(in red), and the
British Empire (in teal). The modern
Pax Americana era is cited by supporters and critics of
U.S. foreign policy since the beginning of World War II. In 1941, before the entrance of the United States into the War, US Ambassador to Canada,
James H. R. Cromwell, published a book, titled
Pax Americana. As the title implies, the book envisages the postwar world order with the interventionist US policy. Another wartime book confirms that the postwar era "might well be known as Pax Americana." Both the world and the United States need American peace and the United States must insist upon it and accept nothing less. Explicit criticisms of the idea of Pax Americana appear in the United States synchronously. From 1945 to 1991, Pax Americana was a partial international order, as it applied only to the
Western world, being preferable for some authors to speak about a
Pax Americana et Sovietica. Many commentators and critics focus on American policies from 1992 to the present, and as such, it carries different connotations depending on the context. For example, it appears three times in the 90-page document, ''
Rebuilding America's Defenses,'' by the
Project for the New American Century, but is also used by critics to characterize American dominance and hyperpower status as imperialist in function and basis. From about the mid-1940s until 1991, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the
Cold War, and characterized by its significant international military presence and greater diplomatic involvement. Seeking an alternative to the isolationist policies pursued after World War I, the United States defined a new policy called
containment to oppose the spread of Soviet
communism. The modern
Pax Americana may be seen as similar to the period of peace in
Rome,
Pax Romana. In both situations, the period of peace was 'relative peace'. During both
Pax Romana and
Pax Americana wars continued to occur, but it was still a prosperous time for both Western and Roman civilizations. It is important to note that during these periods, and most other times of relative tranquility, the peace that is referred to does not mean complete peace. Rather, it simply means the civilization prospered in their military, agriculture, trade, and manufacturing.
Pax Britannica heritage From the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until the
First World War in 1914, the
United Kingdom played the role of
offshore-balancer in Europe, where the
balance of power was the main aim. It was also in this time that the British Empire became the largest empire of all time. The global superiority of
British military and commerce was guaranteed by dominance of a Europe lacking in strong
nation-states, and the presence of the
Royal Navy on all of the world's oceans and seas. In 1905, the
Royal Navy was superior to any two navies combined in the world. It provided services such as suppression of
piracy and
slavery. In this era of peace, though, there were several wars between the major powers: the
Crimean War, the
Franco-Austrian War, the
Austro-Prussian War, the
Franco-Prussian War, and the
Russo-Japanese War, as well as numerous other wars.
William Wohlforth has argued that this period of tranquility, sometimes termed
La Belle Époque, was actually a series of hegemonic states imposing a peaceful order. In Wohlforth's view,
Pax Britannica transitioned to
Pax Russica and then to
Pax Germanica, before ultimately, between 1853 and 1871, ceasing to be a
Pax of any kind. During the
Pax Britannica, America developed close ties with Britain, evolving into what has become known as a "
special relationship" between the two. The many commonalities shared with the two nations (such as language and history) drew them together as allies. Under the managed transition of the British Empire to the
Commonwealth of Nations, members of the
British government, such as
Harold Macmillan, liked to think of
Britain's relationship with America as similar to that of a progenitor
Greece to America's
Rome. Throughout the years, both have been active in North American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries. In 1942,
Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy envisaged that the United States may have to supplant the British Empire. Therefore, the United States "must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a Pax Americana". The transition from the British Empire to the Pax Americana is commonly dated to 1947 when the British rule ended in India, Pakistan, Palestine and the eastern Mediterranean, and the Truman Doctrine announced.
