideals - broadly speaking- around the globe, under a corrupt political class similar to that in Rome. Shown in cases like overthrowing Iranian democracy and installing a Shah in 1953 and the millions killed in the CIA-assisted Indonesian army coup in 1965, according to A Century of US Military Interventions by Dr. Zoltan Grossman. We have trained and given weapons to many of our current enemies just as the Romans trained the Goths. Much of our forces overseas are now being outsourced to private military companies, which are forces with little transparency, blurred foreign policy objectives, and soldiers rationally fighting for the highest paycheck.
Author of Corporate Warriors, P.W. Singer, said in an interview with Vice News, “the assumption of modern day war is a man in uniform apart of a national military— this is not holding true in this century.” Private Military Companies (PMC’S) take on roles from back-end logistics to tactical battlefield roles. PMC fighters are generally ex-military personnel. Using PMC’s decreases political harm to politicians as they have low transparency and do not need to use government resources in comparison to using to the Marines or Army. Private forces have been used for counter piracy off Somalia, Chinese security in Africa and Russia used PMC’s in Crimea, said Singer. One British soldier in a Vice documentary says, “why do five years in Iraq in the Army for 120k when I can do two years at a PMC for 400k?”
Robert Pelton, an experienced journalist/author who covered the spread of PMC’s in Iraq and Afghanistan, said in a Vice interview, “contractors plans are not aligned with militaries plans.” Pelton posed the question to the American people, “is the use of force by a non-state actor appropriate?”
“When they [PMC’s] become political instruments to help prop up a government…” begs the question “does this corporation have a foreign policy of its own? Is it aligned with American foreign policy or another country's?” says David Sanger, chief Washington Correspondent at the Times. PMC’s are owned by people around the globe, making things complicated.
It is important that we are diplomatic overseas and our foreign policy objectives are not blurred by PMC’s, as the history has given us the lessons of the Goths and Romans. We must be careful of who is fighting and representing the West overseas and ensure that their actions are transparent, treating civilians with dignity and keeping them out of harm.
In an interview by AJ+ network, Amaryllis Fox, former 10 year counter-terrorism CIA Officer, says experience taught her that hearing the enemy out on policy concerns is crucial. As long as your enemy is a sub-human psychopath that is going to attack no matter what it never ends,” said Fox. She described something an Al-Qaeda member said in a debriefing to her, “all these movies that America makes like "Hunger Games" and "Star Wars" are about a small scrappy gang of rebels who will do anything in their power with the limited resources they have to expel an outside, technologically advanced invader. And what we don't realize is that’s America to the rest of the world.”
While there are never clear cut answers, it's important to use history as a starting point to make decisions. Let's hope our future Secretary of Defense, four-star General James “Mad Dog” Mattis, can guide policy to decrease the serious tensions throughout the world. He is undoubtedly experienced and intelligent.
