NEW YORK, NY.- One of the most enigmatic figures of antiquity, Tiberius lacked the imperial splendor of his great predecessor Augustus and the excesses of many of his successors. Yet Iron Imperator offers a portrait of a complex and contradictory man, both emperor and exile, tyrant and recluse. Drawing on a wealth of sources, Iskander Rehman examines Tiberius’ philosophical, intellectual, and military influences and the effectiveness of his foreign policy. Analyzing key conflicts, he evaluates the reach and efficacy of Rome’s grand strategy. Iron Imperator applies the lessons of the past to contemporary security challenges and modern global defense policy.
The allure of ancient Rome has rarely been as strong for those analyzing the present state of the Western world since the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. The field of "applied history" is experiencing a resurgence, particularly when it comes to issues of liberty and tyranny, leadership dynamics, multi-front warfare, and the interplay between domestic and foreign politics. Rome's historical narrative is frequently the lens through which scholars interpret contemporary events, as exemplified by this book.
The current political landscape, epitomized by the Trump vs. Biden rivalry, draws parallels to the power struggles between Caesar and Pompey during the decline of the Roman Republic. Trump, depicted often as an emperor, albeit not a favorable one, carries echoes of the rule-breaking populist challenging the establishment represented by Biden. Rehman, who applies historical insights ranging from the Hundred Years' War to sixteenth-century Spain, adopts a nuanced approach. He examines narratives, particularly those of warfare, from distant epochs while emphasizing their uncanny relevance to our present circumstances. Iron Imperator is prefaced by Sir Peter Stothard, a British author, journalist, and critic.
Iron Imperator seeks to gauge whether the Tiberian era—during which the international system’s leading power seemingly succeeded in consolidating its recent gains and avoiding a potentially ruinous geopolitical overextension—holds any instructive insights for the early- to mid-twenty-first-century United States. In so doing, it grapples with a series of important and strategically resonant questions relating to the exercise of Roman imperial leadership and the challenges inherent to the preservation of military primacy more broadly.
The book concludes by drawing on some of the contemporary literature on grand strategy, unipolarity, and imperial overextension, and suggests that the Tiberian period does indeed offer a number of valuable insights for contemporary security managers. Indeed, as Washington’s strategic community traverses its own period of self-doubt, pondering the nature of the U.S.’s security commitments and debating the extent and elasticity of its strategic perimeters, the need for rigorous applied history has rarely been more urgent.
