Pax Silica and the United States' Shrinking Hegemonic Vision

Intensifying competition through China is increasingly shaping U.S. foreign policy around a new logic of technological and trade-based bloc formation. Traces of this trend are clearly visible in the trade wars initiated during the first Trump administration and deepened under the Biden administration through restrictions on chip and advanced technology exports. The final phase of this process is constituted by the Pax Silica declaration announced last December and the cooperative group that has formed around it. This bloc formation, constructed around access to technology, aims to tightly bind many states to a U.S.-centered production and supply ecosystem while excluding China from this structure. Yet Pax Silica does not signify a renewed claim to global order-building; rather, it points to a markedly narrowed version of that claim. The goal is not to construct a universal leadership that sets norms, but to create a manageable sphere of influence composed of a limited number of compliant actors through advanced technology supply chains and standards. Therefore, Pax Silica should be read not as a new phase of U.S. hegemony but as the conceptual expression of an era in which hegemonic ambitions have downshifted.

The U.S. China File

The United States has long maintained a China file. Since Cold War, China has pursued a development path built on investment in human capital, systematic expansion of industrial capacity, and deep integration into global trade networks. This model not only increased the country’s economic prosperity but also granted Beijing growing geopolitical maneuvering space through technology supply chains and financial channels. This transformation created a direct challenge to the global leadership architecture the United States had long sustained. China had begun to exhibit behaviors such as setting norms, building alternative institutions, and shaping the preferences of third countries. Washington’s response to this reality crystallized in the Asia Pivot approach, which became more visible from the Obama period onward. This orientation aimed to shift the center of gravity of U.S. foreign and defense policy from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific, strengthen alliance networks, and constrain China’s strategic space. Today, the United States allocates a significant portion of its strategic resources—from military capacity to diplomatic engagement, from technology policy to trade regulations—to encircling and balancing China.

Pax Silica Signing Ceremony – 12 December 2025 (U.S. State Department Economic Affairs)

Pax Silica can be understood as the complementary and institutionalizing step in the United States’ recent strategic trajectory. Launched in December 2025, this initiative is based on a security-first and selective integration model that clearly departs from classical free trade principles. The program’s starting point is the recognition that silicon and related inputs, which form the foundation of advanced technology production, have acquired not merely economic but direct strategic significance. Within this framework, Pax Silica focuses on a broad supply domain encompassing semiconductors artificial intelligence infrastructure critical minerals energy and logistics networks. The goal is to limit countries’ dependencies on China in these areas reallocate production capacity among trusted U.S. partners and simultaneously build a U.S.-centered technology and supply ecosystem. Thus Pax Silica has become a concrete expression of the search for a controlled and bloc-based economic order under U.S. leadership in an era of redefined globalization. In this context Pax Silica should be read not as a technical business platform but as a strategic network of partnerships built on geopolitical preferences. When examining the membership profile the selection of Japan South Korea Singapore the United Kingdom the Netherlands Australia Israel and the United Arab Emirates is striking. This choice reveals the United States’ intention to advance with high-quality actors aligned with its political priorities rather than pursuing quantitative expansion in technological competition.

To properly understand this framework one must first focus on the conceptual choices employed. Historical usages such as Pax Romana or Pax Ottomana were selected to describe a period of relative stability established by a hegemonic power. These orders were not based on mutual equality but on asymmetric power distribution centralized decision-making mechanisms and the compliance of peripheral actors with rules set by the center. In this sense the concept of Pax Silica carries a deliberate reference to this historical tradition. However what is notable here is that the order-building elements envisioned by Pax Silica are expressed in a distinctly alternative manner. Rather than aiming for a period of prosperity and stability under the shadow of a hegemon’s order Pax Silica seeks to construct a prosperity bloc based on semiconductor production capacity data and digital infrastructure the ability to set technical standards and control over critical inputs. This represents a vision narrowing or downshifting when compared to the United States’ earlier perspective of the Liberal International Order.

