Pax Americana Quotes

The debate over the inherent benefits of Pax Americana should have been settled long ago. But history only settles great debates for as long as people can remember the history.

And it is awful here, there is no other way to say it. But I believe that Detroit is America’s city. It was the vanguard of our way up, just as it is the vanguard of our way down. And one hopes the vanguard of our way up again. Detroit is Pax Americana...America’s way of life was built here.

After the end of the Cold War, a belief was proclaimed in a ‘New World Order’, an ‘end of history’, world peace characterised by democracy and trade (Pax Americana). Now the Twenty-first century is preparing for us perhaps the most bellicose situation in the entire history of humanity. The enormous wars of the Twentieth century will be smaller than those that we and our descendants are going to experience.

Most people think of the Bretton Woods system as a sort of Pax Americana. The American Century, if you will. But that’s simply not the case. The entire concept of the Order is that the United States disadvantages itself economically in order to purchase the loyalty of a global alliance. That is what globalization is. The past several decades haven’t been an American Century. They’ve been an American sacrifice.

few hours after I finished The Multiversity: Pax Americana #1 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, something happened: I got it. Now, I can’t shake the sense that I read the best superhero single issue of the year. Morrison’s Multiversity project (available digitally on comiXology and Kindle , and in our third party marketplace ) is a grand one for DC Comics: eight single issues--each a #1, and

An economically weakened and isolationist America will call into question the Pax Americana, whereby the United States oversees international peace and security, and thus expose the world to the unpredictable whims and values of nondemocratic powers. These are not the solutions the world needs. Creating sustainable economic growth in the twenty-first century requires no less than aggressively retooling history’s greatest engine of growth, democratic capitalism itself. This requires a clear-eyed assessment of how ineffective the system is in its current state, politically as well as economically—and then implementing the repairs that will yield better outcomes. Too much is at stake for us to remain wedded to the status quo. The ominous rise of protectionism and nationalism throughout the world portend that the global economy and community are eroding already. The only way forward is to preserve the best of liberal democratic capitalism and to repair the worst. We cannot cling to past practices and old ideologies simply for their own sake. Doing nothing is no choice at all.

Increasingly economic historians can draw analogies between the development of the present crisis and the period between the two world wars, as well as the crisis of a century ago, which was associated with the so-called great depression of 1873-1895. The latter crisis resulted in the rise of monopoly capitalism and imperialism, but also the end of Pax Britannica, as Britain began its decline from world leadership in the face of challenges from Germany and the United States. The present world crisis seems to be spelling the beginning of the end of Pax Americana and may hold untold other major readjustments in the international division of labor and world power in store for the future.

Both the European Union and the United States are in some sense the heirs of Rome. Like Rome, the United States is founded on a republican myth of liberation from a tyrannical oppressor. Just as the Rape of Lucretia led to the overthrow of the last Etruscan king, so the Boston Tea Party led to the overthrow of the British crown. The Founding Fathers of the United States sought quite literally to create a New Rome, with, for instance, a clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government—with the legislative branch called, as in Rome, the Senate. They even debated whether the executive branch would not be better represented, as in Rome, by two consuls rather than the president that they eventually settled for. The extended period of relative peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War has been dubbed the Pax Americana [‘American Peace’], after the Pax Romana which perdured from the accession of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in 180 CE. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union can be accounted for, in part, by the ghost of the nineteenth century Pax Britannica, when the British Empire was not merely a province of Rome but a Rome unto herself.

The nation that draws the most materials and provisions from the earth, fabricates the most, and sells the most of productions and fabrics to foreign nations, must be, and will be, the great power of the earth.

Was there indeed something essential missing in the composition of their characters, a fracture in the psyche left by violent revolution? One might live comfortably within such a chasm if there were compensations—power, for example, or wealth, space, and frontiers. But the globe had shrunk drastically since the war. Rule, Brittania and the brash pragmatism of Pax Americana had both been eclipsed. Was that it? But it was not only the Americans and the British who had suffered from the revolutions of the past three hundred years. What of the French themselves? And the Germans? What of the great blow dealt to the consciousness of the West by the Reformation? No, take it further back to the split between the Church of the East and the Church of the West. Perhaps even further.

The American Century is over. Pax Americana has come to a close. Gone now is all the hubristic chatter of an American Empire. Gone is the “unipolar world” where the United States was the undisputed hegemonic power.

Those two markers—V-J Day and the Kennedy Assassination—bracket an era variously known as “Pax Americana,” “Good Times,” the “Best Years,” “Happy Days,” and the “American High.

power that could be projected to anyplace on the planet within a thousand miles of saltwater. For good or ill, these ships made Washington the most important city in the world; these ships made the U.S. Congress the most important forum on earth and the President of the United States the most powerful, influential person alive; these ships enforced a global Pax Americana.

An attack on the rich is not a disruption of peace but a step towards it. The rich oppress the poor daily by exploiting their misery and poverty. The poor are kept poor and beaten down continually by the greed of the rich and the systems of capitalist exploitation. Poverty is violence against the poor. Tax cuts for the rich, leading to budget cuts in social spending, are an act of class warfare. It is a mistake to call for “peace” when there is no peace for the poor, homeless, or disadvantaged under capitalism. One might argue that even Christ was crucified in the name of “peace” by the Roman Empire.20 But Pax Romana—or today’s Pax Americana—is never true peace. It is peace by oppression. The rich must be brought low, the powerful must be humbled, the lowly must be exalted, and good news must be proclaimed to the poor.

