Keeping the Peace

Abstract

With the United States as the only surviving superpower, is there a prospect of a ‘Pax Americana’ comparable to the ‘Pax Britannica’ of the nineteenth century?¹ The USA, while militarily and technologically supreme, no longer dominates the world economically. The European Community in 1991 already had a bigger population (320 million) and an industrial base 25 per cent larger than the USA. The EC is operating as an economic union even though not yet as a political one. If later joined by Austria, the Scandinavian countries and by some of the Central and East European countries, its population will exceed 400 million.