Late 20th century After the Second World War, no
armed conflict emerged among major Western nations themselves, and no
nuclear weapons were used in open conflict. The United Nations was also soon developed after World War II to help keep peaceful relations between nations and establishing the veto power for the permanent members of the
UN Security Council, which included the United States. In the second half of the 20th century, the
USSR and US superpowers were engaged in the
Cold War, which can be seen as a struggle between hegemonies for global dominance. After 1945, the United States enjoyed an advantageous position with respect to the rest of the industrialized world. In the
Post–World War II economic expansion, the US was responsible for half of global industrial output, held 80 percent of the world's gold reserves, and was the world's sole
nuclear power. The catastrophic destruction of life, infrastructure, and capital during the Second World War had exhausted the imperialism of the
Old World, victor and vanquished alike. The largest economy in the world at the time, the United States recognized that it had come out of the war with its domestic infrastructure virtually unscathed and its
military forces at unprecedented strength. Military officials recognized the fact that Pax Americana had been reliant on the effective United States
air power, just as the instrument of Pax Britannica a century earlier was its
sea power. In addition, a
unipolar moment was seen to have occurred following the
collapse of the
Soviet Union. The term
Pax Americana was explicitly used by
John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, who advocated against the idea, arguing that the Soviet bloc was composed of human beings with the same individual goals as Americans and that such a peace based on "American weapons of war" was undesirable: I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a
Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. No other US Presidents claimed Pax Americana. As Kennedy, Richard Nixon and George Bush the senior referred to Pax Americana but exclusively to deny its existence in fact and intent. For this reason, the concept was called "undiplomatic". Beginning around the
Vietnam War, the 'Pax Americana' term had started to be used by the critics of
American Imperialism. Here in the late 20th-century conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, the charge of
Neocolonialism was often aimed at Western involvement in the affairs of the
Third World and other developing nations.
NATO became regarded as a symbol of
Pax Americana in West Europe: In one of the first criticisms of "Pax Americana" in 1943
Nathaniel Peffer wrote: He did not know if it would happen: "It is conceivable that ... America might drift into empire, imperceptibly, stage by stage, in a kind of power-politics gravitation." He also noted that America was heading precisely in that direction: "That there are certain stirrings in this direction is apparent, though how deep they go is unclear." Four years after this criticism was written, the Red Army withdrew, paving the way for the
unipolar moment.
Joshua Muravchik commemorated the event by titling his 1991 article, "At Last, Pax Americana". He detailed: The following year, in 1992, the Defense Department's
Defense Planning Guidance draft for the post-Cold War period was leaked to the press. The official responsible, former Assistant Secretary of State,
Paul Wolfowitz, confessed seven years later: "In 1992 a draft memo prepared by my office at the Pentagon ... leaked to the press and sparked a major controversy." The draft's strategy aimed "to prevent any hostile power from dominating" a Eurasian region "whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power". He added: "Senator
Joseph Biden ridiculed the proposed strategy as 'literally a
Pax Americana ... It won't work ...' Just seven years later, many of these same critics seem quite comfortable with the idea of a
Pax Americana." The post-Cold War period, concluded
William Wohlforth, much less ambiguously deserves to be called
Pax Americana. "Calling the current period the true Pax Americana may offend some, but it reflects reality". the
Pax Americana was based on the military preponderance beyond challenge by any combination of rival powers and projection of power throughout the world's
commons – neutral sea, air and space. This projection is coordinated by the
Unified Command Plan which divides the world on regional branches controlled by a single command. The "right to command", translated into Latin, gives
imperium, "commands" (plural)
imperia. The US Combatant Commanders have often been associated with the Roman proconsuls and a complete book was devoted to the comparison. Integrated with it are global network of military alliances (the
Rio Pact, NATO,
ANZUS and bilateral alliances with Japan and several other states) coordinated by Washington in a hub-and-spokes system and worldwide network of several hundreds of military bases and installations. Neither the Rio Treaty, nor NATO, for
Robert J. Art, "was a regional collective security organization; rather both were regional imperia run and operated by the United States". Former Security Advisor
