[Mb-civic] Modern America in a Roman predicament >By Harold James FT.com

[Michael Butler]

FT.com      
 
Modern America in a Roman predicament
>By Harold James
>Published: February 20 2006 20:39 | Last updated: February 20 2006 20:39
>>

Before September 11 2001, it was widely assumed that globalisation bred
peace and stability. But over the past five years, there has been increased
nervousness about this concept in many parts of the world. It is not worry
about the state of the world economy, which has proved amazingly robust, but
about the framework for world governance. In particular, there is widespread
mistrust of the world¹s only superpower and increased doubt about the sort
of politics that America tries to impose on the rest of the world.

As the Bush presidency gets bogged down in the quagmire of Iraq, there is
still a widespread assumption that there might be a quick and easy fix.
Critics of the administration think that the world¹s view of America would
be transformed if only the US president sounded kinder. Many officials in
Washington believe that if the world understood all they really wanted was
peace, prosperity and democracy, the criticism would subside. Such
optimistic beliefs are mistaken but are characteristic of an ever-recurring
dilemma of an interconnected world. Consider some historical parallels: in
1776, the year of the US Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith and Edward
Gibbon published the first volumes of two works that both used history to
illuminate Britain¹s own problems with the globalisation of that age: The
Wealth of Nations and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In these monumental and parallel works, Smith and Gibbon explored what could
be called the ³Roman dilemma². In essence, how peaceful commerce is
frequently seen as a way of building a stable, prosperous and integrated
international society. At the same time, however, the peaceful liberal
economic order leads to domestic clashes and also to international rivalry
and even wars. The conflicts disturb and eventually destroy the commercial
system and the bases of prosperity and integration. These interactions seem
to be a vicious spiral or a trap from which it seems almost impossible to
escape. The liberal commercial world order subverts and destroys itself, and
Smith¹s gloomy (but surprisingly little known) concluding chapters are a
long way from the apparently optimistic beginning, with its focus on the
immense productivity gains possible as a result of the division of labour.

The central problem identified by Gibbon and Smith is that complex societies
need rules to function, whether on a national (state) level or in
international relations. But we do not always comply voluntarily with rules
and rules require some enforcement. In addition, they need to be formulated.
The enforcement and the promulgation of rules are both consequences of
power, and power is always concentrated and unequally distributed.

Even when we think of voluntarily negotiated rules, there is the memory of
some act of power, the long shadow of a hegemonic strength ­ the shadow of
Rome ­ falling on the negotiators.

The propensity for subversion and destruction of a rule-based order comes
about because ­ and whenever ­ there is a perception that rules are
arbitrary, unjust and reflect the imposition of particular interests in a
high-handed imperial display of power.

Power protects commerce and peace but power is clearly not necessarily a
good in itself. It offers a basis on which greater power constantly
accumulates, as power is used to affect the outcome of social processes. One
way of putting this is the frequently made observation that the exercise of
power has an addictive quality. The adage that power tends to corrupt itself
affects the way in which the holders of power behave. Even if the wielder of
power resists the addiction, other people suspect the addiction is there.

People who believe in universal rules and people who see power behind the
rules can scarcely talk to each other. They each have an overall
interpretation of such power that the other perspective simply disappears.
The alternative is rejected as naive or ideological, as in Robert Kagan¹s
famous juxtaposition of the Mars and Venus views of American and Europeans.
As approaches, they are like the optical illusions made famous by Maurits
Cornelius Escher, where squares either pop out of a page or recede, but
where the observer cannot be brought to see both phenomena at the same time.
There is one perspective ­ or the other.

Both politicians and their critics find this hard to understand as they try
to respond to global challenges, such as the threat of terrorism or the
proliferation of nuclear weapons. They are about to be as baffled by Iran as
they were by Iraq.

If the threat lies in discontent about modernity, and if poverty and
marginalisation are the breeding grounds for violence and terrorism, then
growth and a better distribution of wealth can hold a more effective cure.
If, on the other hand, cultural differences are really so profound, then
imperial conflict and conquest is the only adequate answer. Much
contemporary debate, especially after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, fluctuates
between these poles. Should the industrial world buy off or fight the
barbarians at the gate?

Yet both options look like different aspects of the old but unsatisfactory
Roman solution: conquer and provide prosperity. There is only a difference
in emphasis. The first is arrogantly belligerent and the second arrogantly
patronising. Both recommend more power and more modernisation.

There exists an alternative to the ³challenge and response² model that has
as its outcome the clash of civilisations. The other path depends on
dialogue within a shared natural law framework.

Instead of thinking that technical development will automatically produce
prosperity and thus solve, as it were by a kind of magic, the problem of
values, policymakers in the industrialised world need to think and talk
explicitly about values and traditions.

What does Islamic tradition have in common with western traditions that
respects human dignity; and how can modern America show that it respects
these values too?

Resolving the issue of the Guantánamo Bay detentions would be an obvious
first step to showing how America can accept as well as invent universal
values.

The writer, professor of history and international affairs at the Woodrow
Wilson School, Princeton University, is author of The Roman Predicament to
be published in May by Princeton University Press
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