Explaining America’s Global Unpopularity
America’s unpopularity has been on display in recent weeks – at the podium of the UN General Assembly, in Havana at the 118-nation meeting of the Non-aligned Movement, and in new public opinion survey reports. “There is little doubt of the deepening unpopularity of the United States, even among longtime allies,” says a piece in Friday’s LA Times.
This is indeed a serious problem – and increasingly it is a national security problem for the United States. America’s global standing – its authority, respect, credibility, prestige – has weakened in recent years and this has made it harder for the United States to lead and pursue its interests. The danger is two-fold. First, as America becomes increasingly unpopular in countries that are friends and allies of the U.S., their leaders have growing domestic political incentives to resist and oppose us. We have seen this in Germany, Brazil, South Korea, and elsewhere. Second, as America becomes more unpopular in other parts of the world, it fuels anti-Western social and religious movements that give aid and cover to extremists and wielders of violence.
Obviously, some of this anti-Americanism is a result of the Bush administration’s policies – Iraq, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and so forth. It is self inflicted in part. But I think there are also deeper causes of this growing global distaste for America, which current American foreign policy exacerbates. In my view, the foundations of the global system have changed – the structure of power, sovereignty, human rights, democracy – and this has changed the ways in which the United States is seen and the way it can exercise power and assert its authority. I sketch this argument in an essay in the new issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.
You can go to the journal for the full argument, but this is my overall thesis:
Put simply, the geopolitical terrain upon which America’s leadership position rests is shifting. The rise of American unipolar power and the erosion of norms of state sovereignty have “flipped” the Westphalian order on its head, altered the logic of order and rule, and made American power more controversial and contested. It has also made it more difficult for the United States to assert its leadership on the global stage. Because of this, the Bush Administration has run into trouble, or as I would put it, the United States has gotten caught in a “security trap.” When America tries to solve the nation’s security problems by exercising its power or using force, it tends to produce resistance and backlash that leaves the country bereft of authority, isolated, and ultimately more insecure than it was before it acted.
This can be seen clearly in the record of the Bush Administration. But the thornier problem is that, when liberals take over the reins of foreign policy, they too will fall into this security trap unless they understand the problem and devise a foreign policy that works with, rather than against, these evolving global realities. For Bush and some Democrats, being the unchecked superpower means that the United States has the freedom to act alone or in whatever coalitions it sees fit. But, ironically, the opposite is true. Unfettered power creates resentment and opposition, which makes it more difficult for America to act. To turn power into authority, the United States needs to find ways to restrain and reconnect its extraordinary unipolar power to institutions and partnerships that make up the international community.
Accordingly, the next administration -- Democrat or Republican -- needs to focus on rebuilding America’s authority as a global power. Threats and challenges abound around the world, but the United States will struggle in responding to any and all of them unless it rebuilds its political capital in the currency of the new international realm. Call it a renewal agenda, one that has at its core a set of proposals for rebuilding global institutions and partnerships tied to new political bargains between the United States and other major states. Ultimately, the key to rebuilding America’s authority is its commitment to sponsoring and operating within a newly reformed, rules-based international order.
Another way of putting the argument is this:
There has been a subtle shift in the way “rule” is established in the global system since the end of the Cold War. During the Cold War – and into the 1990s – the United States enjoyed a substantial legitimacy as a global leader because it was providing public goods and leading a coalition in balancing against the Soviet communist world. American leadership was functional for the global system – and it was premised on a widely shared sense of the common good. But today the global system is not organized around a balance of power. The United States is still the most powerful state in the system but its functionality in the provisioning of security and public goods is less obvious or willingly offered on agreeable terms.
As I see it, there are only two ways to “solve” this problem. One is for the system to eventually go back into some sort of rough, 21st century version of the balance of power. The U.S. will have its array of allies and others will be arrayed around other states. This may or may not be a stable system. The alternative is a global system that is built around bargains and institutions that support a widely-shared rule-based order. American leadership would be asserted through this rule-based order. Countries would support rather than resist American leadership because American power was embedded in a mutually agreeable system of rules and governance arrangements.
