The end of Pax Americana

As the world contemplates a future with a less dominant United States, geopolitical shifts may create new security challenges for nations like India

It may be hard for most of us to appreciate that the last 75 years have been an anomaly. The relative stability of the post-War era was underwritten by the United States — first in an uneasy balance with the Soviet Union and then for three decades on its own. Pax Americana had too many flaws to mention; but we are now beginning to see what the world may look like when it is gone.

This period has been an anomaly because, for most of its history, the United States has been an isolationist nation. This sprang from both ideological and