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Is America an Indispensable Nation?
In 1998, Madeleine Albright described the United States as “the indispensable nation.” In 2014, Micah Zenko denounced this claim as a myth. A year later, Xenia Wickett argued that Albright was right. “The fact remains,” she writes,
that, today, the US is indispensable – a necessary, if not sufficient actor in addressing the world’s biggest challenges.
These challenges include terrorism, pandemics (such as Ebola), climate change, natural resource constraints (such as energy, food and water), traditional state-on-state challenges in eastern Europe or the Asia-Pacific, and internal unrest in the Middle East. To this extensive list could be added issues such as economic instability, humanitarian and natural disasters and the use of weapons of mass destruction.
For any of these, it is hard to imagine an effective response that does not involve US businesses, civil society organizations or the government.
I pose this question in part because I was recently asked to write a blog post based on my latest book — The Grand Strategy of Classical Sparta: The Persian Challenge — for the Yale University Press website. I found myself asking myself a simple question: Why did Lacedaemon end up as the leader of the Hellenes in the Persian Wars? Why was Athens given a subordinate role?
“This was,” I wrote, “in part a matter of prestige. The prowess of the Spartans in battle was a thing much admired long before Thermopylae.” But there was something more to the story. It really was strange
that the Athenians were denied a leadership role. No power on the Greek mainland or among the islanders, apart from Athens, had ever fought the artillery, infantry, and cavalry of the Mede; and no power in Hellas anywhere, apart from Athens, had managed to defeat them on land. Moreover, on the sea, by 480, Athens was able to deploy something like two hundred triremes, which constituted something like half of the Hellenic fleet. They could plausibly claim and they were not bashful about doing so that the leadership at sea was rightfully theirs. But there was no one willing to back up that claim.
The Athenians were a disruptive force in and after the late sixth century. They had defeated a Theban invasion in 506 B. C., and on the same day they had defeated the Chalcidians from the nearby island of Euboea. In the aftermath, they had seized territory hitherto thought to belong to Boeotia, and they had taken from the equestrian aristocrats of Chalcis the rich land that they had long farmed on the Lelantine Plain. In the years preceding Xerxes’ invasion, these same Athenians had conducted a truceless war by sea with the citizens of Aegina, an island in the Saronic Gulf. Their defeat of the Persians at Marathon may have been regarded as a boon by their neighbors, but it also reinforced the impression that Athens was a growing threat, and their construction in the 480s of a fleet of 200 triremes requiring something like 34,000 men at the oars— though this, too, was no doubt welcome—must also have been unsettling as well.
Sparta’s willingness to shoulder the hegemony was, by way of contrast, reassuring. No one doubted the superiority of Sparta’s hoplites to those of the Athenians, and no one thought of the Spartans as a sea power bent on intimidating their neighbors. They were, as I have said, a satisfied power, and everyone knew it. If they had a predilection for interfering in the business of their neighbors, moreover, it was all to the good. For the Spartans had a reputation for overthrowing tyrants and for installing republican regimes dominated by the local gentry. They had long been the champions of liberty, and it was only natural that they lead a coalition intent on repelling an assault mounted by a barbarian Persian despot.
If you think about it, I went on to say, the United States is in this one particular (if in no other) rather like Sparta. “[I]ts lack of territorial ambitions” enables “it to play the middleman in Europe, the Middle East, and in Asia as well.” Neighbors that cannot get along can jointly cooperate with the Americans.
If you doubt that we are indispensable, consider what happened when, under Barack Obama, we abandoned our traditional role. The Russians seized Crimea and marched into Ukraine. Al Qaeda has expanded its control and influence, while jihadism found its second wind in the guise of ISIS and seized large parts of Syria and Iraq. The Chinese began building bases on atolls in the South China Sea, and the American allies who used to whine about our interventionist streak began complaining about our passivity. To the extent that there is any sort of world order, it relies on us as a superintending power, and the minute we step back the thugs reassert themselves with renewed vigor. It is not just our military strength that is important — though it is vital. It is our neutrality. During the Cold War, we could get Greece and Turkey and South Korea and Japan to sing in something like the same key. Like it or not, in our absence, things tend to spin out of control.
This is, of course, nothing new. It happened in both Europe and Asia after World War I when we withdrew, and the consequences of that withdrawal were horrid both for the peoples of Europe and Asia and for our fellow citizens. If we remain on the path we have entered upon in the last eight years, I shudder to consider the likely outcome and its impact on the children growing up in my household.
Published in Foreign Policy, General, History, Military
We’re finding out.
Bolshevik Barry thinks not.
That’s a bit rose colored don’t ya think. The rule of the 30 in Athens was not liked at all, as a matter of fact it didn’t last that long either because the local gentry of Athens were not that great or even good; as a matter of fact they were puppets of the Spartans (like any good winning nation does you install people who favor you).
