Waiting for the Barbarians 

“The jackal rips out the hare's bowels, but the world rolls on.”

J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first major military campaign of the American Revolutionary War, resulting in an American victory and outpouring of militia support for the anti-British cause. On the 19 April 2025 thousands of people came to Massachusetts town just before dawn to witness a reenactment of how the American Revolution began 250 years ago. Marking the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the country will look back to its war of independence and ask where its legacy stands today.  The concept of Pax Americana (Latin for 'American Peace') , a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later in the world after the end of World War 11  in 1945, when the United States became the world's foremost economic, cultural, and military power exercising primary responsibilities for world order. American political analyst Ian Bremmer argued that with the election of Donald Trump and the subsequent rise in populism in the west, as well as US withdrawal from international agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA, and the Paris Climate Accords, that the Pax Americana is over.