Zbigniew Brzezinski drew an expressive summary of the military foundation of
Pax Americana shortly after the
unipolar moment: Besides the military foundation, there are significant non-military international institutions backed by American financing and diplomacy (like the United Nations and
WTO). The United States invested heavily in programs such as the
Marshall Plan and in the reconstruction of Japan, economically cementing defense ties that owed increasingly to the establishment of the
Iron Curtain/
Eastern Bloc and the widening of the
Cold War. , depicting
Uncle Sam and accusing the American government of
imperialism Being in the best position to take advantage of
free trade, culturally indisposed to traditional empires, and alarmed by the rise of
communism in China and the detonation of the first Soviet
atom bomb, the historically
non-interventionist US also took a keen interest in developing multilateral institutions which would maintain a favorable world order among them. The
International Monetary Fund and
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), part of the
Bretton Woods system of
international financial management was developed and, until the early 1970s, the existence of a
fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was developed and consists of a protocol for normalization and reduction of trade
tariffs. With
the fall of the Iron Curtain, the demise of the notion of a
Pax Sovietica, and the end of the
Cold War, the US maintained significant contingents of armed forces in Europe and East Asia. The institutions behind the Pax Americana and the rise of the United States unipolar power have persisted into the early 21st century. The ability of the United States to act as "the world's policeman" has been constrained by its own citizens' historic aversion to foreign wars. Though there have been calls for the continuation of military leadership, as stated in "Rebuilding America's Defenses": The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global
Pax Americana will not preserve itself. [... What is required is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities. This is reflected in the research of
American exceptionalism, which shows that "there is some indication for [being a leader of an 'American peace'] among the [US] public, but very little evidence of
unilateral attitudes". and the next year "The Life after Pax Americana". In 2003, he announced "The End of the American Era". In 2012, he projected: "America's military strength will remain as central to global stability in the years ahead as it has been in the past." The Russian analyst
Leonid Grinin argues that at present and in the nearest future
Pax Americana will remain an effective tool of supporting the world order since the US concentrates too many leadership functions which no other country is able to take to the full extent. Thus, he warns that the destruction of
Pax Americana will bring critical transformations of the
World-system with unclear consequences. American political analyst
Ian Bremmer argued that with the election of
Donald Trump and the subsequent rise in
populism in the west, as well as US withdrawal from international agreements such as the
Trans-Pacific Partnership,
NAFTA, and the
Paris Climate Accords, that the
Pax Americana is over. American writer and academic
Michael Lind stated that the
Pax Americana withstood both the Cold War and the post-Cold War era, and "today's
Second Cold War has strengthened rather than weakened America's informal empire," at least for now.
Comparison with Pax Romana In 1914, an Italian Historian,
Guglielmo Ferrero, published
Ancient Rome and Modern America: A Comparative Study of Morals and Manners. The title is misleading because the work does not pertain specifically to the United States. Instead, it compares Rome and what Ferrero labels the "New World" and broadens the discussion to modern civilization in general. However, Ferrero's pioneering comparison echoed in the 1961 article by
Mason Hammond, titled "Ancient Rome and modern America reconsidered." Highly critical of the use of the past for the present, he still associated: "The modern world, like the Mediterranean world of the First century BC, faces a choice between self-annihilation... or of unification and peace... Rome of the second century BC and the United States of today face without adequate preparation the responsibilities of world dominance and the dilemma of how to reconcile recognition of the sovereignty of other states with national security." Hammond considered five moments in Roman history which offer tempting similarities to the American present and suggested the differences which "render such parallels deceptive". Two of his differences refer to the parallel between Rome in 150 BC and the United States in 1960. First,
