Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:48:35 -0400
Foreign Policy Research Institute
Over 50 Years of Ideas in Service to Our Nation
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MAKE LOVE NOT WAR?
ANTI-AMERICANISM AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
by Michael Radu
October 10, 2008
Michael Radu, Ph.D., is co-chair of FPRI's Center on
Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, and Homeland Security. His
most recent book is "The War on Terrorism: 21st Century
Perspectives" (Transaction, 2008), co-edited with Stephen
Gale and Harvey Sicherman. His "Europe's Ghost: Tolerance,
Jihadism, and Their Consequences" is forthcoming from
Encounter Press (2009).
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"Teaching The History of Innovation" is the subject of a
webcast on Saturday, October 18.
The webcast is free and open to the public.
To register for any and all of the webcast, use this link:
http://www.webcastgroup.com/client/start.asp?wid=0851018084179
The webcast schedule appears below.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
12:00 pm ET Keynote: Ideas: A History of Thought from Fire to Freud
Peter Watson, Cambridge University
2:15 pm ET From Stone to Silicon: A Brief Survey of
Technology and Inventions
Lawrence Husick, Senior Fellow, FPRI, and Co-Director of
FPRIďs Project on Teaching Innovation
3:30 pm ET Discussion: Engaging Students Using Stone to Silicon
4:30 pm ET The Relation****p Between Social and Technological
Change in American and Western History
Alex Wright, author of Glut: Mastering Information through
the Ages
The webcast is part of a weekend-long History Institute for
Teachers sponsored by the Foreign Policy Research
Institute's Wachman Center. Other presentations in the
history weekend to be posted as videofiles at www.fpri.org
include David Hounshell on Innovation and the American
Economy; Alex Roland on War and Technology; Rocco Martino
and Dennis Shasha on The Invention of the Computer; and Joy
Hakim, Dennis Shasha, Lawrence Husick, and Paul Dickler on
Teaching Innovation.
For information about FPRI's Teaching Innovation project,
visit:
http://www.fpri.org/education/innovation/
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MAKE LOVE NOT WAR?
ANTI-AMERICANISM AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
by Michael Radu
Among the many criticisms made of the Bush administration is
that its policies have left America isolated and given it a
bad image in the world that needs radical repair. What is
not being said is that there are many issues which explain
the reality of global anti-Americanism. While huge numbers
of words have been expended "explaining" anti-Americanism in
the current presidential campaign, these have shed little
light. A reality check is needed.
It is true that anti-Americanism has become the only serious
competitor to soccer as a global s****t; that in many places
it has reached a level of stridency rarely seen before; and
that it has roots much older than the presidency of George
W. Bush. Beyond that, however, to look at the causes and
manifestations of the phenomenon one has to make certain key
distinctions, often missed, more often than not on purpose..
The most immediately evident is the relation****p between the
end of the Cold War and the growth of negative attitudes
toward the United States. Prior to the Soviet collapse,
national interest for those on the anticommunist side in
what used to be called the third world demanded a muting of
ill feelings toward the only available protector--
Wa****ngton. Today, what could be described as nationalist or
leftist parties in Europe, from Spain to Greece to France,
and Islamist regimes elsewhere can both afford to be openly
anti-American as well; hence the growth of that sentiment in
increasingly nationalistic Turkey, the Philippines, and
Korea, and its persistence in Paris, London and Berlin. In
the latter case, the present global financial crisis only
adds another (false) argument against "American" capitalism,
never mind that Europe is in worse financial shape. In
Latin America, which is now going through one of its
cyclical love affairs with leftism and populism, the story
is simpler still. For a Chavez, Correa or Morales to be
anti-American goes naturally with being statist,
incompetent, and strident.
(Western) Europe is the most oft-mentioned case of our
allies turning against us because of our wrong-headed
policies and arrogant behavior. But, as in Latin America,
among elites, hostility to the United States is old hat--
over a century old in the case of France, the intellectual
leader of Europe. It is hostility against the uncivilized
big upstart from across the ocean (hence the derision of
"cowboys" Reagan and Bush); envy and, yes, resentment toward
the liberators of an impotent Europe in 1945. For many on
the European Right America is a threat to national identity
(see Jean-Marie Le Pen in France), its free-wheeling
capitalism a competitor to statism, and more generally a
symbol of a globalization feared by nationalists everywhere.
In Russia the growing and very popular anti-Americanism is
part and parcel of the resurgence of Moscow's imperial
ambitions, with Wa****ngton being seen as the principal
obstacle to the fulfillment of those ambitions.
In the Islamic world the very same civilizational decline
and frustration that made Al Qaeda possible and still helps
its appeal grow in places like Pakistan, India, and
Bangladesh makes the United States--the most present and
thus painful symbol of Muslim economic, political and
cultural backwardness--a natural scapegoat, at both elite
and mass levels. In some ways this is the same game as in
Latin America: encourage hatred for the big foreigner to
distract attention from the local abusive ruler who, at
least, is one of your own. It is also less than surprising
that some Arab elites are hopeful for a new Cold War, which
would allow their regimes to play the ugly American against
the admittedly infidel but friendly (and full of promises
and cheap guns) Russians.
