< Magazine Index > < Index for this Edition > < Subscribe >

       Their symbol was an eagle identical to Rome’s, and “shrines” and standards incorporating it were mounted everywhere. As in Rome’s imperial days, some prominent citizens were actually declared gods, and the word was not always used with tongue in cheek. Several emperors were depicted on coins, in Roman fashion, with the word “GOD” (divus, in Latin) nearby. If the connection was not explicitly stated, it still could be inferred.

       This great power could transport huge armies almost anywhere in the known world, within days or even hours. The nation considered itself a “union,” a “republic,” a “democracy,” yet was in fact an empire, assembled and unified by the cannon, the bullet, and “the long spoon,” as one of its satirists described the bayonet. Atop the capitol building, in plain view of anyone who cared to look, was a statue of the Roman god of war. 

       Warfare was, in large measure, the nation’s business, though always under the euphemism of “defense.” Deep underground, missiles with global range and nuclear payloads stood ready and fueled, awaiting the command that would send them hurtling toward another, hostile power if the need arose. Other, similar weapons rode in launch tubes aboard submarines longer than football fields, or in the bellies of bombers aloft. Novels celebrating these weapons and the crews who manned them topped the best-seller lists, and the public took a vicarious thrill in accounts of the destruction they would wreak on the foe.

       Roughly a fourth of the nation’s federal budget, which ran into the trillions of dollars, was thought to go for preparations for war. Yet no one really knew just how much this military infrastructure and its operation cost per year. The actual total was uncertain, for huge sums were diverted into secret, or “black,” programs concealed by innocuous entries in budget documents. 

       What information was released, could be astonishing. A seemingly simple tool such as a screwdriver, bought for military purposes, might cost as much as an automobile. The price of a toilet seat for military use – about $600 in 1985 currency – became a national scandal when news of it was leaked to the public. 

       Yet this item was merely, so to speak, one leaf in a forest. The cost of one solitary aircraft (of dubious utility, its critics charged) would buy a hot meal for the entire population of India. I recall my father, an aerospace engineer, describing how a single test flight of a single large plane consumed enough money to build a respectable mansion.

       Society was militarized to a degree that some nations would find incredible. In the city where I was born and raised, perhaps every tenth person on the street either was in uniform or was engaged otherwise with the armed forces. Locally, it was impossible to avoid seeing the hardware of war: jet fighters overhead, artillery on public display, and warships’ upperworks looming over the skyline. 

       So it was ironic that these people were not themselves great warriors, unlike the Spartans or Parthians before them. There was no need. As it happened, broad seas protected their eastern and western flanks, while to the north and south were weak and generally friendly nations with the wisdom to keep their grumbling about their mighty neighbor within discreet limits. 

       By a shrewd combination of force, threats and allurement, this superpower either pacified or intimidated would-be foes; and when its people, through their leaders, actually declared hostilities, they usually had allies who took the brunt of the fighting, or else they picked adversaries so feeble as to make victory all but certain. 

       But there was a notable exception to this pattern, and that exception said much about the empire’s true priorities, as opposed to its declared ideals. 

       Though this empire made a tremendous noise about “freedom” (its symbols included a statuesque goddess known as “Lady Liberty”), its government at one point in the 19th century actually fought a hideous internecine war to suppress the exercise of freedom: specifically, to prevent individual provinces from abandoning the “union” and going their own way. 

       During that war, the emperor of this land of “the free” went so far as to suspend habeas corpus. The contrast between rhetoric and reality during these years of conflict was so stark and embarrassing that the war itself was subsequently dismissed as the “late unpleasantness,” as if those words could conceal the tremendous volume of spilled blood and the loss of a generation of young men. A century and a half later, the wounds left by that war had yet to heal completely. Furthermore, this land of “freedom” kept much of its population in jail. At one point, one in every 165 persons was incarcerated. That amounted to some 11 million people, or approximately the population of Calcutta, New York City, or Seoul. A vast constellation of prisons stretched over thousands of miles, east and west, north and south, from the Arctic to the tropics. The range of offenses bearing prison terms was wide, and their number was tremendous. They ranged from first-degree murder to unauthorized possession of a modest wild plant used in cancer treatment. 

Go to Next Page of This Article - C L I C K    H E R E -
.