Terrorists Are a Diversion

In the fifth century, the Roman Empire was consumed by fear, and the equivalent of terrorists: not barbarians, but heretics and criminals. Crime was rampant, both in the cities and the countryside; in the cities, color gangs ruled; in the countryside large swathes were controlled by bandit gangs, referred to as baccaudae.

The preferred means for combating these dangers were: to send in troops to both the cities and the countryside to root out the criminals and to accumulate sacred relics from saints and martyrs to protect against heretics. The troops were largely non-Roman mercenaries, mostly from various Germanic tribes, commanded by their own tribal leaders in many cases, i.e. barbarians. The adventus, in which relics were installed with great ceremony in Ravenna (the working capital of the Empire) and repeated in regional centers, were great rallying events of the era, and included the Emperor, his top officials, and leaders of the Church.

Today, especially in the US, we fear terrorists above all else. Terrorists are much akin to the heretics of old, not in their methods, but in the way they are perceived, as the personification of evil. Crime and immigrants are also feared. Fear of terrorists rallied the people, allowing the government to eliminate many safeguards for personal freedoms in what it calls the Global War on Terror. It also paved the way for the expansion of a redundant military, and for launching an unnecessary war to justify the higher and higher "defense" budgets.

Meanwhile, the US, and much of the rest of the developed world, has increasingly depended upon China, India, and other rapidly developing countries in Asia, for more and more of its manufactured and processed goods and services, and on mercenaries, many from other countries: South Africa, former Yugoslavia, Bangladesh, the Philippines and many others, for supplementing its military, now over-stretched because of the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have now proven intractable.

I suggest that the Chinese, Indians, et al, are the equivalent of the fifth century "barbarians," who eventually took control of the western Roman Empire, not in a major invasion, but because they had been contracted to shoulder more and more of the military functions, even though most of them were also heretics: Arian Christians.

Heretics did not, ultimately, take over Western Europe; sacred relics may or may not have defended Roman Christians, but barbarians certainly did take over. The Goths, adherents of Arianism, took over, but were soon overthrown by Franks, who had recently converted from Paganism to orthodox Christianity.

While the US has been focused upon the terrorists, the world around it has changed fundamentally. No longer is the United States the "sole superpower." It is still a large, militarily powerful state, but one whose economic strength has been sapped in the fight against the imagined enemy, while China, India and Russia are now resurgent economically, European currency (Pounds and Euros) are increasingly favored to the US Dollar. Further, the fabled American military would find it difficult to threaten any of them, since it is bogged down, dispirited and demoralized in Iraq and Afghanistan, still fighting the chimerical terrorists in both places.

Just as in the fifth century Empire, the US and its allies have focused on the wrong threat: terrorists. Meanwhile, its trade and financial policies have actually aided the equivalent of the "barbarians:" China, India, S. Korea and even Vietnam, its former adversary, while its oil-friendly energy policy has energized Russia and revolutionary powers like Venezuela.

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