Home > Work > The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third
1 " It is the struggle of adversarial forces that generates the logic of strategy, which is always and everywhere paradoxical, and as such is diametrically opposed to the commonsense, linear logic of everyday life. Thus, we have, for example, the Roman si vis pacem, para bellum, if you want peace, prepare for war, or tactically, the bad road is the good road in war, because its use is unexpected—granting surprise and thus at least a brief exemption from the entire predicament of a two-sided human struggle. "
― Edward N. Luttwak , The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire from the First Century AD to the Third
2 " Strategically, it is that same paradoxical logic that transforms victories into defeats if they merely persist long enough to pass their culminating point, whether by overextension or by bringing others into the fray, or both. And there is much more of the same, at every level of struggle, from the clash of weapons to the clash of empires, and in peace as well as in war. Always and everywhere it is the paradoxical logic of strategy that determines outcomes, whether the protagonists know of its existence or not. "
3 " Because strategy is neither straightforward nor transparent and never was, it is more easily absorbed intuitively than consciously learned. As it happens, the political culture of the Roman aristocracy was especially receptive to the logic of strategy. Its able-bodied and able-minded men were educated from a very young age in the realities of force, power, and influence and in the ruthless exercise of all three to advance themselves, their kin, and their empire in a fiercely competitive fashion. They were more than capable of understanding the sharp choices that strategy invariably requires, and perfectly willing to act accordingly, whether in the forum or on the battlefield. "
4 " From the beginning of the nineteenth century until Hiroshima, strategic thought was dominated by post-Napoleonic, Clausewitzian notions, and these notions have pervaded the thinking of many whose primary interests are far from removed from military matters. In their crude, popularized form, these ideas stress a particular form of war, conflicts between nationalities; they stress the primacy and desirability of offensive warfare in pursuit of decisive results (thus inspiring an aversion to defensive strategies); and they imply a sharp distinction between the state of peace and the state of war. Finally, these ideas accord primacy to the active use of military force, as opposed to the use of images of force, for the purposes of diplomatic coercion. Only since 1945 has the emergence of new technologies of mass destruction invalidated the fundamental assumptions of the Clausewitzian approach to grand strategy. We, like the Romans, face the prospect not of decisive conflict, but of a permanent state of war, albeit limited. We, like the Romans, must actively protect an advanced society against a variety of threats rather than concentrate on destroying the forces of our enemies in battle. Above all, the nature of modern weapons requires that we avoid their use while nevertheless striving to exploit their full diplomatic potential. The revolutionary implications of these fundamental changes are as yet only dimly understood. It is not surprising, therefore, that even contemporary research on Roman military history is still pervaded by an anachronistic strategic outlook. "
5 " The same effort to conserve force was also evident in war, at the tactical level. The ideal Roman general was not a figure in the heroic style, leading his troops in a reckless charge to victory or death. He would rather advance in a slow and carefully prepared march, building supply roads behind him and fortified camps each night in order to avoid the unpredictable risks of rapid maneuver. He preferred to let the enemy retreat into fortified positions rather than accept the inevitable losses of open warfare, and he would wait to starve out the enemy in a prolonged siege rather than suffer great casualties in taking the fortifications by storm. Overcoming the spirit of a culture still infused with Greek martial ideals (that most reckless of men, Alexander the Great, was actually an object of worship in many Roman households), the great generals of Rome were noted for their extreme caution. It is precisely this aspect of Roman tactics (in addition to the heavy reliance on combat engineering) that explains the relentless quality of Roman armies on the move, as well as their peculiar resilience in adversity: the Romans won their victories slowly, but they were very hard to defeat. Just as the Romans had apparently no need of a Clausewitz to subject their military energies to the discipline of political goals, it seems that they had no need of modern analytical techniques either. Innocent of the science of systems analysis, the Romans nevertheless designed and built large and complex security systems that successfully integrated troop deployments, fixed defenses, road networks, and signaling links in a coherent whole. "