My point is that if liberals and Democrats want to run a successful foreign policy when their turn comes, they will need to do more than simply fiddle with Bush-era foreign policy. They will need a grand strategy for renewing American authority pursued via an agenda for rebuilding the global order.
This is in many aspects a very adorable article, but isn't it too much of rosy dreams?
Can a historic development really be rolled back like this? That seems very doubtful. Particularly as democracies are involved. It's like when having discovered the true self of a friend being a cheater. There is no way back to the trust you felt before.
What would be left for the U.S. were to demonstrate being a team-player abiding the same rules as everyone else. Constantly, not only occasionally. Any relapses into trying to "set rules" to advance own interests will exacerbate the trust problem.
Given the modus operandi of the American political system, this is not a particularly plausible outcome.
So we are left with the situation that the U.S. abdicated from its role as leader of the Free World and has found no other world to lead.
This is a pity, but the sooner we all get used to this new reality, the better.
The notion of "American security threats" seems myopic and not suitable to gain acceptance abroad. America is, compared to most other countries, not particularly threatened, and such references are prone to be understood as code for American need to take advantage of other nations.
There are however two security threats that need international, no actually global, solutions:
If America directs the nation's efforts at finding solutions on these problems, chances are that this global unpopularity can be reversed.
September 24, 2006 9:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
The first problem we have to solve is our own internal political problem. We have a political system designed with at most a 2 year perspective and the depth of a 15 second campaign ad which is most likely to be 15 seconds of lying to the American people.
Meanwhile, even at the highest levels, in fact most especially at the highest levels, we are deaf, blind and dumb to the fact that world news can be picked up on a cell phone almost anywhere.
Our politicians plays to the lowest common denominator it can find, the proverbial zombie in the recliner with a beer and the remote, while the world can tune into facts in an instant.
This results in people abroad being horrified at our ignorance, at the lies we tell ourselves and at our lazy assumption that we are "leading" them.
September 24, 2006 9:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Some thoughts on reading both Ikenberry and Olofsson.
I recoil when I read about sustaining American "power" and "authority," preferring power-sharing and the quieter moral authority which comes from good behavior, not just wily marketing.
Our military strength should not exceed our diplomatic strength. Use of military force should always be seen as a sign of leadership failure and dealt with accordingly.
The bigger and more powerful we are, the greater our responsibility to behave well.
As long as our presence overseas is dominated by our military and our corporations, we are not going to do well (or be trusted, liked, and admired).
We need to be the first to behave by the rules, not the most likely to abrogate them.
We need to understand that, as long as the culture we export demonstrates a celebration of glitzy violence and rule-breaking, that's how we will be perceived -- and the perception is accurate.
We should do everything we can to dismantle a foreign policy (and a prevailing attitude) which makes us "world leaders" in the use of force.
The problem is, the hegemonists have been careful to demonize negotiation, international cooperation, peace & justice, thinking before acting, and empathy. It's going to take a while before an exhausted, angry, frustrated and increasingly alienated American public will be capable of embracing them once again.
September 24, 2006 9:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Ikenberry,
I agree with the you on the importance of rising anti-Americanism, and agree that the next administration will have to work very hard to repair, as best it can, the US reputation. I also agree that participating with others in the construction of a reworked global security framework, built on new and revived international institutions and compacts, and then operating withing that framework, is the best way to advance our interests.
But I have some problems with the theoretical framework you employ in order to interpret current global events. That framework strikes me as too idealized and ahistorical. The only reason this is important is that we will probably continue to make bad decisions as a nation if we do not come to a blunt, realistic understanding of what is happening.
The first thing to recognize is that the powerful are always feared, envied and resented by the less powerful. The latter have a perpetual drive to increase their own power and independence, and lessen their potential vulnerability, in relation to the former - if they have a choice. If they have no choice, they may acquiesce to the superior power and fall into a habit of obedience. And if there are several worrisome powers, they will seek to align themselves with the less worrisome in order to resist and defend themselves against the more worrisome. But these are all relationships of interest and convenience.
