Behind the term “American peace” stands not only security but a whole system of habits, dependencies, and power that has shaped Europe more deeply than it will admit
When German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says that “Pax Americana” has ended and warns of a permanent American withdrawal from Europe, it sounds like a historic turning point, but it is equally useful to read such statements as a signal of current mood rather than a final verdict. For Merz spoke of the need for Europe to become less dependent on the US, but at the same time of the desire for transatlantic ties to “remain strong,” including the message that Trump would be welcome in Germany next year.
We have already seen similar dynamics with Emmanuel Macron, who in 2019 in an interview for The Economist declared NATO “brain dead,” causing shock among some, only to then spend weeks explaining that he wanted, well, to “wake up” the allies. Both Macron and Merz, in moments of nervousness in Washington or when American policy turns inward, readily raise the tone about European autonomy, and as soon as expectations of a “return to the old normal” appear in American politics, the same circles in European capitals most often hurry back to the familiar rhythm of relying on the American umbrella. That is precisely why one should not pay too much attention to these daily statements, but to things that are far more important. Because “Pax Americana” is not just a phrase but an entire historical order.
Pax Americana literally means “American peace,” but this is not a description of a world without wars, but the name for a period of relative stability and predictability in areas where American power extends, mainly from 1945 onward. The Merriam-Webster dictionary ties the term to a “period of relative tranquility” from about 1945 to the present in regions reached by American power. In practice, it is the name for a combination of military protection, economic rules, and political expectations that for decades created the framework in which allies and partners counted on the US as the main guarantor of order, while adversaries had to factor in American capability and willingness to intervene.
The term itself, like Pax Romana or Pax Britannica, is more a symbol than a precise scientific category, but a symbol that hits the essence. An interesting detail is that “Pax Americana” is mentioned in the press even before World War II, and the Oxford English Dictionary notes an early appearance of the term already in the late 19th century, in a completely different context, within the United States. Nevertheless, modern usage ties to the postwar world, when the US emerged from the war as the strongest industrial and financial power, with enormous military strength and the political will to shape the international system.
The key thing about Pax Americana is that it did not arise on its own, but as a project that was at the same time idealistic and with deep interests. One contemporary analysis from Berlin’s SWP summarizes it through three pillars: American military power, economic openness, and liberal democratic legitimacy of American foreign policy. That combination for decades created the impression that American domination is not just force, but “order,” i.e., a set of rules, institutions, and promises that provide predictability, at least for those within that circle.
The economic backbone of that order was built already during the war, in Bretton Woods in 1944, when the monetary framework was agreed upon and institutions like the IMF and the World Bank were founded, with the dollar gaining the role of the central currency in the international system. This was joined by the GATT in 1947, the precursor to today’s WTO, as an infrastructural agreement for world trade which, despite all its gaps and inequalities, rested on the idea that markets “open up” and exchange expands under American political patronage. For Europe, the crucial one was the Marshall Plan, or the European Recovery Program, launched in 1948 as a massive financial and political injection for the reconstruction of Western Europe, with a very clear strategic calculation to simultaneously strengthen American influence and push back Soviet attractiveness.
On the security side, Pax Americana was not just NATO, but NATO was its most recognizable European institution. The idea was simple and brutally effective: the US provides military protection, including the nuclear umbrella and the presence of bases, while European states accept strategic tying to Washington and gradually align defense and political policies. In a broader sense, the American role extended through a network of alliances in Asia, through bases, command structures, and the ability to project power across seas and air—what is often described as control of “global commons,” i.e., seas, air, and later space. One interesting detail is that Pax Americana is often explained through the “public goods” that the American navy and American logistics offered the system, primarily the security of main maritime routes and global trade, which benefited even those who were not American allies in the strict sense.
But the order was not just military and financial architecture. The cultural and technological layer is often underestimated, yet it was crucial for the experience of “normality.” Hollywood, the Anglo-American media ecosystem, universities, corporate culture, management standards, and later the digital infrastructure of the internet—all this created an atmosphere in which the American model of living, working, and consuming was presented as the universal future, while alternative models were regularly labeled as backward or even threatening. Pax Americana in that sense was also a story about who determines the language of prestige and the “rules of the game,” from finance to culture.
At the same time, it is important to debunk the myth that it is about peace in the literal sense. The “American peace” never meant peace for Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, or a series of smaller, often forgotten battlefields and operations. Even when there was no direct war between major industrial powers, the periphery often paid the price through interventions, proxy wars, sanctions, and political upheavals. This is where one of the enduring paradoxes arises: an order experienced in the West as stability—and still understood that way today (especially by Merz, whatever he says now)—part of the world experienced (and experiences) as coercion, disciplining, and economic steering in favor of the center.
Europe is special in this story because it was not just an object, but also a co-author, at least in the beginning. Historian and political scientist Geir Lundestad as early as 1986 introduced the famous formulation “empire by invitation,” arguing that American expansion in Western Europe after 1945 was largely encouraged by invitations and interests from European elites who wanted American security and American economic aid, even at the cost of limiting their own strategic autonomy. That “invitation” was not just diplomatic; it was also domestic political, because many European governments tied their stability and development to the Atlantic framework, to a market or mixed economy, and to institutions emerging under American protection.
If we now return to today’s statements about the “end,” it is interesting to note that the debate is increasingly less about tanks and more about the reliability of the arrangement itself. When new American documents openly criticize European authorities, when Washington talks about “support” for certain political currents in Europe, or when messages come from the US that the focus is increasingly on the Western Hemisphere and Asia, European leaders suddenly start speaking the language of emancipation. Merz’s reaction to the new American strategy and his message that Europe must become more independent in security fall into that category, along with simultaneous attempts not to burn bridges completely.
In that sense, Pax Americana is indeed “dead” as the old, stable agreement in which the US played the convincing guarantor and arbiter, and Europe could live in the luxury of strategic passivity. Only one version remains in which that concept can be sustained, and that is the version in which Europe would become even more obedient to Washington, not because it believes in a common project, but because it does not want to pay the price of real autonomy. That would be peace as hierarchy, peace as managing allies, peace in which the most important decisions are still made across the Atlantic, and European capitals translate them into their own domestic policy. If that is the future, then “Pax Americana” has not disappeared, but has taken off the gloves—and that is actually just another word for the end of an era in which stability was sold as partnership.
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