Post B98jmt00H8ZB6OCRSi by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
(DIR) More posts by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
(DIR) Post #B98jmrflCumOzJilGq by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
1 likes, 1 repeats
In 216 BC, during the Second Punic War, the Roman Republic fought the Battle of Cannae against the forces of the Carthaginian general Hannibal. It was an utter and total defeat for Rome; its army of more than 86,000 soldiers was slaughtered, captured, or dispersed. The number of people killed in a single day at Cannae remains among the highest in the history of warfare, even two thousand years later. Cannae was just the latest of a string of defeats that had cost the Roman Republic something like a fifth of all its military-age males. And, in short order, Rome, then centered on the Italian Peninsula, raised yet another army and fought on. By 201 BC, Rome was triumphant over Carthage, stripping it of its empire. Half a century later, Rome would fight the Third Punic War, this time annihilating Carthage entirely.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae1/
(DIR) Post #B98jms5Hg1CEGTf93Q by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
1 likes, 1 repeats
Centuries later, in 451 AD, Rome fought the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains against the Huns, led by Atilla. By this time, Rome was no longer a republic limited to Italy; instead, it was an empire that ruled the entire Mediterranean basin and most of Europe. It was incomprehensibly larger and more populous than it had been in 216 BC, with far more resources on which it could (theoretically, at least) draw.The army that Rome fielded against Atilla was *smaller* than the army that fought Hannibal, perhaps no more than 50,000 men. Of this, a significant number were not actually Romans, but rather Visigothic allies. One historian estimates that even a tiny standing army of about 30,000 soldiers would have cost the empire about 2/3 of the entire income from its western half. Most historians agree that Rome won at the Catalaunian Plains, but it was the last major military operation that the western empire undertook.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Catalaunian_Plains2/
(DIR) Post #B98jmsSKILczPwRXyC by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
1 likes, 1 repeats
In other words, Rome was vastly larger, more populous, and theoretically much richer than it had been centuries earlier, and could mobilize only a fraction of its previous manpower, at much greater cost, for a much more tenuous victory, after which the empire eventually fell entirely.I bring that up in the context of two recent reports. The first is by a think tank in Washington, DC, that estimates the US has expended most of its shore-based missiles capable of intercepting Iranian ballistic missiles:https://www.csis.org/analysis/renewed-iran-war-would-test-diminished-interceptor-inventoriesThe second is a news story, apparently leaked by someone in the US government, that the US has expended most of its long-range precision missiles against Iran:https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-stockpile-long-range-missiles-nearly-depleted-iran-war/3/
(DIR) Post #B98jmsklBoNCL74Ghc by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
0 likes, 0 repeats
These are exquisitely complex weapons that are immensely expensive and require years to manufacture. The US cannot replenish its stockpiles of these weapons on anything remotely resembling the timeline on which the US has been waging its absurd war on Iran. The shortage of these munitions seems to have been driving Trump’s latest decision to stop attacking.The US still has vast stockpiles of less sophisticated weapons which it could use against Iran, but their use would require steps the US is extremely reluctant to take: moving troops nearer to or into Iran, or moving naval ships closer to Iranian shores, or flying more manned aircraft over Iran. The US ability to strike Iran from a distance that minimizes risk to US personnel is shrinking to zero. The US ability to intercept Iranian strikes is similarly shrinking.4/
(DIR) Post #B98jmt00H8ZB6OCRSi by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
0 likes, 0 repeats
How, we might wonder, did this happen? The US spends close to a *trillion dollars* each year. Donald Trump’s unique incompetence explains a bit, but cannot account for an imperial power that routinely spends a trillion dollars a year on its military faring so poorly against a much smaller, poorer, and weaker adversary in a war of choice.The US military once strode the earth like a colossus. How did it end up here?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States5/
(DIR) Post #B98jmtIn9Hay2ezRkO by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
0 likes, 0 repeats
Joseph Tainter might suggest that the same thing happened to the US that happened to Rome: over-complexitication, leading to diminishing marginal returns on investment in complexity. As Rome’s empire grew, so too did its army. So too did the number of bureaucrats to manage that army, and the amount collected in taxes to feed it, and the number of forts to base it in, and so on.All that additional complexity—interconnections, specializations, and, above all, layers of hierarchy—consumed resources. When the empire was growing, that additional complexity bought returns in the form of loot. But eventually the empire grew so large, its interconnections so long and tenuous, that conquests slowed and the empire was forced to extract its operating revenue from an increasingly squeezed peasantry. Eventually, the costs of maintaining all that complexity became too much to justify it and, after centuries of decline, the empire collapsed.6/
(DIR) Post #B98jmtbE2kLAxpcATo by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
0 likes, 0 repeats
Blair Fix invites us instead to look at this problem through the lens of Thorstein Veblen’s theory of industry (productive activity to meet material needs) vs business (interference with industry to generate profits).If we compare how much money the US spends on its military against the amount of energy the US military consumes in order to do all the things it does—a proxy for its “industry” output—we find that these have been diverging for decades. That is, ever more money spent on the military isn’t generating ever more *stuff* in the form of goods and activities. Instead, all that money is being consumed as rents: by a massive bureaucracy, by military contractors and suppliers (or rather, the shareholders and executives at those firms), by politicians lobbied by those firms, and so on.https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2026/05/22/the-business-of-war-and-the-mismeasurement-of-military-might/7/
(DIR) Post #B98jmtsF1Tx3obZl0C by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
1 likes, 1 repeats
Aren’t these two thinkers describing the same problem in different terms, though? Tainter’s theory of collapse, Veblen’s theory of capitalists sabotaging production to enrich themselves. Maybe throw in Peter Turchin’s theory of collapse through elite overproduction, or perhaps even Marx’s anticipated collapse of capitalist through a falling rate of profit. Each of these ideas is, to crudely summarize, saying the same thing: society can only support rentier elites for so long before the cost becomes untenable. As it does so, those elites will try to grab more of what is left for themselves in a desperate bid to remain in control, accelerating the decline of the overall system.8/