The End of Pax Americana
Historians sometimes call the period of time from 27BC to 180AD the Pax Romana, Latin for the “Roman Peace”. This was a time when the Roman Empire was so absolutely dominant in the Mediterranean that the region saw a long period of relative order and peace. Trade flourished, populations grew, and it was generally a good time (at least for the Romans). Twenty years ago, international affairs students liked to have ivory-tower debates about whether the US itself constituted an empire. After all, we had a military presence pretty much everywhere, we enforced borders far from our homeland, intervened decisively anywhere and anytime American interests were threatened and we fostered a system of global free trade. You can see the similarities.
Of course, whether the US is or is not an “empire” is a purely academic question; a matter of semantics and degree. The reality is that in the period between the fall of the Soviet Union and the present day, we have lived in a “uni-polar” world, where the US called most of the shots, much as the British Empire had in the century before WWI and the Romans had millennia prior. In many ways, the US has been shades of empire. And in many ways the last 40 years have been a Pax Americana. A period of uni-polarity with its accompanying relative peace, expanded trade and prosperity.
But things have been changing, and we’ve reached a tipping point.
Two key changes: one slow and one fast. The slow change has been the relative decline of American dominance (economic and militarily). Let’s be clear… this is not a reflection of American decline, but rather, the rise of China. Geopolitics is about relative strength and influence, not absolute strength. We’ve seen this coming for at least 20 years. The fast change is President Trump’s 180-degree pivot on most long-term tenants of US foreign policy. Both of these developments are pushing in the same direction: the dissolution of the global order as we’ve known it for most of our lives.
Trump’s Foreign Policy
Our system of government gives the chief executive broad latitude to conduct foreign affairs however he sees fit. Trump is exercising that power dramatically, breaking with the past in so many ways it’s difficult to keep up. Rather than encouraging free trade, he’s embarking on what amounts to economic de-globalization. Rather than seeking to bolster the democratic Western Bloc in Europe via NATO, he’s aligning the US with Russia. Rather than pursuing a two-state solution in the Mideast, he’s giving unequivocal support to Israel to annex whichever territories they see fit. He’s moving from a foreign policy which was at least theoretically aligned with international law, norms and (little-d) democratic values, to one where those concepts are no longer particularly relevant.
It’s really hard to overstate how radical and rapid these changes are. You would need hours to unpack just one of them. What they amount to is this… We’re moving from a world where alliances and institutions led by the US determined the outcomes of the most important contests to a world where it’s something much simpler: everyone for themselves. It’s like the chess board has been upended and the pieces are all being put back in new places. Things are going to be more dynamic, less predictable, less stable, and probably not as favorable for us as the previous 40 have been - though of course that remains to be seen. Even if the Democrats win control of the White House and Congress in four years, this trend will not be reversed.
The Case For America-First Foreign Policy
The president likes to say the US has gotten a raw deal from its allies. That’s complete nonsense. The United States isn’t the richest, most secure large country in the world because we’ve been systematically victimized. However, there is a school of thought that supports what he’s doing. You could call it hyper-realist. It starts with the assumption that the US is no longer relatively powerful enough to decisively see off all comers. If that is the reality, then it follows that other states will soon no longer reliably help further our interests in exchange for US security guarantees. The implied quid quo pro of the post WW2 order starts to break down. The costs of maintaining and enforcing the status quo begin to outweigh the benefits for America. In this line of thinking, President Trump’s foreign policy pivot is simply an acknowledgement of reality, and a practical “right-sizing” of American ambitions on the world stage. We’re better off focusing our resources more narrowly where we think the ROI is higher. Smaller military, less intervention, no compromises to accommodate friends. As to getting in bed with Russia, it can be rationalized as a necessary step to keep Russia from becoming a client state of our main rival: China. Keeping China and Russia from teaming up has been a foreign policy priority for the US at least as far back as Nixon. And this more isolationist (less globalist) approach to the world is not at all unprecedented. Historically, all the way up to the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans largely wanted to stay well clear of foreign entanglements, particularly in Europe.
The Case Against America-First Foreign Policy
Arguments against the President’s policy pivot take a few different forms:
One is a kind of romantic wish for an approach to the world based on principles and values. One where we do things because they’re right, rather than expedient. You know… a world where America is the proverbial shining city on the hill. Of course, US foreign policy has never lived up to that standard. But it at least paid lip service to the ideal.
