This is a truly great book that explains the current international situation. You should get it.
Most empires in history were empires of conquest. A polity got strong, so it conquered a neighbor. This made the polity even stronger, enabling the empire to conquer another neighbor. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you come across a neighbor too strong to conquer or your grandkids get lazy and the provinces rebel. This leads to several features:
The Roman Empire was built 500 BC - 140 BC, approximately. At the start of this period, Rome was a tiny city state somewhere in the unimportant area called Latium. When it ended, Rome ruled the Mediterranean - but not completely. Even Italy was a mosaic of supposedly independent city-states, bound to Rome by alliances. Rome proceeded to survive for about six centuries in the west and its passing was mourned, not celebrated. This shows us Rome was not an Empire of Conquest.
Thomas Madden posits that there is a second type of empire, "Empire of Trust", which results when a polity proves its power and trustworthiness to the point that other polities prefer for it to be in charge than the alternative. Empires of trust have these characteristics:
He proves that all of these attributes occurred in Rome during its expansion stage. For example, in the second Punic war, there was a Roman ally that defected to the other side, Locri. After it was conquered, the commanding officer pillaged the local temple and in general mistreated the locals. They appealed to the Roman Senate, which had all the senior leaders brought to Rome for trial. The C.O. committed suicide, and his chief lieutenants were beheaded.
Empires of trust grow because the world is a dangerous place, and they need allies. Then, when the enemies of those allies attack, the empire needs to defend them. The defeated enemies are then turned into allies and the cycle continues.
We have huge forces stationed in West Europe and Japan. Our navy isn't as big as the next two combined - it's bigger than all of the rest of the world's navies combined. It's hard not to call the US an empire.
At the same time, our provinces are limited to such rich plums are Guam, Puerto Rico, etc. Our lack of imperial desires is evident by the way we conquered Germany in WWI, and then left. After WWII, when the US had to conquer Germany a second time, US troops stayed. But the US did not keep Germany as a conquered province for long - it took just five years for defeated Germany to regain its independence.
There is a lot more there, and anybody who knows US history can fill up additional details. Countries conquered by the US tend to become democracies, not provinces ruled from Washington.
After Rome conquered the world it has a bunch of civil wars and eventually became a monarchy for all practical purposes. But the founding fathers knew Roman History, and specifically tried to prevent this in the Republic they were building.
The Roman Republic failed because it had no separation between military and civilian officials. So soldiers in a particular legion would be loyal to their senator rather than the Roman government (once they became professional soldiers - the early Roman armies were citizen-soldiers who went home after the battle). In the US, this is not the case. There is only one politician with authority on the military, and his authority ends at the end of his term.
The author reminds us the George Bush did not get the job by having his legion conquer Washington D.C., so he is no Caesar.
The Romans got a lot of their high culture from Greece. When they first intervened in Greece, it was to secure Greek freedom and out of respect for Greeks. But as time wore on and they saw how the Greeks behaved, they lost that respect. They still liked the culture, but saw the Greeks themselves as immature has-beens.
The Greeks welcomed the Romans first as liberators. But once the threat to Greek freedom (Macedonia) was eliminated, they started having second thoughts. They considered the Romans uncultured boors, good only to fight. They said and wrote it. The kept whining about the loss of Greek freedom while reducing the size of their militaries, secure in the knowledge that they can whine safely.
Any similarity to a region of the modern world?
I'm Jewish. My ancestors included terrorists that would be at home in any Al Qaeda training camp. Rome tried almost everything to pacify the Jews before it got to outright war, and then after the first war, and then after the second. After the third, the Romans were so fed up that they outlawed Judaism for a number of years.
It took a lot of fighting, and plenty of Jewish dead, but eventually the Jews figured that God does not want them to fight against their gentile neighbors or the Roman government. It was obvious it would take a miracle for the Jews to win, but people who think they fight for God expect miracles. Fanatics do not respond to anything other than being killed. Only when all the Jewish fanatics were dead could the sane leaders rebuild Judaism as something the world can live with.