What the US and the West can learn from the Fall of Rome

Historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley write about imperial life cycles and point to things the West can do to thrive – as it confronts decline and the rise of China.

The West is facing several challenges at the moment: internal political ferment, economic uncertainty and shifts in geopolitical balance of power. Some suggest that the rise of China and groupings like the BRICS point to the emergence of a new global order which will contradict the interests of Europe and the US.

The West’s loss of hegemony has prompted historians to look at the past for parallels of decline. Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? is a prominent example. Peter Heather and John Rapley’s 2023 book Why Empires Fall: Rome, America and the Future of the West has also generated a fair bit of attention and been translated into Spanish and Chinese.

Historians tend to be suspicious of comparisons across time but Heather and Rapley suggest that the ascendance and unravelling of the Roman empire may have lessons for the modern West, which is at a “major tipping point” so far as its power and influence is concerned.

They take issue with populist leaders and a line of writers from Edward Gibbon to Niall Ferguson who maintain that Rome fell because of immigrants (‘barbarian invasions’) and the abandonment of traditional culture while subsequently arguing that Western renewal depends on closing borders and returning to an ancestral faith.

Why Empires Fall, drawing on Heather’s 2005 book The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, argues on the basis of recent archaeological finds and historiography that contact with barbarian tribes was a lot more complicated than previously assumed, thus warranting a range of different conclusions.

Heather says that “long-lived imperial systems have a kind of a life cycle to them, that the way they operate transforms both themselves and the world around them” - they bring about economic changes within their borders and in the periphery, altering strategic power in ways “that makes it more difficult for that imperial system to keep on working” as it used to previously.

Imperial expansion thus generates the seeds of its own decline; its sustenance depends on constantly making adjustments with new realities. The West, they argue, needs to keep that in mind as it contemplates its own future.

The rise of Rome

Rome began as a conquest state incorporating new provinces; the empire created financial and legal structures that allowed trade and landowners to thrive and armies to be maintained, it instituted a recognizable common culture marked by the use of Latin, Roman law, dress, architecture and imperial religion(s).

Provincial elites that were socialized into Roman ways prospered, local economies developed by producing their own goods and thereby moved prosperity away from the Italian heartland to the provinces and beyond.

The Roman state had to trade and politically deal with Germanic and other tribes on the periphery (to ensure supplies to troops, for instance). Contact with empire led to outsiders adopting Roman customs; those who cooperated with Rome, formed military alliances or supplied soldiers and slaves, while also raiding its territories when convenient.

This was a process of constant exchange that over time changed both the militaries and political organization of those in the periphery. Economic change transformed tribal social structures; it heightened inequalities within their societies and created new political elites. Tribes adopted military technologies and consolidated into fewer, larger confederations which were eventually strong enough exert pressure on Rome as and when opportunities arose.

The Roman Empire was also unsettled by exogenous shocks that generated far-reaching changes. Rome had to contend with the rise of Persia through the Sassanian dynasty in the third century that forced it to commit troops to the East, undertake military reforms and increase revenue extraction from Roman towns. The Huns from the Eurasian steppe subsequently put pressure on tribes from Germania at various points in the fourth and fifth century. Two groups of Goths arrived at the Danube in 376 seeking asylum, which eventually led to war that Rome lost at Hadrianople.

The next hundred years are marked by wars, the sack of Rome in 410 by Alaric the Visigoth, the rise of Attila the Hun and the decline of the Hunnic empire after him. There is through this period, constant alliance-building and breaking with tribal groups in the inner periphery; regular dynastic instability and efforts by Roman emperors to simultaneously keep the landowning class happy while maintaining adequate armies to protect frontiers.

Landowning elites at this time also defected to Germanic confederations when convenient. Over time groups like the Goths, Vandals, Alans and Suevi chipped away at the empire establishing independent but geographically fluid kingdoms in key regions as Gaul, Spain and North Africa, depriving Rome of vital tax revenues, necessitating more war which eventually exhausted the Western part of empire by 476.

Western parallels

The modern West has had similar trajectories – the Roman empire instituted legal and cultural norms that allowed capitalism to emerge and develop by medieval and modern eras, first through northern Italy, then Spain and Portugal, Holland, France, Britain and the United States.

Settler colonies were the equivalent of Rome’s provinces, transferring resources from the East to the West, aided by slaves and immigrants who powered their economies. “At its peak, in the decades straddling the turn of the twentieth century, some 55 million Europeans left for the ‘New World’.”