Another line of thinking is that reports of Pax Americana’s death are greatly exaggerated, and that America-First foreign policy is creating a reality of diminished US influence, rather than responding to one. Without a doubt, Russia is a paper tiger, and China may not be quite as powerful as it seems. It’s possible to argue that China has already peaked. If America’s rivals and adversaries are weaker than they appear, then downsizing our global ambitions may be penny-wise and pound-foolish.
A third view is that some kind of a pivot may be necessary, but it’s being executed terribly. All tactics. No strategy. Often, the President seems like a poker player with no idea what his chips are worth. He concedes important things before negotiations even start and walks away with trophies that end up being worth a lot less than they appear. Worse, he’s forfeiting relationships that have the power of cultural and historical bonds in favor of relationships with governments and individuals with whom it’s hard to see any common long-term interests. In fact, with people who are deeply antagonistic towards individual liberty, free speech, self-determination, and who are deeply untrustworthy. America has struck deals with the devil many times in the past and it’s always ugly, but the enthusiastic embrace of foreign leaders who would love to see America crumble is just hard to swallow.
A Few Educated Guesses
NATO may be supplanted by a European Defense Treaty. NATO will continue to exist on paper but American security guarantees have now been hollowed out and so our role in European security will change from “must have” to “nice to have”. Defense spending in Europe will soar over the next five to seven years. Why five to seven? Because that’s about how long it will take Russia to re-arm. The spending will (sensibly) be directed towards European defense contractors. Eventually this new defense bloc will be led by Germany, France or more probably - Poland. To fund this shift, Europe will be forced to de-regulate and goose economic growth. This is what the Trump administration seems to want. And hopefully it works. We should only hope it doesn’t work too well. We all know what happened the last time we had a major European military build-up and resurgence of this brand of xenophobic nationalism. It didn’t end well.
Nuclear proliferation may speed up, starting with Ukraine. The President has Ukraine over a barrel and is actively coercing it into an unfavorable settlement. The security guarantees being discussed currently are inadequate. Nukes may be their only real option. They had them once before and they still have the expertise and material required to build them. It won’t take them long. Poland and Japan are other countries that would be wise to pursue nuclear weapons, posthaste.
Taiwan is the next country to receive an “offer it can’t refuse”: technology transfer for security. Taiwan would be wise to avoid exporting its highest-end technology to the US or anyone else. It’s their silicon shield. Without it, they have zero assurance of help from the US. But we’ll still see threats, wheeling and dealing around the topic. They’re already building factories in the US at Biden’s request. But not for their highest end chips.
Putin will restart his asymmetric campaign elsewhere once the Russian economy has stabilized, if he lives long enough. It could be the Caucuses, Moldova, the Baltics or high arctic Finland/Norway. But he’s proven his playbook works, even though it almost cost him his skin this time. Incursions in non-NATO countries will be designed to topple western-leaning governments and install governments that will align with Russia. Incursions into NATO countries will be designed to be small enough to make it impossible for NATO to reach the unanimous agreement required to trigger Article 5. Think small, unpopulated regions of Norway or Finland or a small island in the Baltic Sea. If that happens, NATO loses all credibility and all value as a deterrent. It will have died. This would be a crowning achievement for Putin.
China becomes the de-facto leader of the Global South (ex India and parts of Latin America). The closure of USAID and withdrawal from many United Nations bodies is probably not the end of our pullback from the developing world. We might also see the US withdraw from the World Bank and the IMF. This creates a vacuum that will be filled by China, which has made no secret of its desire to mobilize poor countries behind its agenda with generous infrastructure funding, loans, and state-led investment.
Globally, inflation will be a recurring challenge. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details, particularly as they change day to day. But we know now that tariffs are going to be permanent and substantial, and they’ll be coming both from within and without. And we know this is inflationary. One of the very first insights of the dismal science was that specialization by countries in-line with their comparative advantages leads to lower costs of production. Tariffs push against that directly by creating incentives to shift production to places less well suited for it. Economic self-reliance does have some clear advantages for national security and could result in redistribution of wealth towards blue-collar workers in developed countries like the US, which could go some way towards reducing domestic political polarization. But it comes with higher costs. That doesn’t mean high inflation all the time. But it does mean higher on average going forward. And therefore, higher interest rates on average.