The Spartans were perhaps intelligent and for a time a competent power in Greece but they were not some “pro-liberty let’s not take any land” type of power. They took land in the Peloponnese and also took it in Asia Minor from the Persians. The Spartans were a nation with goals and values and they lived by them and while they might have led the Greeks in war with the Aechamenids they were not some Messiahs of the Greeks.
If we are to find a legitimate savior from permanent Persian threat then we have to concede it was the Macedonians. They were the ones that fought and conquered the Persians whole sale and brought far more unity to Greece than the Athenians, Spartans, or Thebians ever did.
Unless the next president is an economic wizard, we may face a debt crisis/calamity that will make at least large-scale American military intervention untenable.
That being said I would argue we are far more closer in terms of national power to the Romans. Like the Romans our nation has the capacity to wage large scale conflicts across large distances and long periods of time. Our nation has similar republican values and we fight to at least in some degree towards preserving them across the world and preventing the rise of those which would oppose them.
Like Rome we were as a nation more or less at an institutional level founded in a Republic (as Roman Law began with the 12 tables during the Republic). Our land was a mix of previously colonized territory and local populaces in North America with the British, French, and Spanish as established powers while the in Italy the Romans were surrounded by established Greek Colonies and the Etruscans from the North and the Carthaginians moving up from Sicily.
Like the Romans our citizens to a degree saw themselves as bringing “civilization” to the western territories it conquered and colonized. Stopping human travesties like human sacrifice which was practice by the Celts and in the case of the Carthaginians it was alleged that they committed infanticide were seen as compelling moral reasons to defeat them.
Like the USA the Roman Republic became a super power as the previous land of super powers (the Diadochi in Alexander’s previous empire; akin to the Europeans) in Greece slaughtered themselves and the Romans moved in not long after.
As I survey the world, I find myself frantically trying to figure out which historical lessons are the the right ones to draw upon — is this like 1914? 1939? Or are we verging on, say, 455? And in truth, I don’t know whether any of these parallels are the right ones.
Off topic, this morning I came across this:
The US is indispensable because of its innovative economy. Without that, 80 or 90% of the world would live in abject poverty.
Before the Persian Wars, they had just such a reputation, and it was well-earned. The war with Athens effected changes in Lacedaemon.
Rome never fought to preserve republican values. They honored them at home. They created provinces ruled by proconsuls — veritable viceroys — abroad.
The lessons we can draw from history are insights about national and international power, human nature, and other basics, not it’s parallels. And yet the Greeks provide an endless and always fascinating source of lessons because some really brilliant chroniclers wrote it down for us and and they are few enough so we can read all the source material. Interesting article, thanks.
All roads lead to Rome. Not a city on a hill, but rather an eternal city. Never something material but rather an ideal to which all might aspire. Even then, this is probably not going to be like those dates you mentioned and even then 455 AD was not, I would argue the defining moment of the Roman Empire (as it lived on for another 1,000 years in Constantine’s city towards the east)
The western half of the Roman Empire produced good men even in the end like Flavius Stilicho, Flavius Aetius, and Flavius Majorianus (who is my avatar) who were able to rally the Romans and the Foederati toward’s the virtues that made it a worthy nation state and defeat their enemies.
Rome cannot die and America has no real reason (history is not pre-determined) to die either. The concept of world where men can live freely and the state respects and restrains itself from impinging on those traits of man will never be extinguished. Like Rome, the USA has republican ideals and they cannot be wiped out as they are ideas.
Prior to the Persian Wars the Spartans had long worked towards dominating the Peloponnese, like besieging Argos. They were not some altruistic nation of freedom loving men and women. The Dorians had taken such land (including Sparta) from the Acheaens in war. They were not some “satisfied power” that sought to simply have only Sparta and defend the sovereignty of each and every Greek city. They fought repeated wars to enslave fellow Greeks and to hold their territory.
Did they have an interesting system of governance that had some republican traits? Yes they did. Were they against the Persians? Yes they were? Were they also willing to work with the Persians against other Greeks? Yes they were as they received aid from the Persians when fighting the Athenians.
The Spartans were not some ideal of Republicanism in any sense. The Romans were far closer to that as they actually had a republican constitution and their citizenship was earned and inherited rather than simply inherited. The Roman form of government (SPQR, the Senate and People of Rome) was far more republican than an aristocratic society like the Spartans.
Even then, a proconsulship was simply the highest magistrate office in a province, not the only one, and it was only for a year and reserved for citizens that had served as consuls (so experienced individuals).
