MEXICO CITY - November 6, 2013: Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economics, in the Banorte Ixe Plenary Session 2013 where businessmen and political figures participated. Krugman is an american economist.
In an October 16, 2023 column for the New York Times, liberal economist Paul Krugman lamented the decline the "Pax Americana" and argued that MAGA Republicans were to blame. The term "Pax Americana" refers to a period of relative stability in the West following World War 2, and that stability, according to the concept, was encouraged by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
A lot has happened politically since Krugman wrote that column. Donald Trump won the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Joe Biden ended his reelection campaign following a widely criticized debate with Trump, Republicans flipped the U.S. Senate, and Trump narrowly defeated then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election before returning to White House on January 20, 2025.
Krugman revisits the "Pax Americana" subject in an article posted on his Substack page on February 10, warning the stability of the West is in serious danger during Trump's second presidency. And Krugman is highly critical of the "destruction of" the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which, he says, Trump ally Elon Musk encouraged.
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"USAID is just the most extreme example of how the Musk/Trump Administration is sabotaging the American empire," Krugman laments. "For years, America is or was an imperial power, although in a different way from most past empires — less reliant on force, more reliant on good will and trust. What Musk and Trump have done is to destroy much of the basis for U.S. influence, leaving America far weaker than it was just a few weeks ago."
The economist continues, "America's imperial era — the Pax Americana — began after World War II. With Europe and Japan in ruins and Britain exhausted, the U.S. had no military or economic peers outside the Soviet Bloc. "
Krugman stresses that "humanitarian aid," USAID's mission, plays "an important role in supporting America's moral authority."
"Were we always the good guys? Of course not," Krugman writes. "America engineered the overthrow of democratically elected leaders it didn't like, from Iran's Mohammed Mosaddegh to Chile's Salvador Allende. We supported tinpot dictators where that served U.S. interests, or in some cases, corporate interests. We killed huge numbers of civilians in Korea, and then again in Vietnam."
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Krugman adds, "But compare the Pax Americana with any previous hegemony, and we look like a beacon of enlightenment. And our relative decency was rewarded."
Krugman warns that between threatening allies like Canada and Mexico with high tariffs "on spurious grounds," Trump's "threat to seize Greenland," and "the abrupt demolition of USAID," Trump and their allies "have taken a wrecking ball to the foundations of the Pax Americana."
"So now we're a nation that doesn’t keep its word, that can't be trusted to honor its agreements…. All of this makes us distrusted and friendless," Krugman warns. "It also makes us weak, because America needs allies even more now than it did during the Cold War."
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Paul Krugman's full SubStack column is available at this link.