Jakub J. Grygiel - Return of the Barbarians: Confronting Non-State Actors from Ancient Rome to the Present

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Jakub J. Grygiel 2018

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To Tobias, Nina, and Sybil

This book took many years to complete. Consequently, the list of individuals who have made comments, observations, and critiques or who simply listened with great patience to various snippets of this topic is long. The germ of the idea began with a presentation at a small seminar hosted by the late Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. It then turned into a short essay, encouraged and chiseled by Adam Garfinkle, the editor of The American Interest , who was present at that seminar. From then on, several small or large aspects of the argument in this book have appeared in Orbis, Security Studies, Policy Review, Infinity Journal, and, again, The American Interest . I am grateful to the editors, the anonymous reviewers, and the readers who commented on these pieces. I have also presented parts of these arguments in many places (Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Naval Postgraduate School, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the SGRI meeting in Trento, among others) and benefited from the discussions and the criticism offered at these events. The list of people to thank would be too long here.

I wrote the original draft while on the faculty at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University. I benefited there from my frequent interactions with some great colleagues, in particular Charles Doran, Eliot Cohen, Riordan Roett, Marco Cesa, and Daniel Markey. My fabulous assistant, Starline Lee, helped with the daily tasks with great cheer. The SAIS librarians Sheila Thalhimer, Susan High, Stephen Sears, and others fulfilled every request I sent their way, giving me access to otherwise difficult-to-find books and articles.

I put the finishing touches on the manuscript as a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. Conversations with its then president, Wess Mitchell, strengthened several arguments in this book not to mention that they also led to another book we coauthored in the meantime. Larry Hirsch supported me for years, and my stay at CEPA would not have been possible without him. The rest of the cheerful CEPA team were supportive in all my other tasks, allowing me to find time to edit the book, and are an incredibly friendly bunch.

Several research assistants helped me throughout the years on a variety of topics and among them are Philip Reiner, Carsten Schmiedl, and Alexander Bellah. Dianne Sehler from the Bradley Foundation, and Nadia Schadlow and Marin Strmecki from the Smith Richardson Foundation supported various projects that, while not directly related to this book, touched upon themes that make an appearance in it. Dr. Schadlow, in particular, has always been a font of encouragement and has often commented on early drafts of several of my writings.

Michael Watson at Cambridge University Press patiently combed through the manuscript, and even more patiently waited for my ruminations and final edits. Lisa Carter has helped with the preparation and publicity of the book.

Last but obviously not least, my wife and kids have kept me busy, stepping over the piles of books on barbarians strewn on my floor. The children have been lobbying, individually of course, to have the book dedicated to them. As always, they win, even though they will have to share the dedication with each other.

Barbarians are back. Small groups, even individuals, administering little or no territory, with minimal resources but with a long reach, are unfortunately on the front pages of newspapers because of their destructive fury. They harass and attack states from the streets of London, Paris, and Barcelona to wider areas in the Middle East and elsewhere. They are not merely tragic and bloody nuisances but strategic actors that compete with existing states, forcing them to alter their behavior, their military postures, and even their domestic lifestyles. The various Islamist groups and individuals who over the past decade have presented in different ways a persistent threat to the United States and the West, as well as to states in other regions of the world, come immediately to mind. It would be certainly wrong to ignore the religious connotations of these groups, arising from the Islamic world, but it is equally dangerous to think that the conditions that are making these murderous groups possible are rooted exclusively in Islam. Barbarians are back because there are deep trends that bestow lethality, and thus a strategic role, to groups that do not need the vast administrative apparatus, the territory, and the skilled and rule-abiding citizenry of modern states.