A STATE, NOT MEN:

The Grand Strategy of Rome (Walter Russell Mead , 3/06/11, American Interest)

I may have surprised my students by focusing on something other than the eye-catching details — Hannibal’s route over the Alps, the classic battle strategy at Cannae, or even the struggle between Fabius and his mutinous subordinate that almost wrecked the Roman army. Those are important and they are worth knowing about, but I wanted to draw their attention to the real grand strategy of Rome: the construction of a new kind of state and society that brought Rome to world power despite Hannibal’s best efforts.

In Livy’s account we see a contest between two styles of organization. Carthage has its factions and its politics, but in the Carthaginian system, individual leaders are strong but the state is weak. Hannibal and the Barca clan have one policy; their opponents have another, but one doesn’t get a picture of a central coordinating power center in Carthage overseeing the twists and turns of the war. This is no doubt partly because of Livy’s dependence on Roman sources; history is written by the winners.

But it also seems truly the case that Rome was the first of the ancient city states (in the Mediterranean world) to develop a real system of governance that operated reasonably reliably and consistently. The Romans had their legal system, their political system with its competition for office and its checks and balances, their standardized methods of training and equipping an army, and even (for the time) a well organized method for dealing with the public finance and debt.

Among other strengths, Rome’s solid institutional base gave the city a greater ability to manage power across distance and manage a conflict that was larger and more complex than any other war the city had fought. [...]

Rome’s deep political stability and the capacity of so many Romans to think clearly and act decisively enabled the city to manage the complexities of the conflict; those characteristics also made Rome resilient. Slaughter a legion and kill a consul if you like: Rome can make more. It also made Rome reliable. Promises from Hannibal did not and could not bind Carthage the way that promises from properly constituted Roman authorities vested with imperium bound the Senate.