Pax Americana is only as strong as the sum of its parts

It is an indisputable fact that much of the peace, prosperity, and stability of the post-Second World War paradigm came as a direct result of the US-led global order.

By putting an end to the often-ancient rivalries between competing imperial powers, the United States, through its post-war economic and strategic might, coupled with immense political capital, guaranteed the freedom of the seas and promoted an explosion of free trade across the globe, paving the way for the modern, interconnected global economy and period of innovation we enjoy today.

Through this might, both conventional and strategic arsenal, the United States established what has become known as a “strategic umbrella”, where for greater input into their ally’s security policy and easier access to their markets, the United States would do the heavy lifting on the global geostrategic stage.

Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Western Europe, and parts of Asia were the major beneficiaries of this new “globalised world” and the radically new approach to global power relations which would be ironed out at the Bretton Woods Conference and the formation of multilateral organs like the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund.

This formalisation would also give way to more drastic implementation through policies like the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe following the devastation of the Second World War, providing both a carrot and stick to help preserve peace in the post-war years.

Now, however, in the nearly two and a half decades since the end of the Cold War, the golden era of the Pax Americana is coming to an end. Highlighting this point is Arthur Herman, acclaimed American author, historian, and Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute in a piece titled, Toward a New Pax Americana in which he stated, “The Pax Americana that has prevailed over world affairs since the end of World War II is dead, if not actually buried. It must now be replaced. The two remaining questions are: with what and how?”

Going further, Herman added, “The old Pax Americana rested on two assumptions, both of which are now out of date. The first was that the US military was strong enough to protect its allies everywhere, from Asia to the Middle East to Europe. After World War II, American statesmen built a complex network of alliances centred on NATO in Europe and a ‘hub and spoke’ alliance with Japan, South Korea, and other nations in East Asia...

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“The second assumption was that as the driving engine of the world order, the US economy would always be strong enough to sustain the largest military in history ... Today, neither assumption is operative. Instead, China (and soon, India) are geared to be the main drivers of the global economy – and one could argue China already is. Meanwhile, the US military – while still relatively strong in terms of the size of its forces and budget – is increasingly forced to make hard choices between priorities,” Herman explained in further detail.

One thing that has been long overlooked is the role that allies like Australia and its aforementioned global partners equally played a critical role in the preservation and expansion of the Pax Americana at its height and will be required to play an increasingly important and pillar-esque role in a new era of Pax Americana.

Pax Americana is in the state it is because of America itself

At the core of rebuilding Pax Americana for Herman is the dual emphasis on rebuilding the American industrial and military might and correcting what he described as the “abject retreat” begun under President Barack Obama and accelerated by President Joe Biden that has served to ironically promote greater global instability, while also using the US military to attack adversaries particularly in the Middle East.

Herman stated, “What the Pax Americana could not survive, however, was abject surrender. Despite President Barack Obama’s claims that he rejected a declinist view of American power, his pullout from Iraq and the Middle East in order to execute a much-vaunted but largely non-existent ‘Pacific pivot,’ his acquiescence to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and overseeing eight years of cutbacks in military spending as well as the withdrawal of missile defence from Eastern Europe; opened the ‘EXIT’ doors for an American retreat from world affairs.

“The Biden administration has managed to turn retreat into full-scale flight. Its record has been cumulative from its earliest days in office, starting with the abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan. A break with Saudi Arabia followed, frustrating hopes of a new round of Abraham Accord-style agreements between Israel and its neighbors – then, a belated and timid response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, despite multiple warning signs that an attack was imminent,” Herman explained further.

These blundering examples have served only to embolden revisionist powers like Russia, China, and Iran who have rapidly sought to expand their coercive agenda against the post-Second World War order, while also establishing parallel international institutions and mechanisms like the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRICS multilateral trading bloc to challenge a tired, divided, and fraying world order.

Herman explained this reality, saying, “In short, on every continent, from every political perspective, and in every category of American engagement in the world, the once-powerful Pax Americana looks outdated, overstretched, and even (to some critics) downright provocative. It’s as if we were spoiling for a fight with our adversaries that both of us know we cannot win."

Rebuilding the world order for the 21st century

While Herman described four possible outcomes as a result of the end of the existing Pax Americana model, ranging from complete US isolationism emboldening the world’s revisionist powers – namely Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China would rapidly accelerate their plans to completely dismantle what remained of the post-Second World War order and establish themselves as the world’s epicentre of power – to a more nuanced approach in which America and its partners are more directly engaged in a clearly defined Cold War 2.0 between the two emerging blocs of economic, political, and strategic power, by far, the most important models proposed by Herman is his fourth creation, one in which, as he described, “essentially involves turning the original Pax Americana formula inside out”.

Herman expanded on the critical details of turning Pax Americana “inside out”, explaining, “Instead of American arms, productivity, and instrumentalities flowing outward to sustain and support allies and the global economy, the new Pax Americana relies on achieving a proper balance between American interests and those of our democratic allies in order to generate a more stable and equitable global system and confront the current and future threat from the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis.

“This involves 1) boosting US economic strength through reshoring and restoring our manufacturing and industrial base and 2) using US technological innovation – which has been the critical source of our economic leadership – as the point of the spear in our military leadership in arming ourselves and allies, from AI and unmanned aircraft systems to cyber security and space exploration,” Herman detailed further.

Where this novel approach differs from the original incarnation of Pax Americana, at least in part, is a far more transactional approach to the tried-and-tested arsenal of democracy model, through which the US can more accurately audit and account for allied investment in the new world order by “measuring an ally’s contribution to the common defence burden by tracking its defence budget as a percentage of GDP. Instead, the contribution of German, French, Italian, and Japanese firms to specific programs can become the new metric for defence burden – sharing within NATO and beyond, as well as being a more accurate measure of who contributes what to the defence of democracy around the world, and global peace and stability”.

Herman’s proposal seems to be a zero-sum game through its emphasis solely on American reshoring and restoration of the US industrial base and “value add” economic supply chain, rather than aggregating across trusted US partners to prioritise the creation of multiple supporting nodes and centres of economic, political, and strategic mass and power around the globe.

Granted Herman’s reference point is from the US perspective and we shouldn’t expect an American to put our interests ahead of their own. Equally Herman’s proposal fails to account for a number of factors and once again disproportionally places the burden upon America and the American people and in particular, lower and-middle class Americans.

But it does provide the basis for a model worthy of emulation, expansion and tailoring locally in order help establish an aggregate of economic, political, and strategic mass in support of the reimagined Pax Americana through individual “pillar”-like structures where for their individual part, allies like Australia are responsible for the maintenance of peace, prosperity, security and the “rules-based order” in well-defined parts of the globe.

Enter Pax Australis

Australia has long been recognised as America’s “loyal deputy” in the Indo-Pacific, with a proud history of “paying into” the insurance policy that is the Australia-US alliance through participation in every major conflict of the 20th century alongside the United States.

Yes, this approach has yielded results, particularly throughout the waning years of the Cold War and into the 21st century when America’s disproportionate bearing of the burden allowed Australia, like many Western nations, to become “fat, rich, happy and complacent” on the back of the American sacrifice and, more recently, with the AUKUS trilateral partnership.

Now however, the circumstances have changed and irrevocably. America cannot, despite the immortal words of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, bear the costs alone, not anymore anyway, particularly in an era of increased geopolitical competition and strain with nations of equal or increasing economic, political, and strategic mass.

Rather, it is time for US allies like Australia and the United Kingdom to set about easing the burden on the United States and embracing the opportunities while balancing the risks associated with tailored stratagems similar to those proposed by Herman and his push to reinvigorate and reinvent Pax Americana.

Doing this, however, would be a major departure for Australia in particular, effectively requiring the nation to establish its own strategic umbrella in its area of primary responsibility and importance, which lazy policymakers and bureaucrats have been intent on pigeonholing as the South Pacific because it is the easy way out.

In stark contrast to this lazy and easy policy making, Australia’s primary area of responsibility and critical importance to the nation’s security, stability, and prosperity could strongly be argued to expand from the east coast of Africa and the Persian Gulf, through to American Samoa and up into the South China Sea.

This area of responsibility provides immense economic opportunity, being home to some of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies and populations including India, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Kenya, and the Philippines which alone is projected to have a population of 5 billion people with a total combined gross domestic product worth US$13.13 trillion (AU$20.1 trillion) by 2030.

By 2050, this same cluster of nations will have a projected population of 5.7 billion with a total combined gross domestic product worth US$30.35 trillion (AU$46.5 trillion) with voracious demand for raw resources, agricultural goods, financial services and high-end, value-add products Australia is uniquely positioned to apply.

Ultimately, this new geography is reminiscent of the warnings provided by Peter Zeihan, who explained, “A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation.”

While these figures don’t include a host of other nations that make up this region, it provides a sense of the scale and scope of the opportunities right on Australia’s doorstep and separate to our economic dependence on the People’s Republic of China, for example.

Equally, these nations would relish the opportunity to enjoy a protracted period of peace, prosperity and stability providing an opportunity for Australia to position itself as this region’s strategic benefactor and linchpin of economic, political, and strategic stability (despite our size) through a Pax Australis model under the broader strategic umbrella provided by a reinvigorated and remodeled Pax Americana.

We just have to begin this process at home and begin it, yesterday.

Final thoughts

Australia, as a nation, is defined by its economic, political, and strategic relationships with the Indo-Pacific and the access to the growing economies and strategic sea lines of communication supporting over 90 per cent of global trade, so the success, stability, and prosperity of this region is intrinsically linked to our own.

Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national strategy and ambition integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust and ambitious Australian role in the region.

Regardless of whether we are in a “pre-war” or traditional “Cold War” environment, it is clear that successive generations of Australian leaders have let the country down, too entranced and seduced by the promise of “Peace Dividends” and the “End of History” to recognise the cold reality of the world, particularly developing concurrently with the “Clash of Civilisations” during the Global War on Terror.

Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of “it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother” will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.

Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..