Pax Americana Mortua Est (The Pax Americana is Dead)
There have been two unusually long periods of global stability in the modern world: the Pax Britannica (1815-1914) and the Pax Americana (1945-2025). These were named after the Pax Romana, the “Roman Peace”, which was how ancient Romans saw the period of their halcyon days.
Pax Romana (The Roman Peace)
In that pre-globalized world, what those ancient Roman observers noted was, that by bringing the entire Mediterranean Sea and the territories extending beyond it under their control, the previous age of war and rampant piracy in the region had come to an end. With the sea lanes kept safe by Rome’s navy and an ever-expanding network of high-quality roads, commerce and people could move freely. While there was certainly poverty, and the suffering of the enslaved was terrible, the well-planned, well-built (or re-built) cities of the empire give testimony to a rise in the quality of life for urban citizens. Technological innovation and investment in infrastructure—roads, aqueducts, public fountains both for decoration and as sources of drinking water, public baths, public privies, public markets, theatres, and places of entertainment—testify to the benefits of a Mediterranean world where war was kept to the outer margins of a large area.
At its peak, the “Pax” also extended beyond those borders. For a time, the fortified lines of contact between the Roman world and the “barbarians” beyond were not so much a place of confrontation but of commerce and exchange. The Limes in Germany and Hadrian’s Wall in Britain functioned like modern borders, with people and goods passing through them in a regulated way. This period lasted from the time of Caesar Augustus (63 BCE – 14 CE) to the 5th century.
The end was not sudden but came on gradually. Poor leadership and economic troubles in the 3rd century led to the reforms of Diocletian (reigned 284-305), augmented by further improvements by Constantine I (reigned 306-337). Most notably, Constantine brought financial stability by creating a new gold-based currency called the solidus (or nomisma in Greek), which would endure as a standard of exchange for a thousand years, and creating a highly defensible capital at Byzantion, which he named Nova Roma, but came to be called Constantinople. This too would last a thousand years. But for all these useful reforms, demographics and land degradation (clear cutting? over-farming? changing climate? all or some of the above?) led to agricultural decline and a drop in state revenues. Land consolidation in Italy turning family farms into plantation style estates meant the severe contraction of the population base that had formed the traditional bulwark of the Roman army, namely, Italian farm boys. The solution was the enlistment of foederati: allies from among the “barbarians” to fill the defence gap. Many were settled as intact tribes in depopulated agricultural zones to bring the land back into production. However, the continued inability or unwillingness to pay the agreed upon sums led these groups to rebel.
The symbolic watershed moment was the sack of Rome in 410 by a disgruntled group of foederati who had been settled in the Balkans: the Visigoths (“Western Goths”). Their generalissimo, Alaric, led the tribe’s warrior class to Rome to demand their pay. The city was unable to defend itself.
While the event’s repercussions in real terms were limited by the fact that the administrative centre of the empire was in Constantinople, the symbolic shock of the grand old capital falling to barbarians shook many Romans to the core. Augustine, the bishop of Hippo in North Africa, wrote his massive, “The City of God,” in response to these events. His conclusion was that empires come and go, but the City of God (AKA, “The Kingdom of Heaven”) is eternal. In a sense, Augustine was preparing his fellow Latin Romans psychologically for what would unfold over the next several centuries. By 476, the city of Rome came under the control of the Germanic warlord Odoacer. The “Fall of Rome” is traditionally dated here, but this is a misnomer. It would be better to call this moment, the fall of the Pax Romana, but not of the empire as such.
The truth is, that even as the western part of the empire was dismantled by Germanic tribes, the eastern half continued intact for another century and a half, even reconquering some western territories, including the city of Rome. Indeed, after the “Armies of Islam” seized the Levant, Egypt, and North Africa from Roman control in the 7th and 8th centuries, imperial control continued from Constantinople over the remaining territories in Anatolia, Greece, and the Balkans for many more centuries. Nevertheless, despite the institutional and legal continuity of Roman authority over the realm erroneously called by modern historians, “the Byzantine Empire” (they always called themselves “Romans”, and their detractors in western Europe called them “Greeks”, but no one called them “Byzantine” until after the empire ceased to exist), the Pax Romana in the Mediterranean region and beyond was shattered. Even into our time, this remains a region of conflict.
