Pax Americana is a Latin term meaning “American Peace”. The phrase is used to describe the period of relative peace which the world has enjoyed since 1946, as a direct result of American power.
In the more than sixty years since the allies won WWII, the world has experienced a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. This has largely been the result of two factors:
- Pariah states have been largely held in check against attacking their neighbors, by fear of intervention from the United States.
- Peaceful nations have been able to reduce or eliminate military expenditures, counting on the United States to protect them from aggression.
George W. Bush understood the operation and benefits of Pax Americana. In a speech at West Point in 2002, he stated “Competition between great nations is inevitable, but armed conflict in our world is not … America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge … making the destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”
Unfortunately, Barack Obama does not believe that America deserves a special place in the world. While traveling in Europe, he denied the concept of American exceptionalism and referred to the loss of American power as “not a loss for America.”
Along with the rest of humanity, the United States has benefited from this peace and prosperity though the expansion of free trade with people across the entire globe. World peace is in everyones best interests.
Unfortunately, the leftist establishment simply cannot stomach the fact that a nation which they hate as much as the United States could have that sort of special role in international affairs. As such, they argue against any use of American power, whether to protect Colombia from armed socialist guerrillas, to liberate the people of Iraq from a ruthless dictator, or to protect the world against a nuclear armed Iran. No matter what good the United States does, it cannot be seen as good — because the United States is (nominally) a capitalist nation and it therefore the great enemy of leftists everywhere.
Even the New York Times can read the writing on the wall, declaring in 2009 “Gone are the days, from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana, when Britain and the United States made the rules that others followed.”
The future without Pax Americana is grim. Hundreds of nations will be forced to rebuild their military capabilities, thereby initiating not one global arms race but dozens of regional arms races. Worse, pariah states will feel safe in threatening, extorting, and attacking neighboring states. As soon as the first two-bit dictator realizes this is possible and manages to do it successfully, the floodgates will open and regional wars will erupt across the globe. Tens or hundreds of millions of people will die, global trade will be shattered, and the unprecedented levels of prosperity we have enjoyed will evaporate like a morning dew.
The leftists will have achieved their goal, the destruction of American power — but the world will be a far worse place because of this.
