B. U. G. S.

When I pointed out how right my predictions had been inthe past, some readers ask that I write some now.

Here’s one:

Believe it or not, we are living in what will be called the Pax Americana in the exact same sense that the period from 1814-1914 is now officialy dubbed the Pax Britannica.

Pax means “peace,” and few of us lving today would consider this to be peace.

To those of us living in a Pax of this sort, the term seems strange.

In fact what we now look upon as the Pax Romanicum, from which the later Paxes derive their name, would seem an odd term for those living at the time. The idea that the whole Mediterannean world was at PEACE during the two centuries after Augustus won the civil war and became emperor is what later historians said.

There were constant wars, including the conquest of Britain, which struck the people there as less than perfect peace.

But all three so-called Paxes are very similar. In each case, the following period is called a Pax by HISTORIANS. I doubt if anyone saw them that way at the time.

Pax is a comparative term. In each case, you have to look at what happened just BEFORE the so-called Pax began.

The Pax Romanicum followed a decades-long civil war. Legions fought legions, leaders died, chaos ruled. For over two centuries nothing vaguely approaching it occurred again.

But war was constant on a small scale udring the period historians refer to as the Pax Romanum.

Again, to understand the term Pac Britannica you have to look at what happened just BEFORE it.

The Pax Brittania came at the end of a Europe-wide war and Napoleanic occupation that lasted over twenty years, fought from Spain to Moscow. From 1814 when Napolean was finally beaten at Waterlook to 1914, nothing approaching that endless conflict occurred again.

As we all know, one of the really ironic things that the allies convinced themselves of in World War I was that, if they won, the Pax would return. They seriously called it The War to End All Wars. In the 1920s all the major powers signed the Kellogg-Briand pact stating that war was no longer an option for any of them.

In fact during the first few months of World War II there was a period called the Sitzkrieg after Germany invaded Poland when Germans and French troops just sat there.

Only Churchill kept it going until Germany finally took France out in 1940. He could have made peace with Germany and let Hitler go after Stalin until Germany finally lost patience.

After that came almost half a century of World War II and the Cold War which was fought in every corner of the globe. The resources spent in the Cold War dwarfed those spent in any other war in history.

The lives taken by Communists during that period dwarf those of all the wars before, but they were just a bunch of Russians and Chinese and stuff, so nobody cares about that.

We lost a couple of hundred thousand troops over that period and that matters to historians.

But what really mattered were Jews who died in World War II.

But, despite the fact that it didn’t kill anybody importantm, the Cold War made the whole world unstable and we were hovering on the brink of nuclear war for over a generation.

A nuclear war could have wiped out New York and San Francisco, where REAL PEOPLE lived, so that was a big deal.

What we have right now is what HISTORIANS will look upon as “outbreaks.” They do not threaten important places. where real people live.

If this period lasts long enough, it will called a Pax. But the period from 1918 to 1939 was too short to be called a Pax Anybody.

From a historical point of view, this Pax has been going since the first country left the Soviet Empire without being crushed. It is already about the length of the 1918 to 1939 period of peace.

I think the rule of thumb so far is that a real Pax Somebody has to last a century.

But this one might make it for fifty years, and so it will up to the historical umpires to make the call.

The end of this period of peace will come when Superterrorism ends the whole era of national states.

My article in WOL, “Superterrorism” was written about 1998, and was reused on September 11, 2001. It’s in the old WOL archives.