President Trump’s economic nationalism will accelerate the end of Pax America by speeding up the dismantling of the global political and financial architecture established by the US since 1945. If pursued to its logical conclusion, the US risks isolation.
Pax Americana is a term applied to the post-World War II order in which the US employed its overwhelming power and influence to shape and direct the global order. America took the leadership role in the promotion of democracy, globalization, civil rights, and the rule of law.
The 1944 Bretton Woods agreement established the US dollar as the world reserve currency; The World Bank, the IMF, and GATT fostered international commerce; and The United Nations and a network of American-led alliances, most notably NATO, promoted peace and security.
The US was viewed as a benign hegemon so nations were willing to submit part of their autonomy to participate in this new global architecture. Democracy was regarded as the best form of government, global trade flourished and more countries bought into the rules-based framework.
All of this changed on September 11th, 2001. According to @RPEddy, “Osama bin Laden’s attack on the Twin Towers was the most extraordinarily powerful asymmetric act of geopolitical history. A few thousand dollars ended Pax Americana.”
The most efficient American response to terrorism might have been strengthening intelligence, clandestine action against terrorist networks, and an international effort to diminish the underlying conditions that terrorists seek to exploit.
But as Yuval Noah Harari explains: "The less political violence in a particular state, the greater the public shock at an act of terrorism. The theatre of terror incites in them visceral fears of anarchy. The state is driven to respond with its own theatre of security..."
"... Once its citizens have seen the terrorist drama of the World Trade Center collapsing, the state feels compelled to stage an equally spectacular counterdrama, with even more fire and smoke."
The US unleashed a mighty storm by bombing Afghanistan and acting belligerently in its decision to invade Iraq, a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The Iraqi invasion was strongly opposed by long-standing US allies, including France and Germany.
It is estimated 36 million people took part in almost 3,000 protests worldwide against the war. The US still broke with the international rules it had spent the previous five decades building and defending, exemplifying that national sovereignty was no longer sacrosanct.
The military blunders in Iraq (the vast amounts of civilian casualties and horrific revelations of torture and abuse by US troops at the Abu Ghraib prison) shattered the myth of US supremacy and invincibility.
America’s War on Terror has been an unmitigated disaster. Since 2000, there have been over 61,000 terrorist attacks globally, killing more than 140,000 people. There are nine times more people killed from terrorism today than there were in 2000.
Belief in the universality of American values and ideals disintegrated. America’s prestige, soft power and agenda-setting capacity declined. To make matters worse, the crippling 2008 financial crisis served to discredit America’s role as the global financial system’s manager.
With America’s loss of international standing and relative economic decline, political leaders feel increasingly emboldened to test and probe the current order with an eye toward reshaping the international system in ways that reflect their own interests, norms and values.
Countries are less willing to submit to the wisdom of US leadership and this is reflected in the ascent of “strongmen” around the world. The era of US dominance in global affairs is over.
Whether the current transitional phase will be a tectonic reckoning or unfold with greater smoothness and calm is one of the great imponderables facing the world today. History does not always move forward.
