Pax Americana Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Pax Americana (Latin for “American peace”) describes the absence of world-scale war as the United States emerged as the major economic, military, and political power in the world following World War II (1939–1945). The term is a play on Pax Romana, or Roman peace, used to describe a period of relative peace in the Mediterranean area in the early years of the Common Era.

From the early twentieth century, the United States exerted strong influence in Latin America. After World War I (1914–1918), U.S. president Woodrow Wilson challenged Europe’s hold on their Asian and African territories under the banner of self-determination of peoples. That campaign, conducted most specifically in the context of the Versailles conference that followed World War I, has been variously analyzed as an exercise in idealism and as an effort to break into the markets represented by the French and British colonies.

Projection Of Influence After World War Ii

After World War II, the United States replaced the European powers as the dominant outside power in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. It even stationed troops in Europe itself, becoming the preeminent military force there. As Torbjørn Knutsen explains in a chapter titled “Pax Americana” in his book The Rise and Fall of World Orders, the United States, by 1965, had 375 major military bases and 3000 minor military installations around the world. The United Kingdom’s commonwealth states, like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, came to ally as much with the United States as with Britain. When these expansions of influence were added to the previous U.S. predominance in Latin America, the United States, and in particular its multinational corporations, attained what some scholars call global reach.

The cold war fueled the U.S. projection of military, political, and economic power. The United States viewed itself needing to ensure against an expansion of influence by the Soviet Union. As civil war raged in Greece in 1947, President Harry Truman put the United States in the position of supporting pro-Western elements against those who appeared to side with the Soviet Union. Truman proclaimed that the United States would defend nations threatened by outside forces. “It must be the policy of the United States,” he told Congress, “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressure.”

National Security Council Document 68, issued in April 1950, called for military buildup and military engagement, with a level of “military readiness which can be maintained as long as necessary as a deterrent to Soviet aggression, as indispensable support to our political attitude toward the USSR, as a source of encouragement to nations resisting Soviet political aggression, and as an adequate basis for immediate military commitments and for rapid mobilization should war prove unavoidable” (289). In June 1950, Truman extended the reach of this pledge to east Asia when he intervened militarily in Korea.

Motivation the military intervention has been identified variously as relating to concern about expansion by the Soviet Union, a need for access to raw materials for an expanding economy, and idealism reflected in a desire to protect foreign nations. Following Truman’s lead, President Dwight Eisenhower expanded U.S. commitments and activity. In Latin America, the Central Intelligence Agency intervened covertly in Guatemala in 1953 against a government that had taken measures against the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company. In the Middle East, Eisenhower moved against perceived Soviet influence under what came to be called the Eisenhower Doctrine. As embodied in a 1957 resolution of the U.S. Congress, the Eisenhower Doctrine held:

The United States regards as vital to the national interest and world peace the preservation of the independence and integrity of the nations of the Middle East. To this end, if the President determines the necessity thereof, the United States is prepared to use armed forces to assist any such nation . . . requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.

In 1958, Eisenhower sent the U.S. Marines to Lebanon to counter a perceived effort by Syria to promote leftist elements. In Indochina, the United States replaced France in opposing nationalist elements friendly to the Soviet Union and China.

In Latin America, the United States continued the control it had exerted in earlier times. President Lyndon Johnson intervened successfully in the Dominican Republic in 1965 to restore to power friendly military elements who had overthrown the country’s president, but were in danger of being removed by civilian elements seeking to restore the overthrown president. A few years later, an unsuccessful intervention followed this incident, commenced by Eisenhower and continued by President John Kennedy to try to overthrow the Soviet-oriented government of Cuba.

Other countries were encouraged to orient their economies to the United States and the West, rather than to the Soviet Union. They were encouraged as well to follow U.S. political principles rather than those of the Soviet Union. Despite all this political and military activity, the United States managed to avoid direct military confrontation with the Soviet Union, hence justifying use of the term Pax Americana.

Ideological Use

Supporters of the U.S. posture, its critics, and analysts who took no particular stance, but simply sought to describe the role of the United States in the world, all used the term Pax Americana. Supporters of the U.S. posture regarded the U.S. approach as beneficial to the United States economically, and also viewed it as helpful in opposing what they viewed as an expansionist Soviet Union. For example, Jan Prybyla views Pax Americana as improving life around the globe. Prybyla credits implementation of the concept as having brought “theretofore unmatched prosperity and overall … peace to those willing and able to work together on this vast undertaking and accept the not overly demanding prescripts for the attainment of the desired ends.”

Critics use Pax Americana as shorthand for what they see as neocolonialism—the United States seeking to replace France and the United Kingdom in the unfair exploitation of resources and labor in the poorer countries of the world. Critics view the stated aim of opposing the Soviet Union as a cover for expanding economic and political influence. Aleksandr Iakovlev, a Soviet analyst, contends that Pax Americana signifies the aim of the United States to gain a new “world empire” by military means.

Even though the term Pax Americana is associated with the cold war, it survived the demise of the Soviet Union. It applies to the unipolar situation thus created. Nonstate actors who engage in acts of violence against the United States challenge Pax Americana, as reflected in the attacks of September 11, 2001.The United States subsequently declared a war on terror, and military actions were undertaken in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some analysts view U.S. hegemony as beneficial to the Middle East, while others regard American use of military force as counterproductive and destabilizing.

Bibliography:

Barnet, Richard J., and Ronald E. Müller. Global Reach:The Power of the Multinational Corporations. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974.
Iakovlev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich. Pax Americana. Moscow: Molodaia gvardia, 1969.
National Security Council. National Security Council Report 68. A Report to the President Pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950.
Foreign Relations of the United States 1950. Vol. 1, 235–292.Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1977.
Prybyla, Jan. The American Way of Peace: An Interpretation. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005.
Knutsen,Torbjørn L. The Rise and Fall of World Orders. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1999.
Murden, Simon W. Islam, the Middle East, and the New Global Hegemony. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002.
Parchami, Ali. Hegemonic Peace and Empire: The Pax Romana, Britannica, and Americana. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Steel, Ronald. Pax Americana. New York: Viking, 1970.
Thayer, Bradley A. The Pax Americana and the Middle East: U.S. Grand Strategic Interests in the Region. Ramat Gan, Israel: Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, 2003.
S. Congress. Joint Resolution to Promote Peace and Stability in the Middle East. U.S. Congress Statutes at Large. Vol. 71, 5. H. J. Res. 117, 1957.

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