During the Cold War, fear of and resentment toward the US was tempered, in part because other countries saw US power as checked by the existence of the Soviet Union. Many of these countries also needed us to help them defend themselves against what was perceived as a more worrisome common enemy. But now that the Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union is gone, their attention has naturally turned toward checking and balancing the US power that it previously worked with. This is such a standard phenomenon in world history that I don't understand why you think you need to resort to the more elaborate theoretical explnations in terms of an idealized "Westphalian order" that has been "flipped on it's head". There is no topsy-turvy inversion of the previous "logic of rule and order." The logic of rule and order functions as it always has, and continual flows of power and shifts or rivalry and cooperation have always been part of that logic.
You tend to describe easily undertandable natural phenomena in terms of ironies and seeming paradoxes. And so far as I can tell, that is because you are committed to a certain mythology about American power that doesn't square with the empirical reality of global events. For example, you say:
For Bush and some Democrats, being the unchecked superpower means that the United States has the freedom to act alone or in whatever coalitions it sees fit. But, ironically, the opposite is true. Unfettered power creates resentment and opposition, which makes it more difficult for America to act. To turn power into authority, the United States needs to find ways to restrain and reconnect its extraordinary unipolar power to institutions and partnerships that make up the international community.
There is nothing "ironic" about what is happening. Surely the lesson we should take from what is occuring now in the world is that our power is not unfettered, and never was. Power is the capacity to influence others, and get them to do what you want. If US power was truly unfettered, it would have no difficulty in influencing others to act in conformity to our will. And if the US realy had "extraordinary unipolar" power, it would have no need to operate within a rule based community framework, since people form communities to overcome the vulnerabilities and limitations they experience as independent agents. There is no unipolarity. Instead we live in an increasingly multipolar world (maybe even an "apolar" world) of overlapping power centers. The US might be in a situation in which there is no other single nation which has comparable power; but that doesn't mean US power is unfettered or unipolar.
I think the myth of unipolarity is a mistaken inference from the ending of the previous bipolar arrangement. The assumption seems to be that if you have a bipolar world, and then one of the poles disintegrates, what you are left with is a unipolar world. But this just isn't true. In a bipolar world, the structural integrity and organizational force of each of the poles is provided by the resistance to the other pole. When one of the poles disappears, the other is bound to disintegrate soon afterward because the motives that tied it together have vanished.
Another common myth, the myth of US hegemony, is based on a confusion of predominance and preponderance. Being the most powerful state in a system does not make one a "hegemon". Hypothesize a system consisting of 50 states. Suppose one state has a "power rating" of 50, four other states have a power rating of 20, five have a power rating of 10, twenty have a power rating of 5 and twenty have a power rating of 1. Certainly the first state is by far the most powerful state in the system. But the combined power of the other forty-nine countries is 250, five times that of the supposed "hegemon". The top state only gets to rule so long as most of that other power either aligns itself with it, or remains divided. But it never does remain divided, and the alliances only stay intact so long as there are sizeable competing alliances which mandate them.
The bottom line is that US power has been declining. US power in the postwar years was largely built on the fact that it was the last large and economically healthy power left standing in a world of smoking ruins and revolutionary chaos. But most of those other once-devastated countries have grown richer, and capable. As their power has grown, US power has declined commensurately. And two very large powers, Russia and China, were not destroyed by the Cold War conflict, but tempered and incorporated into the global system where they are not very significant players.
What I worry about is that US politicians of both parties are still unwilling to take this simple news to the people. I think they are afraid of the impenetrable barrier of US vanity. Most living Americans gew up in what was - for Americans at least - a golden era of glittering US supremacy, self-importance and confidence. In a sense, every American was a little prince or princess who was an heir of the Great King. Nobody wants to tell the people that those postwar wonder years of lordly US dominance are not coming back, because they were built on an inherently transitory phenomenon of a world recovering from trauma, and then the need by one portion of that world to defeat a common enemy.
You say:
But today the global system is not organized around a balance of power. The United States is still the most powerful state in the system but its functionality in the provisioning of security and public goods is less obvious or willingly offered on agreeable terms.