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The Romans at least promulgated a republican government form within their own nation (as they either placed a puppet as the leader of a nation like Spartans did or they took it over completely with colonization and then instituted local governments that imitate the roman style) and were able to completely codify a legal system from which to govern a massive empire and unite dozens of religions and cultures into (E Plurbus Unum) one nation and to eventually even give them citizenship under Caracalla.
The Spartans never had to deal with wars of people fighting to become Spartans. They were not envied or admired to such a degree that other nations would fight to be recognized as them. The Romans had to do just that in the Socii War of 90-88 BC. The funny part being that at the start those rebelling Italians had even formed a capital and began to print their own currency but once the Romans offered them citizenship and the rights of being Romans the vast majority of them ceased with their rebellion.
The Romans had a government where all (aside from slaves) could have some degree of representation. The Romans fought actual barbarians. The Roman government was actually a Republic while the Spartans were an aristocracy. The Romans fought to spread their ideals, perhaps not in some explicit crusader fashion but they believed they were spreading a civilization that was beneficial to man.
You are dreaming. In the late empire, there were memories of republicanism, but there was no reality. There was, moreover, no prospect for the recovery of liberty, and no one had any notion of trying to do so.
Rome from the outset was a brutal imperial power — even in the republican period. Its citizens at that time valued liberty — which is to say, their own liberty — and they worked hard and sucessfully to deprive everyone else of theirs.
There are no nations of altruistic freedom-loving women and men. The Spartans were a satisfied power — chiefly because they had bit off as much as they could chew when they conquered Messenia. I never expressed any dreamy rot about them of the sort that you seem to entertain regarding Rome. All that I said was that they overturned tyrannies in the late archaic period before the Persian Wars (which they did) and that they were not perceived as a threat to local liberties by their allies. After the Peloponnesian War, the Spartans went off the rails.
For the record, since Could be Anyone is spreading confusion, after reconquering Messenia in the 7th century, the Spartans never again sought additional land. And, after the Persian Wars, they surrendered the hegemony at sea to the Athenians — who quickly established a league to continue the war against the Persians and gradually turned that league into an empire paying tribute to Athens. The Spartans, who were genuinely a satisfied power, made no effort to establish an empire until the end of the Peloponnesian War — when they either had to take on the hegemony or acquiesce in Athens’ making a comeback. Never did they do anything much out of altruism. But anyone who thinks that the Romans were altruistic needs to take a second look at the evidence. From day one, Rome was an expanding, aggressive power intent on subjecting every other community within reach.
Let me add that Sparta was an aristocracy of sorts. Within that aristocracy, it was, however, quite egalitarian (until it came apart). Rome was from the outset also an aristocracy — dominated by patricians initially and eventually by a class of men descended from former consuls who were tellingly called nobiles. There was, let me add, no representation at Rome. One had to travel there to vote in the voting assemblies, and for the most part that vote was delivered by the great aristocratic families, which controlled their clients quite effectively.
Rome was impressive — as a conquering machine. Sparta was impressive — mainly in the defense. Both were brutal. Both are worthy of contemplation. Both republican experiments ended in tears. The Romans turned their brutality on one another and fought a series of civil wars that destroyed the Roman nobility and produced a despotism that lasted ca. 500 years in the West and 1000 years in the East. Those civil wars eliminated even the aspiration for liberty. One should not get romantic about either Sparta or Rome. One should view them soberly as historical examples — useful for understanding grand strategy and the fragility of republican institutions.
The Spartans were still waging wars after taking Messenia. They waged wars with both Argos and the city of Tegea in the 6th Century BC and were ultimately more or less victorious against both. From there it seemed they licked their wounds and built up their power base, after all they had just experienced several wars and a helot revolt. That takes resoruces and manpower that need to be recouped.
I don’t know if I would call such a “satisfied power” (which sounds like a very relative term), more like a cunning power (it knows its limits for the most part). They no doubt were rightly concerned about the Athenians and their ambitions but they created their own empire after defeating them and even joined with the “barbarian” Persians to do it.
If Rome was completely dominated by Patricians then why ever even kowtow to the Plebians (as a matter of fact at the time of Caesar there was roughly 600 senators and that is only counting the senate, not the legislative assembly of the Plebians) and give them anything? Why grant them the privileges of their own political offices and those which Patricians had once only held?
The Spartan state literally only recognized blood Spartans as citizens (leaving the Periokoi out). The Roman Republic at least gave individuals the chance through military service to become citizens and later in the Empire (for reason of taxation I concede) the privileges of citizenship to all in the Empire.
Even when the Empire was officially created under the Principate with Octavius the consuls at least could repeal laws from edicts of the Emperor. It took a while for the republican institutions to be fully annihilated with the Dominate of Diocletian.