representative federalism today offers for international rivalries an alternative solution to Pax Americana. "Rome moved toward imperialistic control; the United States can still hope for a cooperative federal solution through the United Nations." Unwilling to trust the lessons of history, Hammond bet on the utopian idea of world federalism. Second, the world is bipolar and it would be "foolish to equate Antiochus the Great of Syria in the 190s BC or Parthia in the 150s as rivals to Rome with Russia as a rival to the United States" because Russia is more formidable. What Hammond called "representative federalism" remains where it was in his days, but thirty years after he published his parallels, Pax Americana leaped relatively to Pax Sovietica. The parallel proved to be "deceptive" indeed but in the opposite sense. Writing in 1945,
Ludwig Dehio remembered that the Germans used the term
Pax Anglosaxonica in a sense of Pax Americana since 1918 and discussed the possibility of a Pax Anglosaxonica as a world-wide counterpart to the Pax Romana. The War fast took a clear turn towards what the contemporary Germans feared as the fatal
Pax Anglosaxonica. In 1943, Hitler tried to encourage his team: "They will never become Rome. America will never be the Rome of the future." The same year, however, Hitler's compatriot and the founder of the
Paneuropean Union,
Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, whom Hitler called "cosmopolitan bastard", projected a new "Pax Romana" based on the preponderant US air power: Soon many scholars found that what Coudenhove-Kalergi called the "only realistic hope for peace" is coming true. In 1953, British Classicist
Gilbert Murray encouraged that across the Atlantic is waiting a "greater Rome" which can establish world peace or at least maintain Europe in an "ocean of barbarism" as Rome maintained
Hellas. In the mid-1960s, some scholars concluded that the United States had outstripped the Soviet Union beyond the bipolar model and instead looked to the model of Rome. One of those scholars, George Liska, argued that historical superstates in general and the Roman Empire in particular rather than the recent colonial empires have relevance for the contemporary US foreign policy. Prefacing his
Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire in 1976, Pentagon employee
Edward Luttwak stressed that the United States pursues similar to Rome goals, faces a similar kind of resistance, and hence must apply a similar strategy. In the late 1990s, Pentagon initiated new research on "military advantage in history" and how to keep it. Of four empires they selected, Rome was emphasized as the most relevant model for the contemporary United States. The "whole bunch" of copies went out to the government. While Pentagon and NSC employees turned into Roman Historians, Roman Historian
Arthur M. Eckstein proceeded in the reverse direction. He noted that the theoretical framework of hierarchy, unipolarity, and empire as political scientists have defined these terms is a procedure rarely pursued among scholars of Mediterranean antiquity and decided to fill the gap. Eckstein presented his subject in terms of the 20th-century
International Relations. The five-year (196–192 BC) diplomatic confrontation between Rome and
Antiochus III was a classic contest between the two superpowers in a "bipolar system". The confrontation turned into war and in 189 BC Rome defeated Antiochus. This victory resulted in an unprecedented for the Mediterranean world unipolar moment with Rome established as a "unipolar hegemon". There remained only one political and military focus, only one preponderant power. "Rome was now the sole remaining superpower." A unified "unipolar system" stretched from Spain to Syria. Anti-imperialist empire is not a modern invention. Initially, Rome had appeared in the East as an anti-imperialist power – the champion of the weaker states against the aggression of the great powers of
Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III. Eckstein's student, Paul Burton, adds that
Achaean League statesman Lycortas, father of
Polybius, interpreted the Roman foreign policy in words that might sound familiar to the critics of US foreign policy: The message the Romans are sending by criticizing the Achaeans is that "freedom, in the Roman mind, is also empire" (
Livius 39.36.5 – 37.17). But Eckstein cared to provide the contemporary world with an emergency exit from Pax Americana. The Roman achievement of unipolarity was only one step along the spectrum of interstate relations that leads towards empire. And unipolarity, even when once achieved, can nevertheless be reversed. Historically this has frequently occurred and in the late 2000s the United States is discovering that unipolarity is unstable.
Joseph Nye titled his 2002 article "The New Rome Meets the New Barbarians". His book of the same year he opens: "Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others." And his 1991 book he titled
Bound to Lead.
Leadership, translated into Greek, renders
hegemony; an alternative translation is
archia – Greek common word for
empire. Decline, he writes, is not necessarily imminent. "Rome remained dominant for more than three centuries after the peak of its power ... The Pax Americana motif and its Roman parallel reached their peak in the context of the 2003
Iraq War. Comparing the United States to the Roman Empire has become somewhat of a cliché.
