Pax Romana v. Pax Americana

Well i think everybody knew what happened to the roman empire, but this comparison is very interesting, just take a look and flip>



After its successful invasion of Iraq, the U.S. appears to be at the height of its power. One can understand why many feel the U.S. is supreme and omnipotent. Indeed, this is precisely what Washington wants the world to think.


No doubt, the U.S. is very powerful militarily. There is good reason to think, however, that it is overextended. In fact, the main strategic result of the occupation of Iraq is to worsen this condition of overextension.


Overextension


Overextension refers to a mismatch between goals and means, with means referring not only to military resources but to political and ideological ones as well. Under the reigning neoconservatives, Washington's goal is to achieve overwhelming military dominance over any rival or coalition of rivals. This quest for even greater global dominance, however, inevitably generates opposition, and it is in this resistance that we see the roots of overextension. Overextension is relative--an overextended power may in fact be in a worse condition even with a significant increase in its military power if resistance to its power increases by an even greater degree.


This point may sound surreal after the massive firepower we witnessed on television night after night over the past month. But consider the following and ask whether they are not signs of overreach: the failure to consolidate a pro-U.S. regime in Afghanistan outside of Kabul; the inability of a key ally, Israel, to quell, even with Washington's unrestricted support, the Palestinian people's uprising; the inflaming of Arab and Muslim sentiment in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, resulting in massive ideological gains for Islamic fundamentalists--which was what Osama bin Laden had been hoping for in the first place; the collapse of the cold war "Atlantic Alliance" and the emergence of a new countervailing alliance, with Germany and France at the center of it; the forging of a powerful global civil society movement against U.S. unilateralism, militarism, and economic hegemony, the most recent significant expression of which is the anti-war movement; the loss of legitimacy of Washington's foreign policy and global military presence, with its global leadership now widely viewed, even among its allies, as imperial domination; the emergence of a powerful anti-American movement in South Korea, which is the forward point of the U.S. military presence in East Asia; the coming to power of anti-neoliberal, anti-U.S. movements in Washington's own backyard--Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador--as the Bush administration is preoccupied with the Middle East; an increasingly negative impact of militarism on the economy, as U.S. military spending becomes dependent on deficit spending, and deficit spending becomes more and more dependent on financing from foreign sources, creating more stresses and strains within an economy that is already in the grip of deflation.


Rest of the article:
www.guerrillanews.com...

Well too bad the comparison here Cold Anger is completely wrong.

Pax Romana stood for "Rome at Peace" and the name was given by Augustus to celebrate the end of the Civil Wars.

It has nothing to do with the comparison that much of Academia has tried to make for many decades now, which is the "Roman Peace" where "Rome tried to impose peace through her armies on other lands".

Which is a complete falsity.

Therefore any "Pax Romana//Pax Americana" relation is void.

Besides, it's odd to try and complain for America doing what it's being asked to by the UN, which is administer peace through out the world with its military might.

The problem is the UN doesn't like it when we get rid of the bad guys that stuff their pockets.

Ugh I just read more of this crap...and I will call it that of my own opinion but here's why.

Mainly because of the "Israel" comment...Israel hasn't wanted to "Quell" the palestinian "uprising" Because that would require killing off the palestinians...or the Israelis, something the palestinian terror organizations wouldn't mind one bit.

This article to me just seems a bit too biased to be informative, but if anyone can pull any useful info out of it, by all means post it here for further discussion.

Originally posted by FreeMason
Ugh I just read more of this crap...and I will call it that of my own opinion but here's why.

Mainly because of the "Israel" comment...Israel hasn't wanted to "Quell" the palestinian "uprising" Because that would require killing off the palestinians...or the Israelis, something the palestinian terror organizations wouldn't mind one bit.

This article to me just seems a bit too biased to be informative, but if anyone can pull any useful info out of it, by all means post it here for further discussion.

Would u like better another source with another way to explain it? I think at the end u will agree with it, is very logical:


The Bases of Empire
Empires throughout human history have relied on foreign military bases to enforce their rule, and in this respect at least, Pax Americana is no different than Pax Romana or Pax Britannica. �The principal method by which Rome established her political supremacy in her world,� wrote historian Arnold Toynbee in his America and the World Revolution (1962),

www.monthlyreview.org...