byzantine history is really truly surreal and fascinating and horrible, all at the same time. any would be prince, or dauphin, should be far more well-versed in it's intricacies than i am.

i think the best way to describe it is like something out of star trek, when you periodically had kirk and the gang run into these creatures that were so far ahead of them that the humans couldn't even recognize the truth as it was. the byzantines existed past the initial fall of rome, all the way through the dark ages and into the beginning of the renaissance, although they were drastically reduced by the time the latter started. there is even a theory - backed up by evidence in the form of migration - that a substantive underpinning of the renaissance, as it existed in rome itself, was a consequence of the collapse of constantinople as a major power. but, i digress.

the period we call rome "byzantium" is pretty much exactly the period where the remnants of roman and greek civilization were defending themselves against a multi-directional onslaught from the barbarian world, a process that took a thousand years for the romans to finally lose. and, in that period, the theme that constantly reinforces itself is just how much more advanced the romans really were. if we had a modern concept of species at the time, we may have been tempted to label the romans superhuman in intellect, at that junction. there really was a substantive difference, then.

so, the thing that comes up over and over again is these roman generals that just effortlessly treat these barbarians in their complicated configurations as figures on a risk board. if you look at maps from the period, it restricts the roman empire, proper, as greece, turkey, the balkans and (usually) southern italy, but the actual reality is that they were the hegemonic power all the way around the black sea, and they had the ability to project power all the way over the steppes, and far into central asia. the generals in constantinople no doubt had a better understanding of the intricacies of the tribal allegiances in the steppes than the tribes in the steppes did, themselves. i mean, they kept histories, to start with - the barbarians didn't. the difference between understanding reality in segments of centuries or millennia, or understanding it in segments of decades (at most), is pretty daunting in managing the world.

this wasn't without consequence. by the end, the barbarians saw the imperial throne with contempt, and spoke of little more than treachery in the context of alliances - in the end, nobody trusted the emperor or his generals anymore. but, that was a process that took centuries, and there wouldn't have been an empire to defend had these manipulations not run their course.

i tend to have little patience for people that want to understand history through a lens of morality, and i actually find it scary to hear people talk about geopolitics in these moralistic terms. if the byzantines had stuck with their allies without reference to changing facts on the ground, they would have been raped and slaughtered in no time.

america likes to pretend it has a history in roman civilization, but it constantly demonstrates that it doesn't understand the subtleties of it. moscow is the true third rome, not washington. and, we should let the empire govern.

if america seeks to be the empire, it needs to throw it's bible away and read more machiavelli.

the liberals are supposed to do better than this