Jonathan Freedland observed:
The New York Review of Books illustrated a 2002 piece on US might with a drawing of George Bush togged up as a
Roman centurion, complete with shield and spears. Bush's visits to Germany in 2002 and 2006 resulted in further Bush-as-Roman-emperor invective appearing in the German press. In 2006, freelance writer, political satirist, and correspondent for the left-leaning
Die Tageszeitung, Arno Frank, compared the spectacle of the visit by
Imperator Bush to "elaborate inspection tours of Roman emperors in important but not completely pacified provinces – such as
Germania". In September 2002, Boston's
WBUR-FM radio station titled a special on US imperial power with the tag "
Pax Americana". The phrase "American Empire" appeared in one thousand news stories over a single six-month period in 2003. A 2009
Google search yielded policy analyst
Vaclav Smil 22 million hits for "America as a new Rome", and 23 million for "American Empire." Intrigued, Smil titled his 2010 book by what he intended to explain:
Why America Is Not a New Rome. The volume of the Rome-US comparisons made a bewildering impression on reviewers: "As the trickle turns into a flood, it is impossible to keep up with the many articles, books, internet sites, and documentaries that pose the comparison. Even after 2009... the number of works about Rome and the USA shows no sign of abating." Two Classicists, Paul J. Burton and Eric Adler, decided that the volume of comparisons between America and Rome requires research of its own. Adler's comparison of comparisons revealed that most interventionists dissociate America from Rome while most critics of US interventions emphasize similarities between the two. The same he finds true for the Edwardian and Victorian debates regarding the British Empire. Isolationists use the polemical value of the "New Rome" to "shock" the reader while interventionists offer the same reader a therapy by distinguishing Rome from America. Adler also observed that many notable authors are more interested in expressing their opinion about recent US foreign policy rather than offering a nuanced interpretation of Roman history checked against primary sources. Instead, from secondary sources they select elements fitting their line and disregard whether these elements are from the republican Rome, or imperial Rome, or even the Byzantine Empire. Like Smil, Classicist and military Historian
Victor Davis Hanson dissociates the United States from Rome. The U.S. does not pursue
world domination, but maintains worldwide influence by a system of mutually beneficial exchanges. The existence of "proconsuls", however, has been recognized by many since the early Cold War. In 1957, French Historian
Amaury de Riencourt associated the American "proconsul" with "the Roman of our time." Expert on recent American history,
Arthur M. Schlesinger, detected several contemporary imperial features, including "proconsuls". Washington does not directly run many parts of the world. Rather, its "informal empire" was one "richly equipped with imperial paraphernalia: troops, ships, planes, bases, proconsuls, local collaborators, all spread wide around the luckless planet". "The
Supreme Allied Commander, always an American, was an appropriate title for the American proconsul whose reputation and influence outweighed those of European premiers, presidents, and chancellors." U.S. "
combatant commanders ... have served as its proconsuls. Their standing in their regions has usually dwarfed that of ambassadors and assistant secretaries of state."
Andrew J. Bacevich in his 2002 book about American Empire titled a chapter "Rise of the proconsuls," where he identifies a new class of uniformed proconsuls presiding over vast "quasi-imperial" domains who emerged in the 1990s. In September 2000,
Washington Post reporter
Dana Priest published a series of articles whose central premise was Combatant Commanders' inordinate amount of political influence within the countries in their areas of responsibility. They "had evolved into the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Empire's proconsuls—well-funded, semi-autonomous, unconventional centers of U.S. foreign policy." A book, titled ''America's Viceroys'', responds to Priest, claiming that US Combatant Commanders pose no threat of marching on Washington while Roman proconsuls "always presented" such threat. Many Roman historians however reduce the period of the threat from "always" to the last century of the Republic (133–31 BC). One of most honorable Roman proconsuls who won for Rome supremacy over the Mediterranean,
Scipio Africanus, was unsuccessful in the 184 BC campaign for the censorship and retired from politics. Founded c. 509 BC, the Republic still firmly controlled its proconsuls. Stephen Wrage precludes future complications with Combatant Commanders, while some Roman historians are more cautious, supposing that the United States might be in the Roman sequence "somewhere between the great wars of conquest [202–146 BC] and the rise of the Caesars." Carnes Lord observes that since the 2000s, the notion that the Combatant Commanders are in effect the "proconsuls" of a new American Empire has become a standard trope in the literature on American foreign policy. Harvard professor Niall Ferguson calls the regional combatant commanders, among whom the whole globe is divided, the "pro-consuls" of this "imperium".