Pax Britannica
The Pax Britannica emerged out of the Napoleonic Wars and the realignment of European powers in the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Britain had gone into the conflict as one of many powers, with France fielding the most formidable land forces. For some time, Britain stood alone as others sued for peace through concessions to Napoleon or had terms dictated to them. Following Napoleon’s final defeat, Britain suddenly found itself the most powerful nation on earth, due in no small part to the much enlarged Royal Navy and the decimation of rival fleets during the wars.
Over the course of the 19th century, the British Empire grew to become the largest the world had ever seen. With only a modest land force, Britain relied on colonial troops to plug the gaps, and sea power to tie its far-flung possessions together. The importance of shipping as the lifeblood of the empire led London to pursue a policy of “free trade”. This was not the free trade of today built on the elimination of tariffs and other bureaucratic trade barriers, but rather, the free movement of ships across the globe. By pressing coastal powers to allow the unhindered passage of merchant ships, it meant that British flagged ships also had that freedom. British polices of this time played a significant role in shaping the Law of the Sea as we know it today. Indeed, the fact that the universally accepted Prime Meridian runs through the Greenwich Observatory in London is due to Britain’s key position of power and influence at the time.
Of course, not all powers were amenable. The Barbary Corsairs (AKA Barbary Pirates)—clients of the Ottoman Empire—were a thorn in the side for non-Muslim shipping in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. The Royal Navy bombarded Algiers in 1824, but the problem was not eliminated until France invaded and subjugated the region in 1830. Britain was officially opposed to the invasion but refrained from threatening military action—perhaps because it was to everyone’s advantage to have the sea lanes cleared of the threat. The great “cold war” of this period was “The Great Game” between Britian and Russia for dominance in central Asia. This “cold war” turned hot in the Crimean War (1853-1856), a conflict won by Britain and her allies (France and the Ottoman Empire), touching off an internal political crisis in Russia. However, throughout this period, the all-encompassing wars of the previous era were avoided or prevented. Smaller countries in Latin America or the Pacific would sometimes call on Royal Navy ships to keep the peace or act as security guarantors (Chile, where the Royal Navy had a base; Peru, the Colombian province of Panama, Hawaii, to name a few).
It was a time of industrialization, demanding ever more raw materials from the far-flung empires of Britain and other European states, the transport of which was assured by the Pax Britannica. French vessels needed not worry about being attacked or blocked or seized by British ones, or German ones by US American ones, and so on.
The Pax Britannica effectively came to an end at the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918). While the British Empire itself did not unravel until after World War II (1939-1945), Britain’s capacity to be a guarantor and major influence outside of its own possessions was diminished. In 1930, even the loyal Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) successfully obtained control of their own foreign policies in the Statute of Westminster. Japan’s expansion in the Far East was a sign that British naval hegemony was over.
Pax Americana
The cataclysmic end of Nazi Germany and imperialist Japan marked a turning point whose closest analogue is the Congress of Vienna of 1815. While the Versailles Treaty of 1919 had tried to create a new, peaceful world order (League of Nations), the lack of a credible great power to enforce the order meant that the following two decades were chaotic and bellicose. The Congress of Vienna had gathered the leaders of Europe to redraw the map of the continent in the hopes of securing a lasting peace. With Britain as the sea power, and the conservative land powers of Prussia, Austria, and Russia cooperating, it worked to some extent—until the configuration of the interlocking and overlapping alliances at the beginning of the 20th century unleashed the firestorm of the Great War.
In 1945, the United Nations, sponsored by the victors of World War II (United States, United Kingdom, France, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and China) ushered in an optimistic time of progress, but also the nuclear deadlock of the Cold War between the US and the USSR. One could say that the post-WWII world had two realms of peace: the Pax Americana and the Pax Sovietica. But it was the United States that set the terms for the global financial system and enforced free movement of goods at sea and in the air with its powerful Navy and Airforce (indeed, with the best equipped and financed military of all time!). Numerous international institutions and agreements ushered in the greatest increase in prosperity and human rights in the history of humanity.
Nevertheless, the two main non-capitalist, non-democratic powers, the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, played spoiler roles during the Pax Americana, each in different ways. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990, many in the West felt that capitalism and liberal democracy had proven to be the natural end state of our species. But some in the former USSR saw things differently. Stitching together an alliance of former security service officers and former Communist Party functionaries who were enriching themselves off the assets of the state, the new leader of this surveillance-cum-kleptocratic state, Vladmir Putin, was determined to end the Pax Americana and “restore” a multi-polar world of spheres of influence. In a real world embodiment of the cinematic “evil dictator”, he seems to be pining for a Yalta moment when he can sit down with the other great powers to carve up the world.
