Oct 11, 2026 · 52 min · 12 segments
Samantha Hancox-Li and Ben Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare, discuss how we went from the triumph of the fall of the Berlin Wall to our current world: more war, more conflict, and no end in sight…
Ben WittesGuest
Samantha Hancox-LiHostSo I want to ask you a little bit, about that period of stability and to kind of bring it back to our little imperium intro.
On one reading, that period of stability is, you can explain it in purely cynical terms, right? The United States is totally preeminent military power.
and there's another reading where which is more i think what you get from fukuyama and people like fukuyama where it's at least partly ideological right it's the ideological alignment between liberal democracies between the people of liberal democracies who don't see a reason and don't want to go to war with each other and we can you know you can flush that in various ways and i'm curious where you come down.
Is this stability more about raw power, or is it more about an ideological coherence?
So the reason the Pax Americana works and is so attractive is that it's a really good deal for everybody.
But let's start with the Pax Romana, which is where, of course, the term Pax Americana comes from.
That was a pretty good deal by the standards of the time, which meant only some of you get enslaved.
You only get wiped off the face of the earth if you resist, and then you're going to get I mean, this is where the term decimation comes from.
But if you don't resist and you just pay exorbitant taxes, there's a fair bit of autonomy and self-government that is tolerated.
Um, uh, but the fundamental, uh, uh, the fundamental trade is, oh, and by the way, we will not exploit your resources.
Or at least when we do, we'll pay for them fair market value, right? And so it's a very strange historically form of imperium.
So I want to ask you a little bit, about that period of stability and to kind of bring it back to our little imperium intro.
On one reading, that period of stability is, you can explain it in purely cynical terms, right? The United States is totally preeminent military power.
and there's another reading where which is more i think what you get from fukuyama and people like fukuyama where it's at least partly ideological right it's the ideological alignment between liberal democracies between the people of liberal democracies who don't see a reason and don't want to go to war with each other and we can you know you can flush that in various ways and i'm curious where you come down.
Is this stability more about raw power, or is it more about an ideological coherence?
So the reason the Pax Americana works and is so attractive is that it's a really good deal for everybody.
But let's start with the Pax Romana, which is where, of course, the term Pax Americana comes from.
That was a pretty good deal by the standards of the time, which meant only some of you get enslaved.
You only get wiped off the face of the earth if you resist, and then you're going to get I mean, this is where the term decimation comes from.
But if you don't resist and you just pay exorbitant taxes, there's a fair bit of autonomy and self-government that is tolerated.
Um, uh, but the fundamental, uh, uh, the fundamental trade is, oh, and by the way, we will not exploit your resources.
Or at least when we do, we'll pay for them fair market value, right? And so it's a very strange historically form of imperium.
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