One of the causes of the spreading of anti-Americanism in
Europe and the Islamic world is its association with anti-
Semitism. The two are joined at the hip by the same glue of
impotence and envy. Unable to destroy Israel, Islamists
blame America for sup****ting it because that is easier than
admitting their own disunity and backwardness. Many among
the European elites, and some populists, also blame
"Zionism" (often a code word for Israel) for both the
problems of the Middle East and, more recently, for their
own countries' problems with the m***** of Muslim
immigrants. Of course, as everyone "knows," Israel is still
around only because Jews control Wa****ngton's policies--on
this there is a meeting of the minds between jihadis and the
ultra-secular "progressives."
In many places, Latin America and some European countries
among them, there is a distinct difference between elite
anti-Americanism and popular indifference or even friend****p
toward the Americans and even their government. That is the
only logical explanation why elected leaders Nicolas
Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Silvio Berlusconi or Gordon Brown--
none of whom are anti-American are leaders of their
im****tant countries. As for Eastern Europe and Africa, the
two areas where anti-Americanism does not thrive (yet?),
there are good reasons for this. When countries were treated
as Russian/Soviet colonies and denied national identity in
the name of a "proletarian internationalism" enforced by
tanks, neither socialism nor hostility to the values
represented by the United States can easily take root. And
when the United States has never been present as a colonial
power and is the main aid donor, Africans have little
incentive to hate Americans.
Many conservatives, President Bush among them, complain that
anti-Americanism is due to ignorance and America's
ineffectiveness in making its case. They are wrong on all
counts. America is known throughout the world, but it is the
wrong America, that of its native critics and enemies, that
is known: Hollywood movies obsessed with hatred for
capitalism, the military and the CIA; Noam Chomsky and
Michael Moore's obsessive hatred of ordinary Americans and
their elected representatives; idiotic rappers; and guilt-
ridden academics.
And then there is the old schizophrenia of America's views
of the world. The world is or it should be like us, but we
do not particularly like to interfere, to be "global
policemen," especially when it costs too much. In their own
differently misguided and arrogant ways, both President Bush
and the militant "human rights" activists pursue the same
kind of moral imperialism: the former with his dangerous
understanding of democracy as a vital and universal
commodity for ex****t--whether there is a market for it or
not, and the latter by promoting the thinking of Vermont or
California "progressive" judges as "international
standards." This moral imperialism is as inappropriate as it
is resented elsewhere. There is also the naive but so
American belief that being the biggest donors of foreign
aid--public and private--should result in the foreigners
being grateful. Unsurprisingly, that does not happen--not in
Sumatra, Egypt, Jordan or Pakistan--because American aid is
taken as natural or, more often than not, is seen as a form
of "reparations" for past, mostly imaginary, sins.
None of those complaining about America's bad image in the
world or its (occasional) lack of allied sup****t ever ask an
im****tant question: is it possible, just possible, that in
at least some issues (think Iran) America may be right and
the mythical "international community" wrong? When President
Bush stated that on the issue of terrorism there are only
two possible positions--for or against--he was accused of
unilateralism and arrogance. But we are never told what
would be a third position!
{Give Saddam and the WMD inspectors more time, after 10 yrs.
of sanctions, had failed...?}
For many years the sophisticated Europeans have engaged in
negotiations with Iran, with U.S. sup****t. The result is
that Iran is now closer than ever to becoming a nuclear
power. Could it be that the Europeans have replaced real
diplomacy--one based on real power--with talks intended to
obscure their absolute lack of both will and capabilities?
Could it be that our European allies' clinging on United
Nations' blessings for any action are sup****ted by a very
fragile reed indeed--one that is dependent on the approval
of Moscow and Beijing? That the UN, far from being the
necessary source of international law, is the collective
voice of a majority of countries who are neither democratic
nor restrained by any law? Given these realities, is the
United States' occasionally taking action without UN
approval wrong?
Anti-Americanism will continue to thrive unless the American
public understands the problem--an unlikely prospect
considering our educational establishment's encouragement of
national guilt. One of the most im****tant, if not the most
im****tant, reasons for this is that it is largely cost-free.
It is the Bush White House that is criticized at home for
shunning Europe's most vocal anti-American leader, Spain's
Jose Luis RodrĄguez Zapatero, the critics implying that
Wa****ngton should turn the other cheek.
Another question that is never posed is what if the U.S.
invasion of Iraq had been successful and very brief, rather
than mishandled, costly and protracted. Would anti-
Americanism, at least that version using Iraq as a pretext,
be stronger or much weaker, rooted in the ignorant m***** or
just a handful of isolated pseudo-intellectuals?
Anti-Americanism is both a real and a global phenomenon. It
has to be dealt with, in the long term, by engaging in
realistic policies and attracting allies, not by masochistic
exercises, public relations gimmicks, or unilateral
concessions. The Michael Moore/Sean Penn/Noam Chomskys in
this country are just an irritation here and abroad; to
actively seek an accommodation with various foreign anti-
American forces in order to make the United States "loved"
would be a disaster. The United States, like other
countries, seeks good feelings abroad, but the promotion of
our interests remains paramount, based on respect and even
fear rather than "love." It is time to become serious--even
during a presidential campaign.
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