Anti-Americanism's Deep Roots
The Current Wave of Hostility Will Ebb. But This Is About More Than the Iraq
War.
Washingtonpost, Monday, June 19, 2006; Page A21
I recently took part in a panel discussion in London about civil conflict
and "failed states" around the world, centered on the interesting work of
the British economist Paul Collier. The panelists included the son of a
famous African liberation-leader-turned-dictator, the former leader of a
South American guerrilla group, a Pakistani journalist, a U.N. official and
the head of a nongovernmental humanitarian organization. Naturally, our
reasoned and learned discussion quickly transmogrified into an extended
round-robin denunciation of American foreign policy.
The
interesting thing was that the Iraq war was far from the main topic. George
W. Bush hardly came up. The panelists focused instead on a long list of
grievances against the United States stretching back over six decades. There
was much discussion of the "colonial legacy" and "neo-colonialism,"
especially in the Middle East and Africa. And even though the colonies in
question had been ruled by Europeans, panelists insisted that this colonial
past was the source of most of the world's resentment toward the United
States. There was much criticism of American policy during the Cold War for
imposing evil regimes, causing poverty and suffering throughout the world,
and blocking national liberation movements as a service to oil companies and
multinational corporations. When the moderator brought up nuclear weapons
proliferation and Iran, the panelists talked about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As for "failed states" and civil conflict, several panelists agreed that
they were always and everywhere the fault of the United States. The African
insisted that Bosnia and Kosovo were destroyed by American military
interventions, not by Slobodan Milosevic, and that Somalia was a failed state
because of American policy. The Pakistani insisted the United States was to
blame for Afghanistan's descent into anarchy in the 1990s. The former guerrilla
leader insisted that most if not all problems in the Western Hemisphere were the
product of over a century of American imperialism.
Some of these charges had more merit than others, but even the moderator
became exasperated by the general refusal to place any responsibility on the
peoples and leaders of countries plagued by civil conflict. Yet t
the panelists held their ground. When someone pointed out that the
young boys fighting in African tribal and ethnic wars could hardly be
fighting against American "imperialism," the African dictator's son
insisted they were indeed. When the head of the NGO paused from gnashing
his teeth at American policy to suggest that perhaps the United States
was not to blame for the genocide in Rwanda, the African dictator's son
argued that it was, because it had failed to intervene. The United
States was to blame both for the suffering it caused and the suffering
it did not alleviate.
The discussion was illuminating. There is
no question that the Iraq war has aroused hostility toward the United
States around the world. And there are many legitimate criticisms to be
made about America's conduct of the war. But it is worth keeping in mind
that this anger against the United States also has deep roots.
The Iraq war has rekindled myriad old resentments toward the
United States, a thousand different complaints, each one specific to a
time and place far removed from the present conflict. It has united a
diverse spectrum of anti-American views in common solidarity -- the
Marxist Africans still angry over American policy in the 1960s and '70s,
the Pakistanis still furious at America's (bipartisan) support for the
dictator Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in the 1970s and '80s, the French
theoreticians who started railing against the American "hyperpower" in
the 1990s, the Latin ex-guerrillas still waging their decades-old
struggle against North American imperialism, the Arab activists still
angry about 1948. At a conference in the Middle East a few months ago, I
heard a moderate Arab scholar complaining bitterly about how American
policy had alienated the Arab peoples in recent years. A former Clinton
official sitting next to him was nodding vigorously but then suddenly
stopped when the Arab scholar made clear that by "recent years" he meant
ever since 1967.
The Iraq war has also made anti-Americanism respectable again, as
it was during the Cold War but had not been since the demise of the
Soviet Union. People who a decade ago would not have been granted a
platform to spout the kind of arguments I heard on this panel are now
given star treatment in the Western and global media. Such people were
always there, but no one was listening to them. Today they dominate the
airwaves, and this in turn is helping produce an increasingly hostile
global public opinion, as evidenced in a recent Pew poll.
There are two lessons to be drawn from all this. One is that in
time the current tidal wave of anti-Americanism will ebb, just as in the
past. Smarter American diplomacy can help, of course, as can success in
places such as Iraq. But the other lesson is not to succumb to the
illusion that America was beloved until the spring of 2003 and will be
beloved again when George W. Bush leaves office. Some folks seem to
believe that by returning to the policies of Harry Truman, Dean Acheson
and John F. Kennedy, America will become popular around the world. I
like those policies, too, but let's not kid ourselves. They also sparked
enormous resentment among millions of peoples in many countries,
resentments that are now returning to the fore. The fact is, because
America is the dominant power in the world, it will always attract
criticism and be blamed both for what it does and what it does not do.
No one should lightly dismiss the current hostility toward the
United States. International legitimacy matters. It is important in
itself, and it affects others' willingness to work with us. But neither
should we be paralyzed by the unavoidable resentments that our power
creates. If we refrained from action out of fear that others around the
world would be angry with us, then we would never act. And count on it:
They'd blame us for that, too.
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace and transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund,
writes a monthly column for The Post.