Günter Bischof calls them "the all powerful proconsuls of the new American empire. Like the proconsuls of Rome they were supposed to bring order and law to the unruly and anarchical world." The Romans often preferred to exercise power through friendly client regimes, rather than direct rule: "Until Jay Garner and L. Paul Bremer became U.S. proconsuls in Baghdad, that was the American method, too". Carnes Lord devoted a book to comparison between the Roman proconsuls, British colonial officials and US Combatant Commanders. The latter for him also associate with the Persian
satraps and Spanish
viceroys. He found the American version most similar to the Roman proconsular model. As they contributed importantly to the policy on the marches of empire, all of them qualify as proconsuls in proper sense of the term. With all due qualification, he confessed, his study is about imperial governance in the imperial periphery. One research on host nations support concludes that the general trend of the South Korean and Japanese alliance burden sharing is towards increase. Increasing the "economic burdens of the allies" is one of the major priorities of President
Donald Trump. Classicist Eric Adler notes that Hanson earlier had written about the decline of the classical studies in the United States and insufficient attention devoted to the classical experience. "When writing about American foreign policy for a lay audience, however, Hanson himself chose to castigate Roman imperialism in order to portray the modern United States as different from—and superior to—the Roman state." As a supporter of a hawkish unilateral American foreign policy, Hanson's "distinctly negative view of Roman imperialism is particularly noteworthy, since it demonstrates the importance a contemporary supporter of a hawkish American foreign policy places on criticizing Rome." The first good evidence of such a taxation comes from Judea as late as 64 BC. Client states made irregular military or economic contributions in case of the hegemonic campaigns, as is the case under the
Pax Americana. Formally, client states remained independent and very seldom were called "clients". The latter term became widely used only in the late medieval period. Usually, other states were called "friends and allies" – a popular expression under the
Pax Americana.
Arnold J. Toynbee stressed the similarity of the US alliances with the
Roman client system and
Ronald Steel cited Toynbee's parallel at length in his book, titled
Pax Americana. Nominally independent allies were offered Roman or US protection which, according to Peter Bender, meant their control and limit on other states' sovereignty. Bender, in his 2003 article "America: The New Roman Empire", summarized: "When politicians or professors are in need of a historical comparison in order to illustrate the United States' incredible might, they almost always think of the Roman Empire." The article abounds with analogies. The Romans similarly were isolationists until they expanded outside of Italy. The factor for the overseas engagement is the same in both cases: the seas or oceans
ceased to offer protection, or so it seemed: Both Rome and the United States claimed the unlimited right to render their enemies permanently harmless." Postwar treatments of Carthage, Macedon, Germany and Japan are similar. "When they later extended their power to overseas territories, they shied away from assuming direct control wherever possible." In the Hellenistic world, Rome withdrew its legions after three wars and instead settled for a role of all-powerful patron and arbitrator. "World powers without rivals are a class unto themselves. They ... are quick to call loyal followers friends, or amicus populi Romani. They no longer know any foes, just rebels, terrorists, and rogue states. They no longer fight, merely punish. They no longer wage wars but merely create peace. They are honestly outraged when vassals fail to act as vassals."
