The Similarities Between The Roman Military And The US

At the peak of the Roman empire, they controlled over 2 million square miles of territory. Spanning from modern day Spain to Israel, and even some parts of eastern Iraq . It went from the border of Scotland all the way down to the northern coastline of Africa. With all of this land, Rome built hundreds of miles of roads connecting the empire. This road network was not just from trade, but it allowed the most important part of the empire to move around; the Roman military. The Roman military was the backbone of the Roman empire, they helped enforce laws and collect taxes, bult public works like roads, crushed rebellions, and protected Rome from outside invaders. Rome wasn’t always this big. If it wasn’t for how the Roman army operated, Rome

The Romans would often appoint a local leader, called pro magistrate, to control the region once they were conquered under the Roman army, and eventually placed in a Roman governor. During the time of the Roman empire, the emperor himself was responsible for appointing these leaders. While this control systems were in theory supposed to separate the emperor from direct control over the entire Roman empire, it was not successful. Due to the appointment by the emperor, he would often overrule or sway the opinions of these local leaders. This is not unlike the local groups that the US props up which were overthrowing socialist and communist governments during the 20th century. Some examples are the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Bay of Pigs Invasion, and many coups in South America. America would often give military support, either through supplying weapons, training troops, or even secretly sending troops to help fight and overthrow the government. After the successful overthrowing the government, the US would have some power over the new government, allowing them to influence their rules and

The Roman army, while it did have forced conscription, mainly relied on volunteers to bolster up their army. The US is no different. The US army is all volunteer, and we do have a draft system, where the US government can call up more soldiers during war time. Another similarity was the connection of private armies used in the military. Many leaders (e.g. Pompey) would assemble their own private armies and help fight with the Roman empire. Furthermore, the Roman empire would need to hire mercenaries, sometimes they were speclises troops, such as Numidian cavalry, Cretan archers, and Balearic slingers, but other times whole legions were just composed of mercenaries. The United States is also quite similar, just not in the way you might expect it to be. We see the “traditional” form of mercenaries through the US’s use of private security contractors (PSC), especially in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The DoD has admitted that they will often use PSCs whenever they need a quick bolstering of troops in a region, and that they often worked independently from the military, staying in their own separate squad. The 2nd way that mercenaries are used in the US military comes from the military industrial complex. This nontraditional form of mercines is the government outsourcing work and production of weapons, armor, and vehicles to companies like Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon