Saturday, August 20, 2005

Pax Americana

I'm not quite sure what Marco means when he says Pax Americana, but I mean what the phrase was coined for, something exactly analogous to the Pax Romana under the Four Good Emperors, but exhibiting the distinctive characteristics of American rather than Roman civilisation. "One world under God, with Liberty and Justice for All". In such a world I, selfishly, would not have to worry about my children being drafted to fight the barbarians, which is why it holds great appeal to me.
This Pax Americana is obviously something that is potential, not actual. Sadly, it does not seem to be approaching with any rapidity. All of the evidence is that the only potential World unifier and pacifier is sliding back more and more into short-sighted pragmatism. It is pathetic to see the most powerful nation on earth making feeble appeasy noises towards totally unimportant and vile organisations like Hamas. It is more pathetic to see it turning a blind eye to the actions of the 'friendly' regime of Uzbekistan. A good first step towards the establishment of the Pax Americana would have been the conquest and long-term occupation under Douglas Macarthur-style American rule of the five Middle Eastern places where some permutation of nihilist Anti-American islamofascism was an entrenched way of life: Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. They should have started in the west and slowly rolled across to the east, like Alexander the Great. It is almost a pity that Al-Qaeda did not take out the White House as well: then there might have been sufficient political will to get and keep the required two million troops on the ground between the Mediterranean and the Indus. If this had happened, there would be a pretty good chance that the world would be a nice place ten years from now. But it hasn't.
In the last few months it has sunk in that things are moving much too slowly, and that I will just have to live with the fear that my children will be drafted to fight the barbarians. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all had to go off and fight the barbarians. I have been fortunate enough not to have. Maybe we will luck out and get two generations in a row. We shall see.

3 comments:

Marco Parigi said...

You are quite right about the White House. In fact, any attack that dwarfs Sep 11 may yet have the effect of enabling Pax Americana. Maybe that is what "home grown terrorists" have in mind.

Dave said...

While we're listing dubious allies, let's not forget General Pervez "I didn't know our leading nuclear scientist was smuggling whole fucking reactors out of the country and selling them to members of the not-so-down-with-the-West club like Syria, Iran and North Korea" Musharraf.

You know, that guy who even now is presiding (with dubious legitimacy) over a military that is exercising not all that much success in closing its borders to Afghanistan's less savoury elements.

Dr Clam said...

I did get a reprint request from someone at the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science once. I couldn't think of any way that PVA glue could further the cause of global nuclear proliferation, so I sent them the paper. If PVA glue is a critical feature of the Pakistani A-Bomb, my bad...