Manging the Barbarians

[Norfolk]

Lack of assimilation is something which has not only harmed our percieved sovereignty but due to the volume of illegal immigrants it has affected all portions of our political elements in efforts to get the recognition for letting it be ok.

The Roman empire was amazing in that it went through so many different types of difficulties ranging from internal political subterfuge, to client countries turning against it for every reason from religion to liberality.

Not unlike what Western countries are going through now. Look at how many people want to come here because their families' and their own personal and financial prospects are so much better here, and then turn around and hate the society that offered them this same opportunity? Yes, there are clear, even grave wrongs in our society, but that is no justification to want to see it harmed or destroyed.

Active malcontents and terrorists may be an absolute minority amongst such people, but it was a small pro-barbarian faction (albeit ethnic origin unknown) that plotted and executed the opening of one of Rome's gates to the Visigoths in 410 A.D. that led to the sacking of the city. There can be real long-term dangers in seeking to redress the crimes and errors of the past, real or imagined, by going to the opposite extreme and seek to "reform" society for its past evils by deliberately suppressing its own cultural mores while bringing in large numbers of people who may be unable to properly adjust to the host society. These problems are really only just beginning for the West.

I think I've gone off topic-here.

Anyway, I think that using financial carrots and the like to influence foreign states or tribes, and especially the cultivation of client-states, is by far a better means of achieving strategic objectives where and when possible than by military force. Military force should only be used when necessary, for the sake of the survival of the country or its allies. It is much too expensive, and much too easily used up or tied up when it is used as a means to achieve "strategic" (or rather, ideological/economic/political, etc.) ends that do not merit it.

It is much cheaper and easier on the economy when from a position of economic and military strength, money is used to achieve legitimate strategic objectives. Conversely, when dealing from a position of military weakness, the use of money to help achieve strategic (and now operational or even just tactical objectives) is much more expensive (after all, you're paying for the full shot of the use of military force yourself now, and you no longer have the luxury of being able to use this force elsewhere), much more risky, and everyone knows that you're doing this because you're military weak.

As much as anything else, I suspect that military over-extension leads to economic weakness that in turn results in a cycle of progressive weakening of one's military power, because when you're weak, others tends to pile on and your need for the use of military force only increases. The Romans discovered that, in part, the hard way. Sorry for the long-winded post.