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Also the title of Nobiles was applied to all those of the Patrician families and those who were recognized for exceptional service, usually this meant being elected as Consul. So it was a meritocratic term also. The Spartans had a drastically state oriented society. The state dominated the individual and more or less pre-determined a life; I personally don’t like that.
The Roman society also had its limits but unlike the Spartans the Romans showed a degree of movement in some direction. One might have called it progress as they moved from 510 BC to 150 BC and then later there was decline but overall the Romans were fluid socially, eventually giving all males that would serve in the military the chance to be improve their lot.
The Romans also shared far more flexibility in their military. Unlike the Spartans (not to say they didn’t have their moments of good miltiary thought) the Romans developed their military to fit with their goals from the Maniples to the Marian reforms to the vexillations to the Comitantenses and the Limitanei (and later Thema) the Romans changed their strategies to move from conquest to defense as the later empire was about holding territory, not gaining anymore.
I do have to concede though that both have lessons to learn from. However, I would argue that I think the Romans have more to offer us than the Spartans.
Mais quelle coinkydink:
Paul,
I am trying to find it. About 6 months ago Barry Obama came back from a meeting with the European Heads of State. He himself said that they were all demanding American leadership. He himself referred to America as the indispensable nation. I went after this one. As Obama had made a dictum out of denying that America was “exceptional”, I compared the two terms. There can be more than one exceptional nation. However, there can be only one indispensable nation.
In Obama’s recent speech after the San Bernardino attack, toward the end he finally referred to America as exceptional. It took just 7 years of on the job training for our special president to figure out just what country he’s been pseudo-governing. What a guy!
Regards,
Jim
The wars with Tegea were over by 546 B. C., which is why I chose that date. The war with Argos in the 490s was an anticipation of the Persian invasion. The Argives were Medizers. The Spartans never again, after making a deal with Tegea shortly before 546, sought additional territory.
It is wrong to say that the Spartans “joined with the ‘barbarian’ Persians” to create their own empire. They did ally with the Persians to fight the Athenians, but not until 411 B.C., and they had ample reason to do so long before that. Soon after they achieved victory over Athens in 404 B. C., they turned on Persia, and Agesilaus tried to take Asia Minor from the Persians. It was at this time that the Athenians and others took Persian money to battle Sparta.
This period is complicated, and everyone was desperate. The point is, however, that at the time of the Persian Wars and for a long time thereafter (down to 411 B. C.) the Spartans balked at any deal with Persia that involved in abandoning Greeks. They did not do so because they were good and sweet. They did so because they wanted to protect their own liberty.
The patricians gave way slowly to plebeian demands only because the plebeians refused to fight otherwise.
The business about the consuls and the Roman emperor is nonsense. They had no power and no influence, and none of them ever dared to oppose an emperor. Read Suetonius and you get a pretty good picture of what the new regime was like. It was a despotism that retained some republican forms. Anyone who made the slightest bit of trouble was quickly killed.
@Zafar- The belief in American Exceptionalism is based on the idea that the US is a constructed nation. I.e, it is not based on geography, race, ethnicity or religion, but on the ideas of the Enlightenment.
It seems more pessimistic by the day: not only are we comparing our imperial decline to Rome’s, but to Sparta’s. N0 matter what happens, everyone, we will be remembered as one of the great empires. Up there with Rome. The archeologists from outer space will find American artefacts in the soil everywhere they dig.
To be precise, your point was that I had confused the point about Sparta doing further expansion after their conquest of Messenia. Even after that my point is that the Spartans willing joined with the “barbarian” Persians to start their own empire and they did.
I was not (and do not care as that is not the point of discussing Sparta) excusing Athens or other Greeks, but rather pointing out Sparta was not some absolutely Pro Hellenic Nation. Even if I disliked the Athenians and their imperialism I do not assist foreigners against them because that jeopardizes us to.
The Senate had power, even in the Principate. If they did not then they would not have been members in conspiracy to replace Emperors or been able to repeal laws. The Lex Julia itself was partially repealed by consuls after being created by Augustus in order to protect their bachelor status in the Empire (as the law condemned adultery and other vices some Roman Elites could not resist).
That being said, the state still had a judicial system and in the Republic there was representation. The Romans allowed for a meritocracy compared to the Spartans less flexible system. While it is true that it eventually became absolute despotism it was not some quick change, but rather incrementally which shows that such values meant something. Even if they eventually fell to being superficial.
On the order of violence, all ancient governments (both democratic and not) were violent. Overall though Rome was far better a state than Sparta. One created a truly lasting (irrevocable) impact on the world.
I can only hope that we might earn the recognition as not just a great empire but also as a force for good. That because of our nation (as I would argue even Rome did to a degree also allow for) more men and women were made free to use their potential to do good than if we had not existed.