Zbigniew Brzezinski comments on the latter analogy: "One is tempted to add, they do not invade other countries, they only liberate." Some scholars deemed
Mithridates' massacre of Roman citizens in 88 BC Rome's "9/11 moment" and described the ways in which the vicissitudes of contemporary Pax Americana are reminiscent of Rome's reaction to Mithridates' revolt. Robert Fisk used the association to claim that Pax Romana was more cruel than Pax Americana: Following the massacre, the Romans "crucified their enemies to extinction. Human rights knew no dimensions in ancient Rome." Alternatively, Max Ostrovsky defines such conclusions as pre-determined and unrelated to
what really happened. No mass crucification occurred. Having defeated Mithridates in 84 BC,
Lucius Cornelius Sulla concluded with him peace and recognized him as friend and ally of Rome. No modern ruler would survive having massacred 80,000 American citizens, neither in power nor physically. On the occasion, the tolerance of Pax Romana appears exaggerated by both ancient and modern standards. Cicero (
De Imperio Cn. Pompei) wondered how Mithridates was left upon throne and allowed to initiate two more
anti-Roman wars. Only after the
Third Mithridatic War in 64 BC
Pompey finally put an end to his kingship and annexed the rogue Kingdom. Besides the books of Vaclav Smil and Peter Bender, a book completely devoted to the comparison between Rome and the United States is
The Empires of Trust by Roman Historian
Thomas F. Madden. Madden outlines numerous parallels, many in agreement with Bender, such as beginning of both Empires as frontier societies and following isolationist policy, their later pattern of
defensive imperialism, and allying other states rather than conquering them. Besides causes and patterns, he devotes much attention to the analogous results of Pax Romana and Pax Americana. The elimination of external threat leads to decline in internal social harmony. The Roman synchronous establishment of the empire and the fall of the republic is causally linked by almost all writers on the subject, ancient and modern, and the thesis is often applied to the United States. US increasing imperialism and expansionism, modern experts warn, would exert a similar impact. The warning was traditionally repeated by anti-imperialists and isolationists from Mark Twain to
Robert A. Taft to
Patrick Buchanan and grew louder with the increased intervention during the
war on terror from such authors as
Chalmers Johnson, Robert Merry, and Michael Vlahos. The distinction of Madden's research is the focus on Pax. The new and bitter civil strife that erupted in Rome and led to the fall of the Republic was a by-product of Pax which paradoxically bears fierce internal divisions. The Romans remained a closely knit group so long as they continued to have powerful outside enemies – so long as the collective focus of their lives was the defense and preservation of their society. The powerful outside enemies were eliminated by 146 BC. And in 133 BC, violence broke on the
Capitoline Hill in Rome. For the first time, the people did not defer to the Senate. And perhaps not anymore. Law was dispensed with and blood began to flow. Romans were killing Romans. Both classics and modern historians stressed the absent external threat as the factor of civil wars in the 1st century BC followed by the fall of the Republic. But Madden seems to be the first scholar to apply the thesis to the United States: "Do the same dangers await America?" Writing before the
2021 Capitol attack, he reflects: In 146 BC, thirteen years before the first outbreak of civil violence, Rome had eliminated two more external threats (from Carthage and Greece). The United States lost its last grave (Soviet) external threat in 1991. Supposing that we might be in the Roman sequence, where 146 BC corresponds to AD 1991, Madden asks whether the United States has reached the level of Pax that Rome had achieved by 146 BC. His estimation is either yes or very close, but either way external threats will remain too small to wield the pre-1991 national unity. Political rivalries under the Pax Romana became fierce – so fierce that they undermined the fabric of the Republic. The Roman experience suggests that a republic cannot survive such a turmoil. But it was neither the Empire that was at stake, nor the Pax Romana that it brought. Those would remain secure for centuries. It was, instead, the republican form of government that fell. Hence, in worst case, Pax Americana would continue under imperial government. == See also ==