By contrast, China has used the global economic system to create the second largest economy in the world and become the world’s factory. The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also has plans to bring the Pax Americana to an end, but primarily by growing China’s economic and military influence, to the point where it becomes the new United States, the single hegemon, capable of setting the rules for the world, undoing the shame imposed on it during the Pax Britannica. That shame came from the European colonial powers and the United States. One of those European powers was Russia, which still holds territory taken from China in the 19th century. But the Chinese leadership is patient and methodical, and for now, Russia is useful. If Putin thinks in centuries, Xi thinks in millennia.
In contrast to China, Russia, though territorially large, has a population not much different from Japan, Mexico, and Brazil, and an economy smaller than Canada’s. Their main trump card is the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, which might be useful for deterrence or Armageddon, but in practical terms, to undo the Pax Americana, Russia must resort to subterfuge and “salami slicing”, i.e., cutting away at other countries until there is nothing left. This slicing consists of sowing division, promoting “useful idiots” who do the Kremlin’s work even when they don’t realize it, and putting puppet regimes in place either by force or through “state capture”.
The lure of money is a key tool of ensnarement. Putin and associates have created a sort of criminal state (a Hutt Space, for the Star Wars fans out there), in which the people at the top are entitled to skim money off state contracts, tax revenues, corporate income, and any other endeavour they can create or access, stash it in offshore accounts, and remain shielded by the power of the head criminal, the President of Russia. It generates huge amounts of wealth for those on the inside. State capture happens by inviting politicians and businesspeople in other countries to cooperate with the Kremlin in exchange for cleverly hidden flows of cash. Once having drunk of this corrosive poison, these people are leveraged to lead or finance parties sympathetic to Russia who will work to introduce just such a system in their own countries. Real democracy is the enemy because the people might unseat such oligarchs. The type of democracy these people craft is for show. It is rigged so that just enough people show up to vote to make it look legitimate, but the levers of outcomes are controlled by the kleptocratic oligarchs.
Aristotle noted how democracies can devolve into oligarchies when the monied gain too much influence in the system. This was never the situation for Russia as it went from autocratic monarchy to single party Communist dictatorship to (via a brief period of political chaos) the current security-state cum-kleptocracy where indeed the saying holds true that, those in power are protected by the law but not bound by it while the rest are bound by it but not protected by it.
For the United States, however, this slide to oligarchy and kleptocracy is a real and current danger. Putin knows this. His siren song of amoral wealth is already luring the current US President and his billionaire right-hand-man, and at least some of the other billionaires lining up to kiss the ring of the would-be king. We know this because they are supporting the very causes supported by the Kremlin, issuing threats and calumnies against the very countries and systems which the Kremlin also derides and denigrates.
Please note: The same message is coming out of the Kremlin and the White House. If you have not troubled and worried over this, you have not grasped the seriousness of the moment we are in.
On Friday, February 14, 2025, at the annual Munich Security Conference, JD Vance, the US Vice-President, was supposed to have delivered a speech on the subject of “The US in the World”. Instead, officially representing his boss in the White House, he took the 30 minutes he had to lambaste his European audience of politicians, diplomats, military officers, security experts, think tank representatives with US culture war criticisms, demonizing the core values of the European Union and elevating far right voices. In that moment, the White House signalled that the Pax Americana was dead. Not only was the United States of America no longer a reliable ally, it had actually declared itself the enemy of the very thing it had built up after World War II: the rules based order which honoured the territorial integrity of all countries, the right of self-determination for all people, standards of human rights, development and civil society aid, the promotion of democracy—in short, all that we were told for 80 years that was good and worthy of fighting for was now the target of destruction.
If any of these values matter to us, we will have to fight for them anew. We will have to claw our way back from cynical, self-serving oligarchy and kleptocracy. The European Union, Canada, and a few others are still on board, but with the great guarantor increasingly in thrall (if not literally, then by way of “principled” agreement) to those who would rule unhindered by any rules and norms, we are left to cobble together a working alliance as a series of islands of Pax in the surging sea of multipolar chaos.
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