Here again is an attempt to describe events in terms of paradoxes and anomalies. Somehow the standard laws of of power balancing have been suspended? No, the growing resistance to US influence is precisely a case of power-balancing in action.
There never was some "Westphalian order". There was no Camelot. There were no loyal knights geneuflecting to the Goodly King, because of the King's great beneficence and bountiful provision of good. There were a lot of countries pursuing their interests as best they could. Now that they no longer need us for the things they needed during the Cold war, they are moving in several other directions.
September 24, 2006 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent comment, Dan K! Ikenberry's post reeks of liberal Beltway triumphalism. All of us deep thinkers are supposed to sit around thinking about how to employ America's amazing "unipolar power" less stupidly than the Bush crew. Bullshit. We have no such "power." We have the world's largest military establishment, which has turned out to be essentially useless. What we had better start thinking about is this: how will we survive in the poverty, weakness, and darkness into which we are headed?
September 24, 2006 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
"impenetrable barrier of US vanity"
That phrase deserves at least a "5".
September 24, 2006 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
A clarification. I said:
And two very large powers, Russia and China, were not destroyed by the Cold War conflict, but tempered and incorporated into the global system where they are not very significant players.
which should read:
And two very large powers, Russia and China, were not destroyed by the Cold War conflict, but tempered and incorporated into the global system where they are now very significant players.
September 24, 2006 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
During the Cold War, most countries saw the United States as being clearly the lesser of two evils. Now that the greater evil is gone, the lesser remains - and no matter how much lesser, it is still perceived as an evil.
People around the world don't like being told what they can or can't do any more than Americans like that. This nuance is, sadly, lost on many (most?) Americans. They only see their own power and never even think of how they'd feel if they were on the other end of it.
September 24, 2006 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
I appreciate Mr. Ikenberry's thoughts but the realist (ie. cynic) in me is convinced that things will have to get a lot worse before (if!) they can get better.
The elephant in the room is the stupendous US war budget (and let's not call it "defense", okay?). With that kind of military spending, the US can't afford not to fight wars. Basically if you pay several hundred billion dollars a year to people whose job is to fight wars and create the necessary infrastructure for it, it is inevitable that you end up fighting wars. If you didn't want to, you'd not be spending all that money on it!
Unfortunately, the amount of resources involved creates a huge inertia that cannot be easily dislodged or even redirected. There is tremendous investment in the status quo and I do not doubt that any attempts to change it would meet with severe resistance. Which is why the status quo will not change, the situation will continue as it is but steadily deterioriate further, up (down) until a point where change will be truly inevitable. That point, unfortunately, will not be a happy place. Chalk it up to the excellent human ability to ignore problems until they cannot be possibly ignored.
September 24, 2006 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
A curious exception in history to the "rule" that everyone gangs up on the most powerful nation: the UK in the 19th century. After Napoleon's defeat Britrain was certainly the most powerful of the victorious nations that brought down Napolenoic France, and in short order the British amassed the largest of the all the 19th century Euorpan empires, while at sea no one could hope to match the Bitish navy. But until the idiotic Kaiser decided to take on the Brits in the early 20th century, no one ever challenged the UK. Not France, not Austria, not Russia or Prussia or even the USA (despite an occasional fit of American pique at the old mother country.) What was different here and why, despite huge imperial ambitions and behavior, was Britain left alone?
September 24, 2006 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hard to add anything to DanK's richly argued riposte.
If we are so powerful, why do we need to influence other states? One exerts influence to get something--what do we need?
Do we seek markets? Let's emphasize making things people want. Do we seek security? Let's stop making enemies. Do we seek admiration? Let's behave admirably.
September 25, 2006 5:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was thinking the same thing.
American power faces much more competition recently with the emergence of China and India as global players. This coupled with the squandering of it's political, and moral reputation under Bush sees the decline in it's power pre-eminance accelerating. The days of American power dominance are rapidly diminishing. There is no actual power without influence.