Modern empires also offered opportunities for enterprising entrepreneurs like the Vanderbilts in the US and Tatas in India to generate vast wealth through contacts and networks. Political elites in colonized countries, like their economic counterparts, also benefited from opportunities afforded by Western conquest (and liberalism) that helped them to challenge empire while it was enriching itself.

Moving forward, the US, like Rome, attained hegemony after establishing postwar institutions like the World Bank, IMF, GATT and the United Nations and spread its values of liberty, democracy and free markets. But just as Rome generated prosperity and changes in societies around it, a Western-led globalization has now seen the centre of gravity of the world economy shift back to the east with the rise of China, India and other Asian countries.

Postwar prosperity generated political shifts too. The US intervened at various points in Latin America, Iran, Vietnam etc to keep developing countries in line but the latter are now pushing back in trade talks and other negotiations with the West. The West’s “share of global GDP has fallen by more than a quarter in less than two decades” and it is unable to enforce its writ abroad as it used to.

What the West can do

Heather and Rapley argue that the West’s relative decline is inevitable but that it can maintain its prosperity, provided citizens and leaders take the right decisions in years ahead. They suggest four things that the West can do to adjust to new realities – and these are particularly pertinent in the context of Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency in view of his abrasive, ‘America-first’ outlook.

First, recognise that anti-immigration rhetoric and isolationism are not fit for purpose. Western leaders should be honest about immigrants rather than carelessly compare them to barbarians infiltrating Rome, since there are clear differences between the two situations. Germanic tribes pushed into the Roman realm because of pressure from the Huns, and Rome could not control the movements of people the way modern states are largely able to through technology and migration policy, notwithstanding dramatic arrivals in Europe by boats.

Ancient migrations were also zero sum affairs since groups competed for land – the main economic asset at the time – whereas modern migrants generate value in a variety of ways and expand economic growth in host countries. An IMF study indicated that a 1 percent increase in immigrant population provides a 2 percent boost to long-term GDP. Over one-third of NHS doctors in the UK come from abroad and the West has effectively offloaded the cost of producing medical staff to other countries by importing migrants.

Two, understand that “outright confrontation with a superpower competitor is not a good way to preserve what remains of your own preeminence.” Heather and Rapley say that that is the main lesson which Roman history has to offer and point to Rome’s relationship with rising Persia from the third century onward.

Both powers “never liked each other. They quarrelled over borders, trade links, and the control of clients; they also trumpeted competing ideologies.” But on realising that they were not strong enough to “subjugate the other, conflict was generally confined to a series of squabbles…which didn’t attack the vital workings of the system.” And when emperor Justinian (527-65) violated this norm with his aggressive reign, it set off a process of confrontation and 25 years of total war in the seventh century that left both empires “utterly bankrupt.”

In the light of this, Heather and Rapley urge Western states to “adopt a nuanced position towards China…They need to separate Chinese policies which threaten what’s best in the Western tradition from those reflecting China’s perfectly legitimate desire to resume its accustomed place as one of the world’s great powers.”

Three, the West’s record of using institutions to its advantage and intervening in internal politics to advance its interests has created widespread resentment in developing countries. If the US and the West are serious about sustaining partnerships with rising powers and the developing world, then they would have recraft international architecture in ways that shares power – especially in key international organisations.

Heather and Rapley maintain that Western concepts like the rule of law, impartial public institutions, a free press “massively enhance the overall quality of life in any country”. But they write that those values will have more purchase in other societies if the West was to be more open to non-western concerns. “Enlarged membership on more equal terms” would “provide a mechanism for some of the better products of modern Western civilization to become hardwired into the new global order.”

Lastly, Why Empires Fall also draws parallels between the financial condition of later Roman Empire  and the modern West now. Rome gradually lost control of land, either through war or concessions to Germanic groups, thereby denuding its own tax base. “The western half of the Roman Empire collapsed into non-existence when the centre found itself left with insufficient funds to maintain its fiscal contract, and defend the interests of its tax-paying, tax-raising elites.”

Western governments now are in a similar quandary with huge levels of debts and a refusal by political elites to tax the wealthy. This is creating a crisis of public services and threatening social security which is stoking public unrest in Western countries. Heather and Rapley call for a new fiscal contract that can possibly “include debt jubilees (especially on student debt), a universal basic income…policies to increase home-building …and perhaps a shift towards larger taxes on wealth as opposed to income.”

It is difficult to envisage Western leaders and citizens take these steps, caught as they are in polarised debates on immigration and tax policy. Governments also cannot be seen as sharing power in international organisations especially in the context of the new Cold War which has set in with China. But Why Empires Fall – with its fascinating, authoritative sweep – offers a persuasive policy framework for leaders to consider in the face of crises in the present.