This book offers a comparative analysis of the United States and the European Union through the lens of the longue durée, tracing the foundations of their long-term stability. It argues that “Pax Americana” and “Pax Europaea” are not mere pauses in conflict, but outward signs of deeply embedded domestic orders. Looking past daily events, the book identifies slow-moving structural mechanisms that shape each power’s character and resilience. The U.S. appears as a “forged union,” born of revolution and a venerated Constitution. Its endurance flows from a rigid-yet-adaptable framework, a powerful Supreme Court, and evolving federalism, which together produced stability and economic dynamism for global leadership. The EU, by contrast, is a “constructed union,” assembled over seven decades of negotiation and legal integration to make war “materially impossible.” Its stability rests on supranational law, a path-dependent treaty process, and dense economic interdependence, yielding internal peace and an external role as a normative, regulatory power. Finally, the book examines the 21st-century polycrisis. Populism and inequality strike at core logics: in the U.S., by pressuring mediating constitutional institutions; in the EU, by rejecting supranational legalism. Meanwhile, a multipolar world tests America’s partisan-fractured foreign policy and the EU’s limited hard power. By linking today’s turmoil to deep historical mechanisms, the book offers a framework for understanding present struggles and future trajectories
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