Why America Is Not a New Rome

America's post--Cold War strategic dominance and its pre-recession affluence inspiredpundits to make celebratory comparisons to ancient Rome at its most powerful. Now, with America nolonger perceived as invulnerable, engaged in protracted fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, andsuffering the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, comparisons are to the bloated,decadent, ineffectual later Empire. In Why America Is Not a New Rome, Vaclav Smil looks at thesecomparisons in detail, going deeper than the facile analogy-making of talk shows and glossy magazinearticles. He finds profound differences. On the surface, the vision of America as the new Rome hasresonance. There are obvious, intriguing parallels and amusing--even disconcerting--similarities.The America-Rome analogy deserves a closer look, and this is what Smil, a scientist and a lifelongstudent of Roman history, offers. He does this by focusing on several fundamental concerns: the verymeaning of empire; the actual extent and nature of Roman and American power; the role of knowledgeand innovation in the two states and the importance of machines and energy sources; and demographicand economic basics--population dynamics, illness, death, wealth, and misery. America is not alatter-day Rome, Smil finds, and we need to understand this in order to look ahead without theburden of counterproductive analogies. Superficial similarities do not imply long-term political,demographic, or economic outcomes identical to Rome's.

Vaclav Smil is Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba and the author of many books, including Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years (2008), Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems (2007), and Energy at the Crossroads: Global Perspectives and Uncertainties (2005)(all published by the MIT Press). He was awarded the 2007 Olivia Schieffelin Nordberg Award for excellence in writing and editing in the population sciences.