Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

No, the whole idea of the Pax Americana, and why it has a froofy-sounding title, is that it mitigates wars outside of America. You can say there's no such thing as a Pax Americana and we can hash that out, but this "nobody tells you" thing isn't valid.

View on HN

My post was long-winded way of saying exactly that: Pax Americana doesn't exist, and never existed. Apparently this rhetoric was lost on you or, more likely, you're being needlessly pedantic here in order to rebut my claim without making any concrete claims of your own.

e: Also why is it that every time I post on HN I get dragged into another stupid argument with you specifically. We need a block feature on this site.

What part of it don't you agree with? Factually, deaths from war, globally, are lower now than the early 20th century, by far. Do you think it's a correlation without causation? Do you disagree with number of deaths as a way to measure peace? I think there's a lot of geopolitical evidence to back up the USs ability to deter larger conflicts.

While I agree with the Pax Americana as a concept, you can’t attribute all of the peace to it. MAD has stopped some as well. Also, industrialization has made wars of conquest unprofitable in general, since the aggressor tends to destroy the factories that are much more valuable than the land itself, while having their own industry targeted.

That's a fair criticism. Although, even if less than 100% of the peace is attributable to pax Americana, that doesn't mean it isn't attributable to any of it. But, I do think the existence of MAD is properly attributable US military spending.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com