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Ancient Rome had this problem, which it 'solved' by selectively permitting various tribes to pass the limes (border) on exchange for military service. If the US
by dsq 3y ago
Ancient Rome had this problem, which it 'solved' by selectively permitting various tribes to pass the limes (border) on exchange for military service. If the US is indeed an empire, it may choose this option.
Unfortunately, it did not end well for Rome, althiugh it worked for a while.
- hulitu 3y agoWhy would somebody want to die just because some rich people sell more products (guns ) and become richer ?
- krapp 3y agoWhat are you implying, that war is some kind of racket?
- FreshStart 3y agoIt's the bloody germans who you have to watch out for. Varus, Varus, return me my legions.
- ElevenLathe 3y agoI believe we already have a version of this, where non-citizen can join up in exchange for a jump in the naturalization line or similar.
- gumby 3y agoThe US does have that system. And of all the theories as to why Rome fell, I really don't think the recruitment of others into the legion is really much of a factor (except, I suppose, a second- or third-order effect of it allowing the various armies to be larger)
- ffgjgf1 3y agoThe system broke down when they stopped trying to disperse immigrants across wide areas and directly integrate them into the social/military system. Instead they allowed them to settle as a group, maintain their own leadership and armies and just function basically as ‘vassals’ states of Rome and we know how that ended…
- gumby 3y agoBut that is nothing like how the US military operates so that’s irrelevant to jsq’s flawed analogy.
- dsq 3y agoI agree with you that the US military does not currently operate this way, but if the level of recruitment keeps falling (which is the article's title, after all), its not far off that the govt make a large scale citizenship for military/law endorcement service deal with poeple eager to enter. This is what Rome did.
- jjk166 3y agoOn the contrary, it was after the system began breaking down that the empire was no longer able to disperse the incoming tribes the way it had for centuries prior and needed them to behave as vassals due to the lack of means both to effectively impose leadership and to govern effectively. This coincides with a more general increase in the number and autonomy of provinces throughout the empire for similar reasons.
- yomlica8 3y agoIIRC Rome actually had a pretty good system for this, where they defeated any large migrating tribes in battle (even if it was kind of a joke battle, a lot of them were fleeing from other forces that had already drove them out) and then disarmed and spread the families out into different provinces. This broke the large potentially dangerous group up and kind of forced them to integrate into the roman system instead of being a different entity inside the empire. It didn't even really stop working, some bad leaders were just to lazy to do it towards the end.
- LinuxBender 3y agoI served a long time ago and there were several immigrants in boot-camp with me. A couple of them barely spoke english but they managed to follow instructions just as well as everyone else so I guess it worked out.