As for the reason for the massive groundswell of Anti-Americanism sweeping the world today, including the populations of it's closest allies, the reason is quite simple. George W Bush, and his idiotic and ill concieved Iraq foray. Gitmo, where prisoners have been held for 5 years without trial (Australian David Hicks among them). Bush's re-definition of torture. Abu Graib. Katrina, exposing inequality and poverty in a country that arrogantly considers itself the best in the world and an example for us all to follow. Forget the changing world, Bush is doing an incredible job all on his own to spread Anti-Americanism.
September 25, 2006 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ikenberry's thesis makes perfect intuitive sense, as does Dan K's riposte. However they are both rather a-historical and I'm surprised nobody has pointed it out.
Ikenberry thesis should predict that the US got more and more unpopular after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Is that really true? I think not. My feeling is that the US became MORE popular during the nineties including up to the Afghanistan War.
This was in spite of a rather militarist foreign policy including the Gulf War, Kosovo, Somalia and many lesser conflicts saw US troops. I believe that the peoples of the world saw the US as generally on the right side of these conflicts.
Whereas during the Cold War the US was seen as scary. The only criterion for foreign policy was, "Is it good for the US and bad for the USSR?" For good reason maybe, but the little guy could easily get crushed, and that fear did not breed popularity. The US record in the peripheral Cold War battles is pretty unpleasant.
There is one major exception to the growing popularity of the US from 1990 through 2002, of course. That is the Islamic world. During these years there were constant low-level conflicts between Islamic populations and their neighbors in African countries, South Asia, the Pacific island countries, and the former USSR (not to mention Israel), and the US usually (but not always) supported the other side.
So I figure, before the onset of the militarism of GWB, the US has become MORE popular in the world, partly because of an attractive if muscular foreign policy.
September 25, 2006 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: This was in spite of a rather militarist foreign policy including the Gulf War, Kosovo, Somalia and many lesser conflicts saw US troops.
But in each of these conflicts the US was standing up the underdog against some local bully. And even though in Kuwait at least US interests were clearly involved, the US did not exploit any of these situations to aggrandize itself.
September 25, 2006 3:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anti-American sentiment abroad has existed throughout the 20th century, at least. The Ugly American was a reality, I'm sorry to say. American tourists traveling throughout the world during that time were seen to be crude, loud and ill-mannered, demanding and uncouth, and profligate spenders. This was the case before and after both great wars. Henry James wrote often about titled Englishmen who married American heiresses.
Unpleasant as it is to hear, it formed a backdrop for much of the anti-U.S. sentiment today. The radical Islamist Qtab came to the U.S. in 1948 prepared to dislike our culture. And he did, basing his defense against modernity on what he saw here in the States.
Before you all dismiss Ikenberry as "idealized and ahistorical", consider that "foreigners" see American foreign policy through not only their longstanding cultural biases, but eventually came to add their religious and political biases.
The Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war did little to endear us.
September 25, 2006 3:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ikenberry thesis should predict that the US got more and more unpopular after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Is that really true? I think not. My feeling is that the US became MORE popular during the nineties including up to the Afghanistan War.
I'm skeptical of that, but I don't have any hard numbers to back me up. Throughout the nineties there was growing concern about, and opposition to, US cultural imperialism. And the anti-globalization movement which finally reached the US with a bang in the late 90's, and was directed against the "Washington Consensus" had been growing abroad for several. Certainly the levels of US unpopularity were nowhere near as high as today. But I do think they had been increasing gradually for some time. 9/11 and the US response to it seemed to crystalize a growing feeling of discomfort, resentment and fear.
September 25, 2006 8:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, 'ugly American' tourists and travellers are a cliche. But speaking from personal experience, there's quite a bit of truth to it.
On the other hand, Quebecois Canadians are pretty appalling when they travel. The Israeli's make a virtue of being obnoxious and condescending. The Germans are hated, etc.
Obnoxious parochialism and being offensive to other cultures and nations is hardly confined to the United States. It's true of you, but I think for most of the world, its hardly a complete judgement.
For much of the 20th century, America represented many different things. The Europeans were often astonished at the virulence of American racism, and while France ruled a colonial empire comprising half of Africa, they'd never deny service to a black man in a restaurant. Racism was the big blemish on America for many Europeans, but even so, that was hardly the complete judgement.
