Text 1 Pax Americana

The 20th century has been the American Century. Already in the 1830s the French writer, Alexis de Tocqueville was predicting that the future of the world would be decided by the United States and Russia, “their starting point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe”. In the second half of the 20th century his prophecy was vindicated. But, even before the First World War the industrial might and the wealth of the United States were legendary. The children of American millionaires married into the European aristocracy, drawing together the elites of the two continents and producing by 1900 forty-two American princesses, seventeen duchesses, sixty-four baronesses and one hundred and thirty-six countesses. It was no accident that two of Britain's leading statesmen in the twentieth century, Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden were half American.

Twice within fifty years US intervention decided the course of a world war and brought victory to the democracies. Then, for fifty years, Washington led the Cold War struggle against communism, emerging from the confrontation in 1989 less confident, less sure of its values than it had been in 1918 or 1945 but victorious nonetheless. When the American academic, William Fox coined the term “Superpower” during the Second World War, he identified three members of his new category, the USA, USSR and the British Empire. By 1989 there was only one survivor.

Throughout the twentieth century US leaders had a vision of the sort of world they wished to shape. Pax Americana would be democratic, capitalist and socially egalitarian. […]

After the Cold War American ideology was by no means universally accepted, despite its victory over communism. Moslem Fundamentalists overthrew America’s ally, the Shah of Iran in January 1979, tore Afghanistan to pieces in the 1990s and destabilized large areas of North Africa. Their anger was a reaction to the secular materialism of the West. Western media compounded the problem precisely because they intruded everywhere, flaunted Western values and threatened traditional standards of behaviour. Yet, if Western materialism and nihilism was often deeply disliked in the Moslem world, democracy alone could confer real legitimacy on a government. By far the largest number of countries in the 1990s either were genuinely democratic or paid lip-service to democratic political values. Most of the military dictators had been driven from power in Latin America, although democracy was still threatened by instability and ethnic tensions in Eastern Europe and Africa.

History did not come to an end with the collapse of communism, as the American analyst Francis Fukuyama argued. Nor did the mood of euphoria, which greeted the fall of the Berlin Wall, last for very long. Saddam Hussein showed that aggressive regimes were still determined to expand their territories and their military arsenals. The collapse of Yugoslavia and the various wars in the Caucasus reminded the world how thin a veneer civilization still presented. But Pax Americana had survived triumphantly. No form of government seemed likely to challenge democracy, no economic structure could rival capitalism for the improvements it brought in standards of living, no other country could rival Hollywood as a producer of dreams for the common man. This was America's century, just as the nineteenth had been Britain’s.

Abridged from “Pax Americana” by Philip Towle. World Encyclopedia of Peace, Vol. 4, p. 130, 132

Notes

1. Pax Americana (Latin) – 1) мир по-американски, по американской модели; 2) единополюсный мир во главе с США; 3) система американских ценностей, 4) концепция, согласно которой мир на Земле сохраняется благодаря усилиям США.

A period of general stability in international affairs under the dominant influence of US power. The “American Peace”, from the Latin “pax”, meaning “peace”, modified by the Latinized adjective “Americana”. The expression is the etymological grandchild of “Pax Romana” and the child of “Pax Britannica”.

The Pax Romana refers to the period of peace and civil order that prevailed within the Roman Empire under Augustus Caesar. In the 19^th century, many British likened their colonial rule and the wordwide economic and political power they wielded to those of Rome, and the term Pax Britannica gained currency.

After World War II, with British power diminished and the empire breaking up, many Americans thought the United States should step into the role of world banner and policeman. […]

The Oxford English Dictionary notes that a variety of similar constructions have been fashioned on this model (including “pax atomica”) to refer to the peace imposed by a great power. An example in Time, September 25, 1989, by Charles Krauthammer:

Germany was conquered, then divided into two states designed to remain forever in a state of permanent, if cold antagonism. Pax Americana and Pax Sovietica solved the German problem.

(Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions by Elizabeth Webber & Mike Feinsilber. Merriam-Webster Inc., Springfield, Massachusetts, 1999, pp.408-409)

For more details see Text 11.

2. American century [refers to] the 20^th century, in which American influence should work for the good of all.

The term was introduced by Henry Luce, creator of the Time-Life publishing empire, in Life magazine, February 17, 1941:

…to accept whole heartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world, and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit. […] The world of the 20^th century, if it is to come to life in any nobility of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American century.

Luce’s statement was a powerful call to a country that had not yet entered World War II and still had strong isolationist impulses.

At the end of the war, when the United States’ supremacy in military and economic strength was clear, it did seem that the American century – the PAX AMERICANA – had arrived. From the perspective of the post-Vietnam, post-Cold War present, things look different.

The phrase comes up whenever pundits, with the apparently irresistible tendency to take an event (or a pole) and make it emblematic of an era, examine the American state of mind and ever-fluctuating sense of well-being.

(Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions by Elizabeth Webber & Mike Feinsilber. Merriam-Webster Inc.,Massachusetts, 1999, p.p.14-15)

Here is a quotation with a reference to this phrase as an example from The Moscow Times:

“Throughout the globe the United States is becoming associated with the unjustified use of force. The president’s disregard for views in other nations, borne out by his neglect of public diplomacy, is giving birth to an anti-American century” the diplomat added. (M. Times, March 12, 2003, p.10)

3. Tocqueville, Alexis de (1805-1859) – French political scientist, historian and politician. For his work “De la démocratie” Tocqueville was awarded the Montyon Prize of the French Academy in 1836 and later he was named to the Legion of Honour, the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (1838), and the French Academy (1841).

In 1839 Tocqueville was elected to the Chamber of Deputies. After the Revolution of 1848 he also became a deputy of the National Assembly. A year later he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The book “Democracy in America”, which is part of his greater work on democracy, was published in 1835 shortly after his visit to the US (1831-1832). It offers an in-depth analysis of the American society and contains a wealth of keen philosophical and sociological observations.

As a prophet of equality and social change, Tocqueville is generally believed to be an alternative to Carl Marx. Thousands of Europeans and Americans continue drawing inspiration from his unabating faith in future classless society with liberty held as the absolute political value.

4. Churchill, Winston (1874 – 1965) started his career as a soldier fighting in India and Egypt. Later he held many government posts and finally became Prime Minister in 1940. During WW II, his remarkable ability as an orator and qualities as a leader made him a symbol of British resistance to fascism. He promoted Britain’s alliance with the Soviet Union and the USA in 1941, but came to view Soviet communism as a future threat, speaking later of an “iron curtain” drawn across Europe. His government was defeated in 1945, but he returned as Conservative Prime Minister in the period of 1951 – 1955.

5. Eden, Anthony (1897-1977) is a noted British politician. His career began in 1923 when he was elected to Parliament, where he showed a keen interest in defence and foreign affairs soon to become Parliamentary Private Secretary at the Foreign Office in 1926.

Eden spent much time in Geneva pursuing his interest in the League of Nations and in 1935 he became Minister for League of Nations Affairs. At the age of just 38 he took over the Foreign Office. During WW II he rejoined the government as [Commonwealth] Dominions Secretary, and in Churchill’s coalition government he was Secretary of State for War, during which time he set up the Home Guard. Churchill then reinstalled him at the head of the Foreign Office.

His premiership was to last just two years, ending ignominiously with the Suez crisis when he was persuaded to resign both as Prime Minister and MP.

6. Fukuyama, Francis – American politician and political scientist, famous for his “End of the World” theory laid down in an essay in 1989. In this paper he argues that each country of the world will eventually embrace Democratic Liberalism, thus putting an end to the evolution of human thought concerning political and social organization of society.