Along the Roads to Damascus, Moscow and Beijing….

Niall Ferguson is alarmed.

His fear, the United States isn’t aggressive enough in the foreign policy arena, leaving openings for the evil Russians and Chinese. He warns us that this is making the world a more dangerous place as the unipolar world where the U.S. was completely dominant and was acting as the world’s policeman slips away. Ferguson is terrified that the American public doesn’t have the attention span required to expand the Empire.

Mr. Ferguson does so love his empires and, begrudgingly, I may have to admit that he does have a point. A unipolar world historically has been a fairly orderly place.  I would argue that the last time that the world was such a unipolar place was during the Roman Empire, and it was nothing if not orderly.

From Vermont Royster’s In Hoc Anno Domini which appears every year in the Wall Street Journal on the last publishing day before Christmas:

When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

Behavior unacceptable to the Romans was dealt with swiftly and effectively. Unfortunately, especially if one wasn’t a citizen of Rome, something was just not quite right about all of this orderliness. Royster saw it like this:

But everywhere there was something else, too. There was oppression—for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar. There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses. There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed. What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts. There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage. And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life. What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Yes, orderliness came with a price, a contempt for human life.
Today, as Vladimir Putin calls for a multipolar world, do the non-occidental countries and people of the world feel as persecuted as those subjects of Rome felt? Is the price for American imposed orderliness too high for many of them?

The answer is clearly, yes. America’s military presence on the borders of Russia and China has clearly pushed these countries into an alliance aimed at halting U.S. interference in their traditional spheres of influence. Additionally, the exorbitant privilege that the U.S. has enjoyed in being able to print the world’s reserve currency has extended, in the eyes of these two, far too much power to those in Washington and these countries will move to change this.

Ferguson believes that this will be a more dangerous world.

Perhaps.

Royster, on the other hand, saw something that entered the world during the Pax Romana that would change everything and offer a new hope:

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.

And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God. Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

This message was quite revolutionary and it didn’t sit well with the Roman authorities of the day. It was, however, a necessary precursor for the development of all individual liberty that was enjoyed by much of Western civilization during the past many centuries. Atheist Murray Rothbard on the sudden light that entered the world:

I am convinced that it is no accident that freedom, limited government, natural rights, and the market economy only really developed in Western civilization. I am convinced that the reason is the attitudes developed by the Christian Church in general, and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. Christianity, with its unique focus on (a) the individual as created in the image of God, and (b) in the central mystery of the Incarnation, God created his Son as a fully human person- (this) means that each individual and his salvation is of central divine concern….

Thus, even though I am not a believer, I hail Christianity, and especially Catholicism, as the underpinning of liberty.

Though it is hard to ignore, and not be somewhat fearful of, what was lost after the fall of the Roman Empire, something better had already been introduced. Yes, it was more than one thousand years between the building of the Pantheon and Brunelleschi’s dome at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiora in Florence, but the concept of natural law had been firmly rooted by then and would be developed further by Catholic and Protestant scholastics and this would allow the concept of liberty and natural law to flourish in many parts of the world for centuries. Perhaps there exists today in some distant part of the American Empire another insignificant and destitute individual who will rise to prominence and remind us again of the critical importance of natural law.

The internet had a parallel during the heyday of Rome, the Roman network of roads. It was along this road network that the message of the importance of the individual was transmitted by Christ’s apostles. Hopefully, today’s network can again successfully spread the message of the importance of the individual, diminish the clamor for empire, keep America’s Empire from going too far down the same road with regards to the contempt for human life that developed in Rome and help us to extend the notion of natural rights and individual liberty further than ever before.  Royster however, knew that St. Paul was deeply concerned about how this would all play out with future empires and future Caesars and he concluded In Hoc Anno Domini with this reminder:

Along the road to Damascus the light shone brightly. But afterward Paul of Tarsus, too, was sore afraid. He feared that other Caesars, other prophets, might one day persuade men that man was nothing save a servant unto them, that men might yield up their birthright from God for pottage and walk no more in freedom.

Then might it come to pass that darkness would settle again over the lands and there would be a burning of books and men would think only of what they should eat and what they should wear, and would give heed only to new Caesars and to false prophets. Then might it come to pass that men would not look upward to see even a winter's star in the East, and once more, there would be no light at all in the darkness.

And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:

Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.

Ferguson doesn’t quite grasp that the American form of orderliness has convinced much of the rest of the world that their liberties are being infringed upon by the American Empire. He doesn’t recognize that in their eyes the U.S. has been willing to trample the notion of natural law in order to achieve its own vision of orderliness that many find rather abhorrent. These people just may recognize that order and rule of law are not ends in and of themselves. They may feel that they are only means by which their natural rights are to be protected. Much of the world believes that America has forgotten this, that America expects the world to give up its birthright to serve Washington and the words of St. Paul, therefore, remain as relevant as ever to these people. He misses that it is a Russian leader that is reminding the world to avoid the yoke of bondage. It never dawns on Ferguson that much of the world sees the American Empire as the danger. Empires are about force and subjugation and are always an affront to natural law and this hasn’t changed since the days of Rome.

Valdimir Putin as he targeted the U.S. yesterday:

The model of a unipolar world has failed. Everyone can easily see it today, even those who try to act in the usual manner, to keep their monopoly, to dictate their rules of the game in politics, commerce and finance, to impose their cultural and behavioural norms,

The world is multipolar, people want to decide their own destinies, preserve their cultural and historical identities and civilisations.

In the China-Russia alliance the overextended American Empire has met a powerful force, and this could be a very good thing for the U.S. The cost of empire to the American public will be exposed as the de-dollarization begins in this China-Russia led alliance. The exorbitant privilege extended to the U.S. via their ability to print the world’s reserve currency has hidden much of the cost of the Empire. As this crumbles, the ability of the U.S. to project power throughout the world will collapse, centralization of power will diminish and an increase in individual liberty should result. This multipolar world will be very different from the one seen during the Cold War. Today, in contrast to the Cold War, Russia and China are in a position to offer better economic and individual liberty concessions to other countries than the U.S. is currently offering. The playing field is far more level than before and this will be ever more apparent as the dollar fades as the world’s reserve currency. It will be quite the paradox for those of us who grew up during the Cold War if it winds up that Russia and China are the ones that keep us all from being entangled in the yoke of bondage.

 Disclaimer: Nothing on this site should be construed as investment advice. It is all merely the opinion of the author.