Why is it so hard to accept that Bush's policies have created hatred for America throughout the world. And why is it so hard to accept that aggressive and vindictive policies that existed before Bush have created resentment.
September 25, 2006 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
I shall refrain from comment on the Quebecois and 'Canadians'. It is a very long story.
I believe that many Americans accept the reality you pose. But this Bush administration governs not through policy but through partisan political techniques. Because propaganda is the most useful tool a political organization can hone and implement, we get press conferences given by varying members of the administration to promote their reality and to obscure what the rest of the world sees all too clearly.
As to preBush policies and the world's view, it may be that short memories dominate long histories. It's a problem because those who with longer memories of how the U.S. behaviour in the world - good and bad - was perceived are usually drowned out by the propaganda or spin of the vested interested - public and private.
September 26, 2006 8:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Normally, when traveling, I use my normal accent, which is rather generic American -- born and brought up mostly in New Jersey (also Maryland and Texas), then 40 years in metro DC. There have been a few times in Europe, usually dealing with officialdom, where it has been useful to switch dialects, much as it is in Texas. A generic Canadian seems to work fairly well.
The one exception, where I emphasize my Nooo Joisey accent, is Quebec. (The Parisians tend not to understand anything I say unless it's to their advantage. Other than people with whom I had an existing relationship, the only distinctly nice people I encountered in Paris, to my amazement, were the CRS paramilitary police. When I was lost looking for the US consulate, to replace my stolen passport, we didn't have much in common except a map and gestures. They tried to draw out the map (the consulate is on a short side street that really doesn't show), then got out "wait a minute", got a relief team, and cheerfully escorted me to the gate, where they then screamed at the gatekeeper to let me in without a passport, since that was the reason I was there. I understand a little more French than I speak, but I suspect I could have learned a few more insults.
OTOH, I rarely argue with people in flak jackets carrying submachine guns, at least one of which, I saw, was set not to safety but full auto (bad practice, but not one to criticize).
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
September 26, 2006 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
An excellent response to Ikenberry's tired restatement of the worldview that still dominates the US foreign policy establishment.
To me, the central point stated very clearly is that the collapse of the Soviet bloc did not convert a bipolar world into a unipolar world as claimed both by people who support "American leadership" and by people who oppose it and actually believed by some but not all who claim it.
The unipolar thesis is summed up in saying the US is now "the only superpower".
In reality the US is the LAST superpower.
That implies it is still a superpower, ie a power capable of successfully projecting force against other "great" powers, even outside its own region. It is also the only such power - no others can do it. But this is because it is the last of the superpowers ie we are entering an age in which there will be no superpowers just as there are no dinosaurs.
The US foreign policy establishment, including the Democrat party wannabees just don't get this.
They overwhelmingly agree that the US is in a weak and declining position and has been since its defeat in Vietnam (which is actually what set the scene for the collapse of the previous bipolar world by enabling Soviet overeach and subsequent collapse). But their conclusion is that the US must adopt a conservative defensive posture, seeking to preserve "stability" of the status quo with the US still retaining hegemony.
The Bushies and neocons also appear to just not to get it in a different and opposite way, with loud chest-thumping about how powerful the US is and flat denial that it is in decline.
However that posturing is so unconvincing and chest-thumping is so universally recognized by serious analysts as symptomatic of weakness and bluster that it simply cannot be taken seriously by anyone who really wants to understand the actual US posture rather than the declaratory posture.
Looked at more closely, the Bush administrations policies in the Middle East actually amount to an orderly retreat from the old imperial order, using the remaining US power projection capacity to minimize the chaos and disruption as the old autocracies collapse by taking the side of the people against their regimes, even though that means helping anti-US parties to enter government through free elections as in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian occupied terrorities.
Without the chest-thumping rhetoric, that would be clearly understood as a policy of retreat from empire while the policy of Ikenberry et al would be recognized as a futile attempt to perpetuate the old order.
Hence the need for the chest thumping rhetoric that alienates public opinion around the world even more than the actual reality of the US backing local tyrannies did in the first place. Recognition of US strategic decline is the last thing US policy makers would want.
