Pax Americana

Pax Americana (Latin: "American Peace") is a term to describe the period of relative peace in the Western world since the end of World War II in 1945, coinciding with the dominant military and economic position of the United States. It places the United States in the military and diplomatic role of a modern-day Roman Empire (see Pax Romana), succeeding the British Empire.

During this period, no armed conflict has emerged among major Western nations themselves, and no nuclear weapons have been used, although the United States and its allies have been involved in various regional wars (such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Falklands War (Britain), the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War) and have maintained espionage and covert operations in various other areas.

Pax Americana may be similar to the period of peace in Rome, Pax Romana. In both situations, the period of peace is 'relative peace'. During both Pax Romana and Pax Americana wars continued to occur, but it was, and is, still a prosperous time for both Western and Roman civilization. It is important to note that during these periods, and most other times of peace, the peace that is referred to does not mean that it was complete peace. By peace, it only means that they prospered in their military, agriculture, trade, and manufacturing.

The term Pax Americana is used by both supporters and critics of United States foreign policy, and as such, it carries different connotations depending on the context. For example, it appears repeatedly in a September 2000 document, Rebuilding America's Defenses, pdf by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century, but is also used by critics to characterize American dominance and hyperpower as imperialist in function and basis.

Heritage of Pax Britannica

From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until World War I in 1914, the United Kingdom played the role of hegemon, where the balance of power was the main aim. It is also in this time that the British Empire became the largest empire of all time.^{[citation needed]} The global superiority of British military and commerce was guaranteed by dominance of a Europe lacking in strong nation-states, and the presence of the Royal Navy on all of the world's oceans and seas. In 1905, the Royal Navy was superior to any two navies combined in the world. It provided services such as suppression of piracy and slavery. Britain also went beyond the seas and developed and funded a universal mail system. During the managed transition of the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations, members of the British government, such as Harold Macmillan, liked to think of Britain's relationship with America as similar to that of a progenitor Greece to America's Rome.^[1]

During the British hegemony, America developed close ties with Britain, evolving into what has become known as a "special relationship" between the two. The many commonalities shared with the two nations (such as language and history) drew them together as allies. Throughout the years, both have been active in North American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries.

However, there were several wars between the major powers during this time period: the Crimean War, the Franco-Austrian War, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Russo-Japanese War, as well as numerous other wars.

Origins of the peace

Some argue that the Pax Americana derives partly from the direct influence of the United States, but as significantly or more so from international institutions backed by American financing and diplomacy.

Even the so-called unipolar moment following the collapse of the Soviet Union does not compare with the advantageous position of the United States in 1945 with respect to the rest of the industrialized world. It was then responsible for half of global industrial output, held 80 percent of the world's gold reserves, and was the world's sole nuclear power. Already the largest economy in the world, the United States came out of the war with its domestic infrastructure virtually unscathed and its military forces at unprecedented strength. The catastrophic destruction of life, infrastructure, and capital during the Second World War had exhausted the imperialism of the Old World, however, victor and vanquished alike.

The U.S. invested heavily in programs such as the Marshall Plan and in the reconstruction of Japan, economically cementing defense ties that owed increasingly to the fall of the Iron Curtain and widening of the Cold War. The aegis of American backing enabled not only the rapid reindustrialization of Europe and Japan, but allowed nations to experiment with new structures such as the European Coal and Steel Community, further enhancing international cooperation.

But in the best position to take advantage of free trade, culturally indisposed to traditional empires (though not without its own colonial interests), and alarmed by the rise of communism in China and the detonation of the first Soviet atom bomb, the historically isolationist U.S. also took a keen interest in developing multilateral institutions which would maintain a favorable world order among them.

International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), part of the Bretton Woods system of international financial management, including until the early 1970s a fixed exchange rate to the US dollar.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), a collective security agreement of Atlantic powers, the mutual defense treaties with Japan and South Korea, and to a far lesser extent the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). With the fall of the Iron Curtain and outbreak of the Cold War, the U.S. maintained significant contingents of armed forces in Europe and East Asia.
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a protocol for normalization and reduction of trade tariffs.
United Nations, but most particularly the veto power of permanent members of the UN Security Council.

Some critics maintain that these programs and organizations are in effect instruments of American power or state policy, or are mismanaged and have deleterious effects on certain nations. Others express resentment at their countries' dependence on U.S. military protection, due to disagreements with U.S. policy or the presence of U.S. forces themselves. The ability of the U.S. to act as "the world's policeman" is constrained further by its own citizens' historic aversion to foreign wars. Nevertheless, the institutions behind the Pax Americana have persisted into the early 21st century.

The United States is often criticized of not taking up the mantle following the disintegration of Pax Britannica before the First World War due to inward-looking isolationist policies. ^{[citation needed]}

Pax Americana as imperialism

The long history of U.S. isolationism subsided only after major shocks associated with the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II, the Cold War, and various post-Cold War conflicts with non-state actors. Critics such as Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky argue that the United States has sought, or has found itself forced into, a quasi-imperialist role by its status as one of the world's superpowers. However, the term "isolationist" in this context applies to the global stage; the United States has never been isolationist with respect to the Western Hemisphere, which it has considered to fall within its sphere of influence, and has a long history of military intervention within this region of the world.

The fiercest debates between imperialist and isolationist factions occurred at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the imperialist faction favored U.S. control of Hawaii and the Philippines. Those who favored traditional American policies of avoiding foreign entanglements included Samuel Gompers and Andrew Carnegie. At that time, "imperial" was used as a positive term by supporters and as a negative term by opponents. When Theodore Roosevelt became President following the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Roosevelt accelerated McKinley's U.S. foreign policy first major shift away from isolationism towards a policy of global foreign intervention.

The term Pax Americana was explicitly used by John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, who advocated against the idea, arguing that the Soviet bloc was composed of human beings with the same individual goals as Americans and that such a peace based on "American weapons of war" was undesirable:

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.^[2]

The democratic peace theory

An alternative theory for the increasing peacefulness is the ongoing spread of democracy. Much empirical research on the Democratic peace theory has found that democracies rarely, or never, make war on one another.

Footnotes

External links

"Pax Americana vs. Pax Britannica", Herbert London January 8, 2004
"The Dangers and Costs of Pax Americana (by Richard M. Ebeling), December 2002
"Imagining the Pax Americana", (by Graham Barrett), The Age, April 17, 2003
"Pax Americana" - article from SourceWatch
"Pax Americana is over" (by Immanuel Wallerstein)
The American Empire: Pax Americana or Pox Americana? (a September 2004 Monthly Review article by John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney)
"U.S. Hegemony: Continuing Decline, Enduring Danger" by Richard B. Du Boff
"A Bush vision of Pax Americana" By Gail Russell Chaddock | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
"Pax Americana Blog", Blog about American Foreign Policy and power, October 2006
"Pax Americana: Pop Culture Blog", Asheville, NC Citizen-Times Online, 2007

[1] Labour's love-in with America is nothing new Daily Telegraph 6 September 2002

[2] Commencement Address American University

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