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Paul Krugman notes what is being destroyed before our eyes: Pax Americana [1]
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Date: 2025-02-10
I recognize that some people are going to have a strong reaction to the phrase “Pax Americana”, but Paul Krugman has some observations that need to be discussed.
First, this isn’t about a de facto American Empire dictating to the rest of the world what must be. (Although Krugman acknowledges that IS a thing.)
..For yes, America is or was an imperial power, although in a different way from most past empires — less reliant on force, more reliant on good will and trust. What Musk and Trump have done is to destroy much of the basis for U.S. influence, leaving America far weaker than it was just a few weeks ago. ...Were we always the good guys? Of course not. America engineered the overthrow of democratically elected leaders it didn’t like, from Iran’s Mohammed Mosaddegh to Chile’s Salvador Allende. We supported tinpot dictators where that served U.S. interests (or in some cases corporate interests.) We killed huge numbers of civilians in Korea, and then again in Vietnam. But compare the Pax Americana with any previous hegemony, and we look like a beacon of enlightenment. And our relative decency was rewarded.
emphasis added
It’s easy (and not wrong) to be horrified at things America has done around the world. That being said, we also need to take into account the historic context/contrast of other empires and what has been accomplished when we’ve attempted to live up to our ideals.
The thing to focus on here is how the Trump/Musk administration, with the full compliance of the Republican Party and oligarchs and corporations, is deliberately rejecting all of the positive aspects of the way America has tried to lead the world. They’re ready to go back to the 19th Century or even earlier.
America’s imperial era — the Pax Americana — began after World War II. With Europe and Japan in ruins and Britain exhausted, the U.S. had no military or economic peers outside the Soviet bloc. As Phillips O’Brien recently noted, America could easily have gobbled up lots of territory if it had thought in conventional Great Power terms. But our leaders were more sophisticated than that. I don’t know whether they had read Norman Angell’s The Great Illusion about how conquest no longer made sense, but they certainly understood that America needed prosperous, willing allies, not more territory. Most famously, America not only departed from the ancient tradition of extracting tribute from vanquished foes, we followed our victory in World War II with the Marshall Plan — a large aid program designed to help both our allies and our former enemies get back on their feet. At its peak in 1949, the U.S. government spent about 17 percent of its budget on foreign aid.
emphasis added
It wasn’t just about foreign aid money either. It was about building international mechanisms of cooperation for mutual benefit, establishing rules, crafting military alliances with partners instead of vassals, and honoring our agreements.
Trump/Musk is throwing all of that away. These are things that took decades to establish. It took a tremendous effort and while it can be destroyed overnight, rebuilding it will take far longer — if it is possible at all. Granted, opposing the Soviet Empire was a big factor, but a lot of it was worth doing in its own right.
Read the whole thing.
While the prospect of another global pandemic is triggering alarm about how global cooperation on disease control has been disrupted, there’s another problem which this will only make far worse.
Although Krugman doesn’t include it in his discussion, climate change is the elephant in the room. Dealing with it will take global cooperation on a scale comparable to fighting a world war — for decades. The billionaire class supporting Trump/Musk hates the idea of what this will require; it directly threatens their fortunes and their privilege.
Elon Musk can go to Mars, but the rest of us are stuck here.
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