Now which would you rather have - no resort to chest-thumping, greater popularity and an attempt at continuation of the imperial policies of Ikenberry et al that imploded with 9/11 - or sufficient chest-thumping to keep the "opinion leaders" of the US bewildered enough to be paralysed from actually influencing US foreign policy while the retreat is organized and democracies established to replace the old order? In the long run it is only replacing the old order of tyrants that has led to the US being justly hated that can end that hatred.
Those are the realistic choices. There is no way the Ikenberry's could have been out maneuvered without the chest thumping. It would have been like trying to pull the Israelis out of the West Bank and substitute an international force without first distracting attention by shouting a lot at Iran.
What goes with decline is an essentially moribund political system in which policy makers can no longer openly discuss actual policy even with "opinion leaders" let alone the general public. Without the complete cognitive dissonance of public discourse about US foreign policy, people like Ikenberry would still have some influence, since their delusions are far more palatable to "opinion leaders" than Dan K's more "realistic" analysis. Allowing them to retain influence would lead to more disasters like 9/11.
Hence the chest-thumping by people who know perfectly well that the US superpower is in decline and don't need that explained to them just because they are lying about it.
How could anybody NOT know? Even Osama bin Laden noticed the US got chased out of Somalia by losing a couple of dozen troops.
How could anybody NOT notice that the US is scarcely a superpower at all when a smaller number of fatal casualties in Iraq than inflicted on a single day by a gang of terrorists produces so much anguish.
What is puzzling about the US political system is the way that complete incomprehension of foreign policy issues is maintained even among people who regularly discuss foreign policy with apparant genuine interest, despite the absence of any censorship that could explain such amazing capacity for not noticing the obvious.
September 26, 2006 10:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
America's domestic popularity has also dropped to a new all-time low, even among the most "patriotic." On Monday, retired military officers bluntly accused Defense Secretary Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public. Oh, and that report was just released about how 16 disparate US spy agencies have reached consensus that the Iraq War has increased international terrorism. And look at all those embarassing headlines about the U.S. Congressional unwillingness to confirm the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Where exactly do you file those items? Under 'How to Win Friends and Influence People'? Our beautiful country has been transmogrified into an international thug. The mendacious fraternity now in power is willing to downsize the Constitution and scrap the Geneva Conventions. Is that the 'new and improved' packaging of their War on Terror? What next?
The hope is that Americans who do love this country are waking up, speaking up, and openly hating what is happening to us. Some of the people abroad -- who care a lot about what America truly stands for -- are hating it with us. They are friends. Bless them.
September 27, 2006 4:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The first thing to recognize is that the powerful are always feared, envied and resented by the less powerful."
You forgot something. Sometimes leadership inspires and empowers. It has happened. It can again. That's not only contextual.
September 27, 2006 4:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anti-Americanism is growing rapidly today in Australia, oddly being the closest of US allies. Predominatly amongst the young, who have no recollection of America before Bush. My daughter is 15 and has had her political awakenings witnessing the international public relations disaster that has been the Bush Presidency (and that's putting it politely). Today her and all of her friends think of Americans as idiots. Refering to them as "stupid Americans", or "that's soooo American" in a derogatory way. Unfortunately Bush has given birth to a growing prejudice here with an entire generation. It'll take more than just a change of President to overcome that sort of feeling.
September 27, 2006 9:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm listening, smokey. Thank you for writing -- ditto, agree.
It will take much more than a mere superficial change of personnel.
September 27, 2006 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I'm a french Canadian (Acadian) who grew up in a fully bilingual region of New Brunswick adjacent to Quebec.
So the conclusion that Quebecois as tourists are astonishing boors came from working in the hospitality industry as a youth, and from knowing other people with years or decades of experience in the hospitality industry.
The Quebecois are a fairly insular culture in love with the notion that they are embattled. I suspect that they'd love it if the Manitoba Metis french, or the New Brunswick Acadian french would disappear so that they could confirm their isolation.
Insularity, it seems, makes for horking huge butts when abroad.
Of course, that doesn't explain the Japanese, who were exemplary travellers in my experience.
October 24, 2006 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink