Pax Americana

Pax Americana (Latin for 'American Peace', modeled after Pax Romana and Pax Britannica), often identified with the "Long Peace", is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later in the world after the end of World War II in 1945, when the United States of America became the world's foremost economic, cultural, and military power exercising primary responsibilities for world order. Though in large measure based on consent and cooperation, the defining feature of the Pax Americana is unipolarity, world organization around a single center of power.

In this sense, Pax Americana has come to describe the military and economic position of the United States relative to other nations. In the aftermath of World War II the American federal government enacted the Marshall Plan, the transferring of US$13.3 billion (the equivalent of $173 billion in 2023) in economic recovery programs to Western European countries; the Marshall Plan has been described as "the launching of the Pax Americana".