[lit-ideas] Anti-Americanism, this malediction considered
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 23:20:19 -0700
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs is a review by Walter Russell Mead
of two European books he describes as anti-anti-American. One of the books,
Uberpower: The Imperial Temptation of America by Josef Joffe, 2006 seems
especially interesting.
We Americans squabble in public. Every important issue is debated in
congress, in the press & every place else. Thus, for any of us paying
attention, the conspiracy theories (requiring something radically different
from the American reality) seem psychotic. Mead writes, "Tocqueville
believed that international affairs was the Achilles' heel of U.S.
democracy. He thought that a successful foreign policy required qualities
that democratic societies generally lack, and that those qualities
democracies generally have are worse than useless when it comes to
confronting the dangers of the real world.
"Joffe draws attention to this problem in a very precise and pointed way in
Uberpower. Joffe recognizes that a successful U.S. foreign policy would
need to be thoughtful, subtle, and sophisticated - but he also realizes that
it is questionable whether U.S. public opinion would be able to sustain such
a policy." This is an excellent point. Secretaries of State and others
responsible for Foreign Policy are continually called upon congressional
carpets to explain in excruciating detail everything they have thought or
not thought about virtually anything that is at all significant. While what
we do lacks subtlety, it at least gives the lie to the conspiracy theories
that claim all sorts of subtle behind the scenes machinations. We have no
"behind the scenes."
"[Joffe] argues that anti-Americanism constitutes a major and growing
problem for the U.S. foreign policy and, perhaps even more serious, that
powers such as China, Russia, and the European Union are beginning to unite
against the United States. An Atlanticist and anti-anti-American to the
core, Joffe feels that these developments are troubling not only for the
United States but for the international community as a whole. There is
important work to be done in the world, he argues, and only the United
States can do it.
Joffe maintains that systematic anti-Americanism is akin to a belief that
the United States is in a 'permanent state of crime against mankind,' in the
words of the twentieth-century French novelist Henri de Montherlant. Joffe
identifies five classic marks of anti-Americanism: reducing Americans to
stereotypes, believing the United States to have an irremediably evil
nature, ascribing to the U.S. establishment a vast conspiratorial power
aimed at utterly dominating the globe, holding the United States responsible
for all the evils in the world, and seeking to limit the influence of the
United States by destroying it or by cutting oneself and one's society off
from its polluting products and practices. Joffe cites a number of
extremely disturbing documents, cartoons and statements from the Arab world
demonstrating a full-fledged ideologically based form of anti-Americanism
that displays all five traits. A less virulent form of the disease has
infected Europe, Joffe argues, and he is able to bring forward an
uncomfortable amount of evidence to support his point.
"Students of modern German history will note resemblances between the
anti-Americanism Joffe describes today and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis.
Joffe welcomes the comparison. In both Europe and the Arab world,
anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism frequently travel together, as Joffe ably
shows. He believes that the relationship between the two ideologies stems
from the representation of Americans and Jews as symbols and agents of
modernity and globalization. American and Jewish cultures (exemplified by
Hollywood), U.S. and Israeli power, and U.S., Jewish, and Israeli economic
success all permeate the world and force others to adapt. As a result, the
losers from globalization blame everything they dislike about globalization
and modernity on the Americans and the Jews."
Joffe then evaluates the various sorts of Anti-Americanism. Third world
countries in Latin America and the Arab World hate American because "the
costs of globalization and modernity loom large and their benefits seem
difficult or impossible for ordinary people to grasp. . ."
Europeans fear that the U.S.-led international economy will overwhelm the
European social model.
"But other regions have had different experiences. In India and China, for
instance, large numbers among both the elite and the population at large
have come to view globalization and modernity, and thus to some degree the
United States, more favorably. As both countries have opened up to the
world economy, their poverty rates have fallen while incomes have increased,
and their ranks in the international pecking order have risen. In India,
once a hotbed of dependency theorists, strategists of nonalignment, and
Marxist critics of all things American, there has been a dramatic and
widespread decline in anti-Americanism in recent years. A poll conducted by
the BBC in January 2005 showed that 64 percent of respondents in India
believed that Bush's reelection in 2004 made the world safer. In China,
Japan has replaced the United States as the primary object of nationalist
ire."
Joffe suggests that the U.S. go back to providing IPGS's (International
Public Goods Supplies) as it did during the Cold War. Mead thinks the
Congress will be unlikely to support the idea. Joffe's nightmare is a
world that still needs the leadership that only the United States can
provide but where other powers are working to bring it down." Mead thinks
that scenario unlikely "Any ranking of great powers in the coming decades
would put China, India, and Japan in second, third, and fourth places,
although not necessarily in that order. Conflict between the United States
and any combination of these three seems increasingly improbable. The rise
of India, the economic recovery of Japan, and the continuing development of
middle powers in Asia have made a bid for hegemony less attractive to China
and thus the prospect of such an attempt less alarming to the United
States."
Mead is far more optimistic than Joffe about the future and especially about
the U.S. He writes, "since Tocqueville's day, the U.S. political system has
consistently managed (although rarely on the first attempt) to muster
sufficient public support of international policies that worked reasonably
well in increasingly complex and demanding circumstances. The prognosis is
more of the same. The United States often makes mistakes, but it generally
manages to do what it must even if it often fails to do all that it should.
One hopes that it will continue to benefit from the counsel and perspective
of the European Atlanticist intelligentsia who have played such a
conspicuous and honorable role in the creation of the most free, most
peaceful, and most stable international community in human history."
The occasional or perhaps I should say "frequent" Anti-American statements
encountered on Lit-Ideas are perplexing. I am invariably curious about the
presuppositions that gave rise to such animus. The anti-Americans fervently
believe their theories. Daniel Pipes wrote a whole book upon this
phenomenon. Belief isn't the issue. What gave rise to the belief is the
issue. And Joffe offers some interesting theories about this "malady."
Fear seems to be at the root. "America is too big, too successful, too
influential. Who can compete with America, and since America is different
from us, let's try to destroy or undermine it." Joffe thinks this
malediction may have a chance at doing just that and proposes that we buy
our way out of this trouble with IPGS. But Mead totes up those who have a
potential for doing real physical harm (as opposed to the non-physical harm
caused by railing against us) and thinks we can manage to continue our
success into the foreseeable future.
Lawrence
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