By Franz Schurmann

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Prediction #65 for Tuesday, June 20, 2000

As The Pax Americana Makes Big Wars Less Likely More Little Wars Will Erupt

In the early 1980's, when a missile-rattling Reagan became president, people again started worrying about nuclear war. Now, as Clinton is pushing hard for an as yet unproven national missile defense (NMD), there is plenty of opposition but not much public worry. Why?

One explanation is that too many people remember an ancestor of the NMD that became a disposable tool for achieving peace. In 1969 President launched an Anti-Ballistics Missile (ABM) program to shoot down incoming Soviet missiles. In May 1972 he scrapped the program when the US and the USSR signed a treaty banning all ABM systems as a first step towards nuclear disarmament.

Like Nixon in 1972, Clinton has convinced the other great powers that global prosperity and peace are inextricably interwoven. If nuclear war ever were to break out all will become big losers. But if they keep the peace among themselves all can become winners. Even Reagan got on the peace and prosperity bandwagon early in his second term.

Great powers are those that have either great military or great economic power. Russia has great military but little economic power. Japan, Germany, France and Britain have great economic but limited military power. India is nearing great power status. Smaller powers like Pakistan, Iran, Israel and Turkey can affect global peace and prosperity. Others in the wings are a unified Korea, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia.

America not only has great military and economic but also technological, cultural and especially political power. America never was and never will be the world's super-cop. But because of its enormous power it can set the tone for the world. That tone can be called a Pax Americana.

The concept derives from the Pax Romana proclaimed by the Emperor Octavian Augustus some 2000 years ago. A key concept was avoidance of war with other great powers. Another was that peace and trade reinforce each other to produce power with stability. As a result Roman power at its height extended from the Caspian Sea and Mesopotamia to the Atlantic Ocean from Morocco to Britain.

However even if the Pax Romana banned big wars it left room for smaller ones. One was Rome's Vietnam in 9 CE when Germanic tribal forces destroyed three Roman legions. Another was the Jewish Wars that culminated in the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The film "Gladiator" began with scenes from the later German Wars waged by the great Stoic emperor Marcus Aurelius towards the end of the third century CE. None of these wars affected the Empire's global trade and peace.

Now there are plenty of little wars going on within the Pax Americana: Ethiopia-Eritrea, Congo, Sierra Leone, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Colombia, the live embers of conflict in Afghanistan and Kashmir and so on.

The recent Ethiopia-Eritrea war took the lives of tens of thousands of young men. The reaction among America and the great powers was yawns of unconcern. The main reason for their yawns was that that war had no effect on the Pax Americana. There is plenty of greed involved in the brutal Congo and Sierra Leone wars but again the Pax Americana is not affected.

President Clinton has kept silent on Russia's brutal war against the Chechens because the latter is a great power. He also is silent on the Sri Lanka and Kashmir horrors because he doesn't want to offend rising great power India. As to Afghanistan, the most war ravaged country in the world, Clinton just zeroes in on the alleged super-terrorist Osama Bin Laden.

Another place where the Pax Americana will definitely not be affected by little wars is Colombia. Washington is putting a lot of aid and money into Colombia in order to prevent a victory of the leftist FARC, Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces.

On the other hand it's not out of the question that some day, China, exasperated by Taiwan's reluctance to come to terms with the "one China" issue, could mount a military attack. Polls show that a majority of Taiwan people believes that America will intervene militarily. But under the Pax Americana concept it's likely America will leave Taiwan on its own.

Why are so many little wars breaking out? Note first that all the countries and movements fighting are between poor and near poor, as in the African, Caucasus and South Asian wars. In Colombia the two strata battle each other even as the flow of narcotics into the biggest drug consumer country, America, continues.

The poor envy the near poor. The latter fear that if the poor win they will be knocked off the one rung of the upward mobility ladder they have managed to climb on. The combination of envious poor and fear-ridden near poor is lethal.

But in the great urban centers of global consumer capitalism unconcern prevails. Global peace means no wars and global prosperity means good and cheap products keep flowing in. That poor and near poor kill each other in some distant country is like the Romans watching the gladiators dismember each other. The gladiators all were poor and near poor folk, all of them from distant lands.