169. Rome, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran

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No, Romulus, I don't want any ancient Romans speaking on this blog.  You're heartless.  You decimate people.  Forty percent of the human beings in your empire were slaves.  You'll ruin my reputation.

"OK, OK, but if you had listened to me twelve years ago you'd be a lot better off than you are now.  You'd be at least a trillion richer in dollars and 6000 richer in lives."

Yes, but in how much danger?

"Probably in less danger than you're in now.  You'd have concentrated on danger.  None of this restructuring their society, changing their values, training their young men to be government soldiers, getting them (admit it) to love us.  Just wiping out — or scaring the pants off — the people that are a danger to you."

And how exactly do you avoid what we did?  When you break a country it's yours, isn't it?  You're responsible.  And, long-term, making a country a democracy makes it safe, doesn't it?  Democracies aren't aggressive.

"Oh, you are so wrong.  And in so many ways.  I won't even mention your belief that democracies aren't aggressors.  What do you think your wonderful Athens was?  Jeez, read Thucydides.  And have you noticed that the builder of the biggest empire since ours, Britain, was a democracy?"

No, since you haven't mentioned it.

"All right, let that pass.  Go to this: 'breaking a country.'  You don't have to do that.  You just break what's a danger to you.  Do they have elephants?  You say, 'If I find an elephant in here I'm going to zap it and all the people around it.'  Do they have elephant training camps?   You say, 'I find one and I'll zap it too.  Too many elephant camps in your country, Mr. King, and I'll zap you.'  I know you can do that.  I've read about your spying and zapping powers."

But suppose they worship elephants?  Suppose they have a fetish about using them?  Suppose that's the whole problem: they have an elephant culture.  That culture is a thousand miles from our culture and it's what makes them hate us.  You want us to ignore that?

"Yes! Yes!  Yes!  You're not interested in culture.  You're interested in living, breathing elephants, physical creatures that can hurt you, threats to your life — not symbolic beasts contrary to 'everything you stand for.'  The truth is, you don't understand your best interest.  You don't know the most economical way to satisfy it.  You don't know how to display it.  And you don't know how to voice it, not in a way to make sure there's no misunderstanding."

Well maybe you could tell me how to voice it.

"I can't exactly, not in your terms.  But in my terms it's very simple. To a nation you have entered you say, 'Keep your own culture, worship whomever or whatever you want, treat each other in any way you want.  Just keep the elephants out, the roads maintained, and the tribute coming.  Do it the Roman way and we'll get along fine.'"

And if some evil is growing in that nation, if in their schools they are raising a generation of elephant fanatics, you'll just let that ideology or culture or whatever, grow.  Well let me tell you something, something you don't know: we tried that once.  The evil was named Nazism.  And we let it grow until it was too late to stop it.  And you know who we blame now for that?  People like you.  We call them isolationists.  "Ignore other countries as long as the tribute — or in our case, profit from trade — keeps coming in."

"And so, because of that Nazi evil, you'll never be isolationist again.  But there's isolationism and there's isolationism.  Can you conceive of a kind in which, while assuring that no country's rockets or elephants can hurt you, you just sit behind your fences and make yourself attractive?  Attractive enough to induce your enemies to change?  Be such an example of freedom and democracy they won't be able resist.  And yes, be prosperous.  Work hard at that.  You and all your democratic allies.  The outsiders will see the connection."

And really change?  I can't see it.  The religion goes too deep.

"Here's where you go Roman.  With all that prosperity inside the fence you and your allies build it very high, with strict conditions about coming in and joining up. (You're always open to that; for long-term world peace you want everybody inside it.)  You count on the contrast between the ways the two cultures play out.  And on their ability, eventually, to see the connection between culture and prosperity.  (At first.  Later they may see connections to less material benefits.)" 

You're not who I thought you were.  You know a lot about our times.

"I do because I've done some studying.  But I'm still Roman.  I'm still saying, 'Keep your own culture, worship whoever or whatever you want.'  I'm just adding  'and bear the consequences.'  And I'm ready to get really Roman with those who can't bear to watch them bear the consequences, or who try to soften them.  Help those people, send them technology, say 'there, there, your culture's really as good as any other,' and you're out of the alliance.'  A good Roman is able to, well, 'watch them starve.'  Because he thinks suffering the consequences is the best way to learn about your religion and culture, what's wrong with it.   The starvation he watches is a means to a good end: getting them permanently into a proven feeding system.  Good end for them.  For us, it's securing our lives against them."

And that comes first, right?

"Right.  And you get it by holding to the strict conditions.  Nobody gets inside the fence, nobody joins the circle of the well-fed, without checking his elephants at the gate and opening his courts for a check by the others.  Any member of the circle who makes it easier for an entrant to skip this, or reduce the motivation to accept the conditions, you throw him out."

Man, we'd have to have a lot of power to do that, or a lot of sympathy among the other members of our alliance, or both.

"I agree.  At one time I think you had both.  Right after 9-11.  Now it may be too late.  But what else gives you a better chance against something so deep?"