How much longer can U.S. pretend it has no empire?
Paul Kennedy There is a very cunning after-dinner board game called SPQR that involves the defense of the Roman Empire at its height. The board itself is a map of Europe and the Mediterranean, showing Roman cities and ports and the military roads and sealanes that connect them. The game involves the “senators and populace” moving selected Roman legions (there were 27 of them in, say, 80 A.D.) along those internal lines in response to new threats, whether they arise from Syria, Scotland or across the River Danube. There were few places along the borders of the empire where one legion was further than a 10-day march from reinforcing another–which was just as well, since Rome’s expansion had given it many enemies and a legion that was based in Sicily one year might find itself in the north of England, guarding Hadrian’s Wall, the next. I thought of SPQR while reading “Where Are the Legions? Global Deployments of U.S. Forces,” published by Global Security, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy
