    7

    The Barbarian Principle

    "A thousand men who fear not for their lives are more to be dreaded

    than ten thousand who fear for their fortunes."

    Denis Diderot

    A position at the top of the pecking order is not permanent.  Far

    from it.  Animals who make it to the peak know that simple fact.  They

    see that yesterday's adolescents have become today's restless adults,

    and watch warily as these youthful challengers size up the odds of

    knocking their elders off the top of the heap.

    Dominant beasts remain vigilant.  But a strange thing happens to

    nations at the pecking order's apogee.  The dominant superorganism

    sometimes goes to sleep.  It falls complacently into a fatal trap,

    assuming that its high position is God-given, that its fortunate lot in life

    will last forever, that its lofty status is carved in stone.  It forgets that

    any pecking order is a temporary thing and no longer remembers just

    how miserable life can be on the bottom.  The results are often an

    unpleasant surprise.

    We all know that Rome was picked apart by peoples any re-

    spectable Roman could see were beneath his contempt.  The barbarians

    didn't  shave.    They  wore  dirty  clothes.    They  were  almost  always

    drunk.  Their living standard was one step above that of a mule.  Their

    technology was laughable.  They usually couldn't read and write.  And

    they certainly had no "culture."  What could these smelly primitives

    do?  They could fight.1

    But Rome was not the first superpower toppled by the third

    world rejects of its day.  Egypt--land of the Pharaohs and home of the

    Sphinx--was the most imposing superpower of its time.  The other

    great dominion of the day--Sumer--was still only a disunited gaggle of

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