Looking at Ancient China and specifically the many different philosophical teachings and ways of government could be very useful to me as an officer in the fleet. For example different people may require different styles of leadership. A normal officer would mostly follow Confucius’ concepts of leadership where a good leader is an ethical leader but that ability to be ethical would certainly depend on the ethics that that leader ascribed to such as utilitarianism, the idea that if the end goal is achieved then whatever means have been used to achieve it are ultimately acceptable, or Kantian teaching where a thing is morally allowable only if the it meets a “categorical imperative” which says that the action must be allowable under any circumstance for anyone. Some elements of legalism are applicable to the navy but only I believe when all other ways of attempting to reason out a more traditional method. This part of legalism would be the two handles and not the other facets of the idea. Grabbing power for the sake of power and increasing the power of the Navy alone has no place in the US Military. Daoism has no place in leadership as it promotes a lazy attitude towards life where as the military needs a much more efficient method. The idea of the duties of the emperor also applies to the navy as even the upper levels of the government has a job and although the exact duties that must be performed are not the same, the idea that the most senior office must be held responsible for duties is essential to how the navy functions. The idea of promoting the men and women who are good at what they do instead of where they come from is also critical to remember as naval officers must choose who to promote and give people qualifications. Without the acknowledgement of this the officers wouldn’t be held to the standard of only promoting the best and the navy would not function as intended. The final way that the ancient Chinese can help to teach the habits of the current naval officer is to remember to study history but not to blindly follow it. The philosopher George Santayana summarized this best with the quote of “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it” without the lessons of the past to help us with making decisions we will continue to mess up. These lessons are important such as not invading Russia in the winter.

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George Williams

The Mongol empire and to an extent the Russian empire under the USSR were very similar in their outward perception that the nation was weak and then became very strong very quickly. The pre-USSR Czarist Russia was a very backward and old school nation with many people still being surfs and keeping up large amounts of small farming plots. While the country was not as split as the nomadic tribes of the Mongols, it was widely accepted that the Russians were fairly weak and slow react to threats. However when the Soviet Union, or USSR was established the country began to rapidly modernize through Stalin’s 5 year plans. In the late 1930’s the nation earned its other similarity to the Mongols, being brutal but tolerant. The Soviet Union was for example much more tolerant of the Jews as opposed to the Germans. This is very evident through German Anti-Jewish Propaganda put out by the Nazi party. The Nazis blamed the Jews for the losing of the First World War along with the other enemies of the Nazi party such as Communists. While the Russians didn’t always treat the Jews the best they didn’t treat their own people that well to begin with. The other way the Russians were similar to the Mongols were that they were a substantial military power once they had formed and organized their military despite Stalin’s purges. They did this by essentially ignoring the well being of the workers and soldiers, and making massive amounts of weapons which they overwhelmed the attacking Germans with. This tactic is very similar to the Mongols who overwhelmed their enemies with massive swooping attacks with more troops in reserve. This is reflected at Kursk where the Russians threw a massive amount of tanks at the oncoming Germans. Primary sources from the battle on both sides account massive amounts of tanks clashing both literally and physically. One German crewman notes that he stopped a charging Russian tank only 26 feet from his own vehicle. The numbers at the battle of Prokhorovka numbered in the thousands of tanks with huge losses on both the German and Russian lines. While the German’s losses were hard to replace, the Russians had a reserve totaling a massive 5000 tanks waiting for their chance to attack. This is very similar to the Mongols who kept some forces in reserve to surprise a tired enemy with fresh and ready attacks.

George Williams

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I think that the Romans had a completely valid fear with the growing popularity of Christianity as any people would have a natural fear of new things. Christianity to the average Roman would have probably had a slightly more fear as first reports probably would have been of a cult following a recently crucified criminal claiming to be the only god. To the average roman this probably would have seemed pretty strange as the Roman pantheon at the time featured several gods and was expanding as new cults tried to assimilate other foreign gods, such as the Egyptian god Isis, in. Further backing to my theory comes from the letter of Pliny the Younger, a lawyer and the author. His most famous writings consisted of several letters to various emperors as well as a great recounting of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the death of Pliny the Elder, his uncle. Pliny seems to be almost at a loss with the Christians as he writes “…to bind themselves by oath, not to do some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.” He seems puzzled at these oaths which we see as fairly normal. This could be because he has been told that they are criminal or just because the Christians seem to be very tied to this. By comparison the Romans tended to have more of these things as one would expect in a large city and definitely a large bureaucracy. I think that the Romans were valid in their initial fears and after that the true nature of overall good was revealed. The fears and hatred could have been compounded by the acts of Christians trying to impose the will of their god on the empire. Acts like this included the attempting halting of gladiatorial games by jumping into the ring. This would have understandably caused significant friction between the Christians and the people they are trying to convert as the Christians are taking away the favorite past time of the uneducated mob. This would have had the same effect as trying to stop people from watching or playing football. There is already a lot of money in the sport and those who stand to lose that money could try and stoke flames over the fears of the Christians. I do not think that the Romans were right to try and stamp out the “cult” as they weren’t harmful and it seemed more of a rash and fearful move with an almost unknown, quickly rising cult.

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Blog 3

George Williams

01MAR19

After the death of Alexander the vast empire was split into a series of smaller kingdoms which were ruled by each of Alexanders generals. They then proceeded to fight against each other until an outside power came in and took over in setting up a singular power. The closest regime change to this was the Syrian revolution as there was a similar splitting of powers with several factions trying to gain control of the whole region until outside powers stepped in and decided a victor. When the revolution began there were several different factions including some questionable fighters who were tolerated as the greater evil needed to be destroyed. This evil was the president of Syria who was responsible for various human rights violations. This fight would lead to the Syrian Civil war which is still on going. As more territory was taken by the different fighters from the Syrian government, the different factions began infighting as well as continuing to fight the government. This is very similar to the splitting of the empire of Alexander with infighting erupting between former allies. From there the Russians and Iranians began to back the government forces. The strong foreign backing helped to the loyalist forces push back the “freedom fighters” who included the volatile ISIS or ISIL. With the loyalist forces hanging on to a sliver of what was their territory, the Russians began to pour in aid. This is similar to the gifting of the kingdom of kingdom of Attalus III from which the Romans took over the east. The Russian aid and outside help from other nations allowed for the destruction of the largest faction, ISIS. With the Russians helping the loyalist troops, they attacked and took back much of the land that they had lost to ISIS. This is similar to the complete taking of the other kingdoms but particularly Ptolemaic Egypt which was one of the larger and more powerful of the kingdoms. The current situation leaves the loyalist forces holding much of the territory with a few of the other factions holding significantly smaller plots of land. If the comparison holds then the Syrians, with the support of the Russian juggernaut, should push the rest of the freedom fighters out of the country and re-establish the sovereignty of the nation. The other possibility would be that the freedom fighters would get a significant of amount of foreign aid probably in the form of US aid. This would most likely only succeed if the Russian support also pulled out.

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