    41

    t heir military complexes and pour the savings into the domestic

    economy.  That diverted treasure produced a burst of prosperity.

    As usual, the Chinese and their superpower enemies had blithely

    dismissed the significance of the unwashed rabble beyond their

    frontiers.  In 1114, that rabble--the Juchen--kicked themselves loose

    from the superpower sphere of influence and prepared for war.  Those

    preparations took a full eleven years.  But when they were over, it was

    time for the major powers to watch out.  First the Juchen attacked

    China's biggest enemy--the Kitan.  The Chinese were delighted.  The

    primitive Juchen had just removed their greatest international

    problem.  But the emperor and his subjects rejoiced a bit too soon.  The

    Juchen wheeled around, hungry for an even bigger conquest.

    In 1126, the backward people who only sixteen years earlier had

    been the lowly puppets of a superpower fought their way into an

    unprepared Chinese capital and decided to stay.  The Middle

    Kingdom121 had been undone by both diplomacy and disarmament

    because they had forgotten about the barbarians.

    Behind the threat of barbarians is a simple fact.  Social

    superorganisms itch to move up on the hierarchical ladder.  And many

    of those who want to ascend would like to do so at our expense. The

    legitimate wish for peace often blinds us to this fact.

    But there is another impulse that also distracts us from the

    danger of barbarians.  The itch to battle our fellow citizens.

    The Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in

    324 AD.122  Eighteen  years later, he moved the capital of the Empire to

    the old Greek colony of Byzantium.123  Constantine explained that he

    was acting on direct orders from his new God124, Jesus, who

    presumably preferred to leave the city of pagan deities and Christian

    persecutions behind.  At that moment, Byzantium--in what is today

    Turkey--became the administrative hub of Europe.125

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