First there was Pax Romana, where practically all of Europe, Asia Minor, and parts of Africa came under the heel of the Roman emperors, beginning from Augustus Caesar. That lasted some centuries, eventually folding into the Holy Roman Empire, which began with the conversion of Constantine. But the succession of attacks from the Huns and other Germanic tribes, coupled with internal rot caused the slow demise of what was called Pax Romana.
Attempts there were to establish some kind of Pax Hispanica, but this never did come to fruition, with their Iberian neighbor, Portugal trying to stake its own colonial adventurism. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the Britons under Queen Elizabeth, attempts by the Iberians and even the French to establish their own power axis in Europe and the rest of the world sundered to the mercantile and colonial prowess of the English. At the apogee of Pax Britannica, “the sun never set on the British Empire”—or so they boasted. While nightfall crept into Myanmar and India, Malaya and Borneo even, it was daytime in the British Isles.
America, with its vast land and almost unlimited natural resources, became the major beneficiary of Pax Britannica. And to cut a long history lesson short, eventually America rose to power. First, it learned how to use war and conflict as a means to become more and more powerful. From the puny war with Spain at the turn of the 20th century, making it a colonialist in the Philippines and Cuba, then its stepping into the European conflict in the First World War, then crushing the Nazis and fascists and humiliating Japan in the Second World War, keeping an unstable peace during the Cold War of the 1950s stretching for an unbroken prosperity cycle of almost five decades. The entire 20th century, particularly its latter half, became Pax Americana.
Yet things change. The world changes. And at a frenetic pace. Major threats have appeared, from the rise of terrorism, mostly fueled by Islamic fundamentalists, to the triggering effects of the Arab Spring on the stability of North African and Middle Eastern nations.
What America and its European allies presumed to be a political stability wrought by its entente with despots and monarchs has suddenly been challenged. The world has become altogether unstable and terror-threatened, punctuated by the Nine-Eleven attack on the US of A, and most recently the series of attacks on the tourist capitals of France. And the continuing carnage in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.
While all these were happening, China was emerging as an economic giant. Very recently, China has become the second-biggest economy in the world, edging out Japan, and is fast threatening American supremacy.
America under Obama, with more than $3 trillion in accumulated debt courtesy of China, has seen this threat to its economic and political hegemony. Thus the “pivot to Asia”, where the US, recognizing the geopolitical and commercial importance of the sea lanes that flow to and through the South China Sea, has had some kind of “cold war” with China.
Under the Aquino regime, the Philippines became a pawn in the American play on the geopolitics of the region. Even Vietnam, its erstwhile enemy, has been engaged. But all these are unstable and temporary alliances, because these countries, along with Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and Taiwan, realize that keeping the peace and confronting no one is to their ultimate advantage.
Enter Duterte, the Filipino president who has proclaimed an independent foreign policy, independent especially when juxtaposed against American interests in the region. It was a tour de force, because all throughout the decades following the end of America’s colonial occupation, successive Filipino leaders have hewed close to the former colonialist master’s designs if not diktat.
Then Donald Trump, who was the surprise victor in the last elections. Trump has upset the assumptions upon which American foreign policy has been based all these years. A new dawn of isolationist, protectionist policies seem to engulf the America of Donald Trump.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership which was unveiled by Obama along with Japan’s Shinzo Abe, and the support of many who thought that a Clinton victory was imminent, has now been thrown into the dustbin even before the participating nations and America itself ratified the economic arrangements. Trump promised its end beginning Day One of his presidency, and prefers to deal with nations in the Asia-Pacific on bilateral mode, hoping to prop up America’s trade advantage.
The recently concluded Apec Leaders’ Meeting in Lima, Peru sounded the dirge on the TPP, with smaller nations both in Asia and Latin-America now beginning to gravitate towards the “wealthy” Chinese.
Still largely a “command” state despite freeing the energies of its business community under an “open economy”, China has the advantage of centralized decision-making, whether in politics or economics.
Though its economy has softened a bit after a quarter century of unsurpassed and stratospheric growth, China has began various multi-national economic initiatives, such as the revival of the Silk Road through land and maritime routes, the formation of the Asian Investment Bank, and the Regional Cooperation Enhancement Program.
The AIB is seen as a competitor of the Asian Development Bank which is principally promoted by Japan, and supported by the World Bank. The RCEP is seen as China’s counterpart for the TPP, now trumped by America’s new POTUS.
Is Pax Americana shifting to a Pax Cinensis?
With the still mighty though recession-ridden Japanese economy and South Korean still a potent economy, plus Singapore and Taiwan, and the emerging economic strength of Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and even the Philippines, it cannot be a completely Chinese-dominated Asia.
Rather, through enhanced cooperation and mutually-beneficial bilateral arrangements, what was once Pax Americana will fold into a Pax Asiatica.
It is the Asia-Pacific century after all, and although America still intends to be the orchestra conductor in this part of the universe, it has to start giving way to a new geopolitical reality.
