NY Times Op-Ed, Mar. 5, 2003 What Would Genghis Do? By MAUREEN DOWD
It's easy to picture Rummy in a big metal breastplate, a skirt and lace-up gladiator sandals.
Rummius Maximus Pompeius.
During the innocent summer before 9/11, the defense secretary's office sponsored a study of ancient empires — Macedonia, Rome, the Mongols — to figure out how they maintained dominance.
What tips could Rummy glean from Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan?
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Niall Ferguson, a professor at Oxford and New York University who wrote the coming book "Empire," said that while "it was rather sweet" that the Pentagon was studying ancient empires, he thought the lessons were no longer relevant.
"The technological and economic differences between modernity and premodernity are colossal," he said.
Besides, he says Americans aren't temperamentally suited to empire-building. "The British didn't mind living for years in Iraq or India for 100-plus years," he said. "Americans aren't attracted to the idea of taking up residence in hot, poor places."
He's right. America doesn't like to occupy. We like to buy our territory, like the bargain Louisiana Purchase and the overpriced amount we were going to pay Turkey (the old Ottoman Empire) to use its bases, before its Parliament balked. At the outside, we prefer to time-share.
As the brazen Bush imperialists try to install a new democracy in Iraq, they are finding the old democracy of our reluctant allies inconvenient.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/opinion/05DOWD.html
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