Italy's Referendum: the Great Defeat of Matteo Renzi, as commented by Leon Tolstoy

Matteo Renzi, Italy's prime minister, portraited as Napoleon Bonaparte on the front cover of an Italian magazine of a few years ago. For some reason, successful leaders tend to embark in risky enterprises that put their leadership at stake and, often, they fail utterly. It happened to Napoleon with the invasion of Russia and it happened to Matteo Renzi with the recent constitutional referendum that ended up with a disastrous defeat for him.

There is a clear parallel between the results of the Italian constitutional referendum of Dec 4th, 2016 and those of the Brexit referendum and the defeat of Hillary Clinton in the US. In all cases, we saw devastating failures for the mainstream media. People refused to listen to the messages beamed to them. They had the feeling of being swindled and probably they knew that, when you start suspecting that you are being swindled, you probably are. And they reacted accordingly.

Something is deeply changing in the world. Top-down, government-controlled propaganda has been used with great efficacy for more than a century, but now it is being defeated by bottom-up, viral information that ebbs and flows in the Web. Is it a good thing?  For sure, the defeat of the Empire of lies is a good thing, but it is also true that the  opposite of a lie is not necessarily the truth. All we can say is that it is happening and that the old ways don't work anymore.

On this point, perhaps it is worth re-reading Tolstoy when he describes the surprise that Napoleon felt at the battle of Borodino, during the Russian campaign, when he, too, found that the old ways didn't work anymore.

_________________________________

Alexander Tolstoy: "War and Peace", Book 10, Chapter XXXIV

Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely he loses.

His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and Friedland- yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally become impotent.

All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization among his own troops.

Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola, Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was happening to his troops.

Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes- only a de Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.

But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and that the least accident might now- with the fight balanced on such a strained center- destroy him and his army.

Which Roman Emperor Would Donald Trump Be?

Comparing Donald Trump to Emperor Hadrian (76 – 138 CE) may seem ludicrous after that Marguerite Yourcenar presented Hadrian to us as a wise and enlightened emperor in her book "Memoirs of Hadrian". Yet, Hadrian found himself facing problems similar to those that all US presidents face nowadays. And some of Hadrian's solutions were not so different than those that Donald Trump is proposing today; for instance, building a wall to keep the Barbarians out. 

All empires in history have gone through similar trajectories: rapid expansion at the beginning, then stasis, then decline and collapse. That was the trajectory of the Roman Empire and there is no reason why the modern empire that we call "Globalization" would follow a different one. It seems clear that the Global Empire has reached its limits and it is poised for a decline in the future.

So, we find ourselves in the conditions that the Roman Empire faced during the 1st and 2nd centuries CE. The turning point for the Romans may have been the battle of Teutoburg, 7 CE, where three Roman legions were annihilated by a band of German barbarians. That was a signal that something wasn't working so well any longer with the Empire. The cost of wars had simply become too much for an Empire that was short of resources and had reached its practical limits to expansion. Then, the Emperors faced a dilemma: keep an aggressive stance and try to continue the expansion or retrench and defend what the Empire already had?  

Different emperors gave different answers to the question. Most of them were prudent; engaging only in cautious and limited conquests. But some were ambitious; the best example being Emperor Trajan (53 – 117) who embarked on a difficult campaign against Dacia with the objective of gaining control of the gold mines in the region. The campaign was a success in military terms, but it was extremely expensive and it badly strained the finances of the Empire. Trajan's successor, Hadrian, hastened to stop all attempts of expansion, to retreat from areas that were not defendable, and to sign peace treaties with the traditional enemies of the Roman Empire. His legacy includes Hadrian's wall, a fortified line that defended the Roman territories in Britannia from the Northern peoples. He also built and reinforced other defensive lines that would become the standard defense element for the Roman Empire. Hadrian may have been a wise emperor, but it is dubious that the walls were a good idea, and their costs may well have bankrupted the Empire in the long run.

Now, fast forward to our time: the next Global Emperor may be Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. Both will face the same problem: defending the vast Global Empire has become terribly expensive in a phase of diminishing resources and with the threat of climate change looming. Trump seems to have understood, at least in part, that some limits have been reached. His foreign policy is non-interventionist. It also includes a reduction of the financing for NATO and negotiates with Russia. It is not unlike Hadrian's policy of retrenchment and, like Hadrian, Trump plans a defensive wall at the borders. Just as for Hadrian's fortifications, the wisdom of this idea is at least dubious. 

Conversely, Trump's adversary, Hillary Clinton, has been much more aggressive in the past as secretary of state and she will probably maintain that stance as president. If Clinton were a Roman Emperor, she would look more like Trajan in her attitudes, or perhaps like Germanicus, a Roman general and candidate emperor who led the legions into a dangerous military adventure in Germania in 15-16 CE, until a more cautious emperor (Tiberius) recalled him and probably got rid of him by poisoning. Where will President Clinton lead the Global Legions? As the Romans learned, victory is never guaranteed but it is always expensive. And excessive military expenses are, normally, what takes empires to their doom. 

Whatever it happens with the upcoming elections in the US, squandering our remaining resources in new wars or in defensive walls will not be a good idea. In addition to resource depletion, we are facing a problem that the Roman Empire didn't face: that of rapid climate change that may do to us much more damage than any Barbarian army did to the Romans. Neither Trump nor Clinton seem to have understood this point.

Will we ever find a wise Emperor who will lead us to fight against the real threat, that of climate change? The future will tell.