Pax Silica contains both clear continuities and ruptures when compared to classical hegemonic orders. The continuity lies in the reproduction of stability through a hierarchical structure. The actors at the center retain the capacity to define norms and operational rules while peripheral actors can integrate into the system and benefit from its economic and technological opportunities as long as they comply with these rules. In this regard Pax Silica reproduces the asymmetric relationship between center and periphery. The rupture however becomes evident in the manner in which this hierarchy is established. Pax Silica aims to operate not through direct use of power but through more indirect and structural tools. Access to technology inclusion in supply chains compliance with standards and access to critical inputs have become the primary mechanisms of pressure in this new era. These tools operate with lower visibility than classical hard power but produce more enduring effects. Within this framework Pax Silica seeks to systematically raise the cost of exclusion from the U.S.-centered technology and production ecosystem. The issue is not so much generating direct threats as maintaining a constant risk of exclusion for non-compliant actors through global value chains. Thus sustainability is achieved through a structure that limits hegemonic order preferences narrows options and generates dependencies.

Mindset Transformation

This approach must be read as a concrete manifestation of a broader transformation in global economic governance. After the Cold War the dominant paradigm assumed that liberal markets and integrated global markets would generate stability and prosperity through their own dynamics. Within this framework the state’s primary function was conceived as facilitating market operations reducing barriers and minimizing regulatory intervention. Pax Silica clearly demonstrates that the United States no longer considers this assumption sustainable. In the current approach states directly intervene in the geographic distribution of production the nature of partnerships and which dependency relationships are tolerable especially in strategically significant sectors. This intervention does not imply the complete rejection of market mechanisms but reflects a new balance in which security concerns override economic rationality. In this process economic efficiency has been partially sacrificed. The intended gain is increased predictability in national security operational resilience during crises and enhanced structural durability. Pax Silica crystallizes this transformation both conceptually and institutionally.

The placement of technology at the center of this new order is no accident. Computational power semiconductors and data infrastructure play a decisive role not only in driving economic growth but also in building military capacity intelligence gathering and analysis processes and the functioning of social control mechanisms. Capacity in these areas determines not only states’ current competitive position but also their future access to development pathways. Technology has therefore ceased to be merely one sector among others and has transformed into the foundational infrastructure of power production. Control over the chain stretching from semiconductor manufacturing to data processing standards now influences not only today’s markets but also tomorrow’s military doctrines industrial structures and governance models. For actors lacking such capacity the problem is not merely falling behind in competition but the progressive narrowing of alternative development options. Through the Pax Silica initiative the United States places this reality at the center and makes technology the foundational element of the new order. Thus technology assumes the fundamental role of a spine upon which hierarchy is established dependencies are shaped and the global order is reproduced.

Pax Silica and the Global Order (Generated by Artificial Intelligence)

It is clear that China is the strategic reference point of Pax Silica. Within this framework the primary condition for joining Pax Silica is the limitation of dependencies on China in strategically significant areas distancing supply relationships and avoiding connections with potential security risks. In this context the United States’ strategic objective should be understood as an effort to make its allies and partners more deeply and structurally dependent on itself. This dependency relationship is constructed through a discourse of mutual benefit. Countries joining Pax Silica aim to gain advantages such as access to advanced technology. Yet these gains simultaneously entail compliance with U.S.-defined standards limitations on supply choices along specific axes and a narrowing of strategic freedom in critical domains. From the U.S. perspective this approach signals a strategy that does not merely seek to enhance its own capacity in competition with China but also actively coordinates the maneuvering space of its allies. Countries integrated into U.S.-centered networks in critical technologies gradually become actors who find it increasingly difficult to exit this ecosystem in terms of data software production equipment and standards. This situation provides the United States not only with economic gains but also with an additional leverage in diplomatic negotiations and crisis situations.

In final analysis Pax Silica signals a clear narrowing in the United States’ vision of the global order. For a long period Washington produced a vision of how the world ought to be—sometimes advancing it through normative claims and sometimes through power politics. Although the outcomes of these steps remain contested the United States’ claim to set global direction was unmistakable. Pax Silica however reveals that this claim is increasingly receding into the background. Today the United States has adopted an approach not aimed at constructing a universal order but at managing risks and narrowing its sphere of influence. This downshifted strategy reflects a preference for constructing a limited aligned and controllable bloc with those actors it can bring alongside rather than building a broad global architecture.