Once Upon A Time
Once upon a time, there was a thing called the Pax Romana, a 200-year period in which Rome organized a stable peace throughout the Mediterranean. Many chafed under Roman rule, but the tranquility and prosperity the Pax Romana provided was worth valuing. Life was better in most of the western Mediterranean in 100AD than it would be in 500AD or 800AD or probably even 1100AD, and that was because of the Pax Romana.
Once upon a time, there was an alliance of mostly Western democracies with a few other non-Western partners that constituted the “first world” in the Cold War. This was labelled a Pax Americana. Like Rome, the United States organized a peace over a vast chunk of the world. Like Rome, the United States was often bullying in the way it led that order and pretty much always put its own interests first. Still, as with the Pax Romana, the Pax Americana delivered a very real peace and prosperity.
This Pax Americana held western democracies together through the Cold War, but then the Soviet Union collapsed, then there was a strange decade in which the United States seemed to have no global challengers, and then there was 9/11 and then the U.S. over-reaction to 9/11. Then there was the 2008 financial crisis- a global economic earthquake that had its origins in the U.S. housing market. In the meantime, China went from a sleeping giant to a global superpower, not quite on par with the United States but not behind by much and seemingly growing stronger by the day.
All the while, internal divisions within those western democracies made them weaker, and made them appear weaker. They were distracted, indecisive, and unequal. They were tepid and they felt tepid, at least politically. In their personal lives, most people liked the new affordable luxuries, the cheap flights to Spain on RyanAir, the affordable cars and appliances enabled by global trade, the ability to call a relative in Brazil without it being ‘custar os olhas da cara.’ But politics was different. Politically, almost everyone yearned for something better than this, something more inspiring than to be told that the prices at Walmart or Albert Heijn would mostly stay the same, that televisions would get cheaper and bigger, that there would not be another cataclysmic war, and that was all there was to hope for from the collective social activity we call politics. And then…….
Liberal Democracy Awakened
An autocrat thought he could take Ukraine in three days. But a funny thing happened. A free and democratic Ukrainian people refused to be taken over by that autocrat. They fought like mad. They armed their middle-aged women. They armed their 80-year old men. They made Molotov cocktails in their kitchens. Their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, became a legend in real time. What the Ukrainian people are doing right now has no appropriate analog. It is not the battle of Helm’s Deep from Lord of the Rings because this isn’t the movies, it’s real life. This isn’t Thermopylae because in reality Spartan society was a slave-ocracy not worth rooting for while Ukraine is a democracy born from the ashes of an evil empire it was forced to be a part of. This isn’t quite like anything what we’ve ever witnessed before.
At first, the defense looked like a heroic but doomed last stand. But the Ukrainian people, led by Zelensky, have shown such resolve and have been so much more effective against the Russian invasion than almost anyone thought possible that it has stiffened the spine of western democracies while giving pause to Russia’s would-be allies. They are saving their country, their democratic country, from authoritarian oppression, by sheer force of will before our very eyes.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has crystallized the stakes in the fight between democracy and autocracy. In just a few days, the shibboleths of the past are gone. Sweden just sent arms to another European country. Germany just sent lethal military aid to a war zone. Switzerland got on board with new banking restrictions. Cyprus agreed to new clamp downs on Russian money laundering despite how lucrative it is for them. The Biden administration (despite its penchant for protectionism and an indoor-voice nationalism) has been consistently helpful too.
Tightening the Pax
Meanwhile, the trajectory of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has reverberations thousands of miles away. If Putin were allowed to swallow Ukraine in a low-cost way, China would see that and think that their gobbling of Taiwan, another free and independent country, would also be low-cost, but if Ukraine really is able to survive this and deliver such a bloody nose to Russia that they leave, a huge side benefit may be that it convinces China to give up on the idea of retaking Taiwan. A victory for one member of the Pax Democratica is a victory for all members.
This Pax Democratica is different than the Pax Americana. Americans, somewhat haughtily to be honest, saw the Pax Americana as a thing we authored and that was a gift we bestowed on others, whether they wanted it or not. This is not that. This would a system in which, even if the United States remains the largest single player, every liberal democracy in the Pax Democratica understands that it is a multipolar global system, that it would self-consciously include non-Western democracies, that the United States would act with others’ interests in mind and not from a posture of ‘America First.’
In the days of the Pax Romana, peace treaties and alliances between Rome and other polities would often include provisions requiring the exchange of elite children. In other words, some of the children of the Roman elite would spend years in the counterpart’s society while the counterpart’s elite children would spend years in Rome. The point of this wasn’t primarily about leverage; it was primarily about understanding. The counterpart youth came to be inculcated in Roman ways and to view Rome, if perhaps not with love, then at least with a friendly respect. The Roman children came to also hold a friendly respect for the counterpart. At minimum, the next generation’s elite in both societies understood each other a bit better and may even had warm feelings toward the other, all to the good in terms of maintaining the Pax Romana.
That’s what immigration, and study abroad in particular, do now. We want as many people and especially young people, traveling across borders to work, study, and play as possible. We want kids from France learning to love the United States and we want kids from the United States learning to love France. The United States and France may have the occasional lovers’ quarrel but they are both fundamentally on the same team, the team of liberal democracies. The days of a lingua franca are gone. The days of a Pax Americana are gone. But they can both be important pillars of the project of today and tomorrow: a Pax Democratica. Whatever else citizens of the Pax Democratica disagree on, they agree on facing down these threats to democracy.
The same can be said for trade. The United States ought to join the CPTPP as soon as possible, for economic reasons, but at least as importantly as a means of tightening its relationship with other democracies around the Pacific Rim. The United States and the EU should finally complete TTIP. If one or two policy areas like chlorine-based chicken rinses are in the way, then just exclude those policy areas and move on. The United States should be willing export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the EU to mitigate their reliance on Russian gas; the recent letter of opposition to such a move by 12 Democratic Senators is as un-strategic as it is narrow-minded. The EU and the U.S. are the two central pillars in the Pax Democratica and it is time they act like it rather than let petty suspicions and grievances interfere with their common bond. Finally, all liberal democracies should be working together to strengthen their security relations via international institutions such as NATO and the UN.
A Reminder
Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a useful reminder that there is no end of history, that liberal democracy will always need defending, that aggressors pop up every so often and that, if not deterred, wreak havoc. But Ukraine’s courage is a reminder too: that standing up for freedom, especially under duress, is not decadent at all but rather is the apex of awe-inspiring, that liberal democracy is worth fighting for, and that the democracies of the world must hang together.
If there is to be some kind of international order of the 21st century, let it be a commitment to democracy valiantly defending its peoples’ liberties from an invading oppressive tyranny, let it be an order in which liberal democracies have each other’s backs, let it be an order in which autocrats are afraid of invading democracies rather than the reverse. Let it be one that not only leans into multipolarity but understands that multipolarity as equality. Let it be one that has at it psychological core a commitment to freedom.
Let it be a Pax Democratica!