Pax Americana

English

Etymology

Learned borrowing from New Latin Pāx Americāna, from pāx (“peace”) + Americāna (“American”) after the model of the imperial Roman Pāx Rōmāna and earlier British Pāx Britannica.

Proper noun

Pax Americana

1. The period of relative peace in the Western world since the end of World War II in 1945, coinciding with the military and economic dominance of the United States.

   Synonym: long peace

   • 2002 September 18, Jonathan Freedland, “Rome, AD… Rome, DC?”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Earlier this month Boston's WBUR radio station titled a special on US imperial power with the Latin tag Pax Americana. Tom Wolfe has written that the America of today is “now the mightiest power on earth, as omnipotent as… Rome under Julius Caesar”.

   • 2022 February 21, David Leonhardt, “Why Ukraine Is Different”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     A war like this — a voluntary war of aggression — would be a sign that Putin believed that Pax Americana was over and that the U.S., the European Union and their allies had become too weak to exact painful consequences.

Coordinate terms

• See pāx

Translations

period of relative peace in the Western world

• French: pax americana (fr)
• German: Pax Americana
• Japanese: パクス・アメリカーナ (pakusu amerikāna)
• Korean: 팍스 아메리카나 (pakseu amerikana)
• Latin: Pax Americana
• Spanish: Pax Americana