My mistake was that I believed his Endgame was similar to mine. But it wasn’t. He didn’t care about saving lives. Or fighting terrorism. Or the Pax Americana.

With the military industrial complex and the prison industrial complex working together in these ways there is a continuous, intensifying coordination of power between Lockdown America at home and imperial Pax Americana abroad. We need to feel these connections conceptually and viscerally, as did W. E. B. Du Bois in his time, because it surfaces not only coordinated powers of domination but a network of shared suffering by those exploited at home and abroad. When in the 1930s Du Bois surveyed the way industrial classes had destroyed post-Civil War Black Reconstruction in America, indeed enabling white power to be resurgent again inside the U.S., Du Bois was able also to perceive (and feel) how it also consolidated a structural violence abroad. While lamenting the devastation at home he thus lifted a lament, too, for multiple peoples abroad, for those he termed “the darker nations.

China's ultimate prize is East Asian hegemony, which is probably inevitable in any event. China's eventual regional ascendancy will spell the end of the Pax Americana in East Asia.

In the second year of the Trump presidency, I attended a dinner of American hedge funders in Hong Kong. I was there as a guest speaker, to survey the usual assortment of global hot spots. A thematic question emerged from the group—was the “Pax Americana” over? There was a period of familiar cross-talk about whether Trump was a calamitous force unraveling the international order or merely an impolitic Republican politician advancing a conventional agenda. I kept interjecting that Trump was ushering in a new era—one of rising nationalist competition that could lead to war and unchecked climate change, to the implosion of American democracy and the accelerated rise of a China that would impose its own rules on the world. Finally, one of the men at the table interrupted with some frustration. He demanded a show of hands—how many around the table had voted for Trump, attracted by the promise of tax cuts and deregulation? After some hesitation, hand after hand went up, until I was looking at a majority of raised hands. The tally surprised me. Sure, I understood the allure of tax cuts and deregulation to a group like that. But these were also people who clearly understood the dangers that Trump posed to American democracy and international order. The experience suggested that even that ambiguous term “Pax Americana” was subordinate to the profit motive that informed seemingly every aspect of the American machinery. I’d come to know the term as a shorthand for America’s sprawling global influence, and how—on balance—the Pax Americana offered some stability amid political upheavals, some scaffolding around the private dramas of billions of individual lives. From the vantage point of these bankers, the Pax Americana protected their stake in international capital markets while allowing for enough risk—wars, coups, shifting energy markets, new technologies—so that they could place profitable bets on the direction of events. Trump was a bet. He’d make it easier for them to do their business and allow them to keep more of their winnings, but he was erratic and hired incompetent people—so much so that he might put the whole enterprise at risk. But it was a bet that enough Americans were willing to make, including those who knew better. From the perspective of financial markets, I had just finished eight years in middle management, as a security official doing his small part to keep the profit-generating ocean liner moving. The debates of seemingly enormous consequence—about the conduct of wars, the nature of national identity, and the fates of many millions of human beings—were incidental to the broader enterprise of wealth being created.

If Bin Laden had the capability to attack but didn’t, that means he didn’t want to. He didn’t have the will. Which seems strange. Bin Laden had attacked once. His attack had a devastating effect. His attack advanced his strategy in four ways. And weakened his enemies in four ways. Why not attack again? The answer lies in Bin Laden’s strategy. Bin Laden’s Endgame was a Caliphate. Which meant his strategy was built to get the people, places and things for the Caliphate to exist. He wanted the Ummah. He wanted the Middle East. He wanted the resources in the Middle East. Plus, he wanted to be boss of it all. He wanted to be Caliph. To get there, Bin Laden wanted to separate the U.S. from the Arab Rulers of the Middle East. He wanted to separate the Middle East from the Pax Americana.

After 9/11, the strategy was to weaken four things: Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden’s leadership of Al-Qaeda. The possibility of a Caliphate. Bin Laden’s standing as future leader of a Caliphate. At the same time, the strategy was to strengthen: The Pax Americana. U.S. leadership of the Pax Americana. The U.S.-Arab Alliance The U.S. position in the U.S.-Arab Alliance. The U.S. strategy was Bin Laden’s strategy in reverse. The U.S. was on the same playing field as Bin Laden. With opposite purposes.

How Bin Laden strengthened himself on 9/11: Bin Laden gained believers in a Caliphate (Strengthened the Caliphate). Bin laden firmed up his position as Caliph if a Caliphate came to be (Strengthened his position in the Caliphate’s Boss Game). Bin Laden attracted new recruits to Al-Qaeda (Strengthened Al-Qaeda). Bin Laden became the unassailable leader of Al-Qaeda (Strengthened his position in the alliance’s Boss Game). How Bin Laden weakened his enemies on 9/11: Bin Laden created distrust in the Pax Americana (Weakened the Pax Americana). Bin Laden lessened the perception of U.S. strength and leadership of the Pax Americana (Weakened the U.S. position in the Pax Americana’s Boss Game). Bin Laden sowed distrust in the alliance between Arab Rulers and the United States (Weakened the U.S.-Arab Alliance). Bin Laden caused allies to doubt U.S. leadership of the U.S.-Arab Alliance (Weakened the U.S. position in the alliance’s Boss Game).