Being Loved Is Overrated
Good morning, America — the world hates you slightly less! They took a poll shortly after Obama’s election:
Views of the US showed improvements in Canada, Egypt, Ghana, India, Italy and Japan. But far more countries have predominantly negative views of America (12), than predominantly positive views (6). Most Europeans show little change and views of the US in Russia and China have grown more negative. On average, positive views have risen from 35 per cent to 40 per cent, but they are still outweighed by negative views (43%, down from 47%). [BBC]
And in other news, Europe (and South Korea, and Japan) still isn’t willing to help more in Afghanistan, which has a few more moments as “the good war” until the usual suspects start urging us to flee from that front, too. Ecuador just expelled someone from our embassy in Quito. Anne Applebaum points to a newly emerging school of “thought” — for now, emerging from a collection of cartoonish kooks in Russia and China, mostly — that the Obama presidency is a hoax by the hidden illuminati who really run America. And there’s always North Korea and Iran, for whom hatred of and tension with America are existential.
Here’s a prediction: two years from now, the world will still hate us. We will be hated as long as we are envied. We will be hated most, paradoxically, by many of those whose most ardent desire is to live here. It will take a little time for world opinion’s lowest common denominator to reconfigure its personalization of anti-Americanism around the figure of Barack Obama, which I suppose means that it will be heavily blended with some ancient old-world prejudices about our new President’s race. We’ve already seen some of this: a pro-government Iranian news agency called Obama a “house slave,” and the terrorist Ayman Zawahiri called Obama and other African-Americans who have served in our government “house negroes.”
Let me tell you a dirty secret about world public opinion. Try to research trends in the growth of global anti-Americanism, and you’ll notice something curious: perhaps because of the pollsters’ own assumptions or biases, most of the data only begin with the Iraq War. But in those relatively rare cases in which the assembled data go back to 2001, you can see that anti-Americanism really took off in Europe in 2001, before the Iraq War.
The conclusion is almost too ugly to contemplate: that European anti-Americanism became fashionable because of 9/11 and the events immediately thereafter, possibly to include the U.S. attack on the Taliban shortly thereafter. In Britain, Turkey, and Pakistan, for example, views of the U.S. declined more in the year after 9/11 than in any year since. Indeed, while it’s a popular myth that “the world rallied to our side” after 9/11, aside from a few politicians and editorialists, the evidence is the opposite: anti-Americanism rose dramatically after 9/11. In the Muslim world, a majority believed that the 9/11 attacks were “not carried out by Arabs” (so who then?). In Europe, a majority believed that the attacks were, as the expression goes, a case of the chickens coming home to roost. Anyone who was reading the opinion pages of The Guardian in those days will remember it all well enough. It is also true that anti-Americanism continued to rise through most of the Iraq War, though without acceleration, and didn’t begin to decline (modestly) until 2007, a year when more U.S. troops were sent to Iraq, but when America began to win the war. Overall, this doesn’t suggest that anti-Americanism is a function of America’s humbleness so much as the natural human tendencies toward envy, toward blaming victims, and toward taking the side of those perceived to be victors. It also suggests that Obama will eventually have to choose between the approval of those abroad who viscerally resent us and the approval of American voters. Place your bets.
I, for one, resolve to take perverse pleasure from documenting the end of the liberal illusion that Obama can make us loved again, and the greater illusion that it really matters.
I still want to know when this mythical age of them liking and respecting us happened…? Maybe for a few years immediately after WWII but not much into the 1950s.
Anyway, has everyone forgotten what the mood was like in the 1980s and 1970s?
This idea, dominant in Western higher education, of the United States as the latest example of evil Western colonialism did not start (by far!!) in the 2000s.
In fact, I remember marveling in the late 1990s —- how successfully Eurocentric intellectualism deflected blame/criticism/recognition of the ills of colonialism directly onto the United States and away from themselves in their coverage of their own colonialism. —
“Whats the point in crying over spilled milk of the colonial past when you have a contemporary monster staring you in the face? At least we’ve learned from our past misdeeds…”
“European anti-Americanism became fashionable because of 9/11 and the events immediately thereafter”
No need to create more myths here, my friend. It was when Bush started guzzling the neocon Kool-Aid right after 9/11 that much of the world became disenchanted with the US. All that cowboy speechifying about American exceptionalism and you’re either with-us-or-against-us is what did it, not schadenfreude over the terror attacks in New York and Washington.
But what really gave America’s image such a bad rep in Europe was befuddlement over how we could have elected such a maroon in 2000.
Well, if he was even elected at all.
Yeah, and you don’t think Georg Haider, Jacques Pascua, or Jacques Chirac reflect badly on Europe? Or should, anyway?
As far as your myth-making charge, I’ve shown you some data. Now pierce that echo chamber you live in and show me some data to prove your point.
“Yeah, and you don’t think Georg Haider, Jacques Pascua, or Jacques Chirac reflects badly on Europe? Or should, anyway?”
No one cares about Austria or France. They’re geopolitically irrelevant.
“As far as your myth-making charge, I’ve shown you some data. Now pierce that echo chamber you live in and show me some data to prove your point.”
Uh, I live in the real world, which is to say outside the US, and have done since 1994.
The first thing the U.S. needs to do is stop bending over for Israel all the time. That’s probably our most damaging association in the eyes of the rest of the world. The neocons, who are hardcore Zionists, are the ones who dragged us into Iraq after all.
Of course, that’s hardly going to happen when the current Chief-of-Staff in the White House served with the IDF during the Gulf War, and has a father who was a member of the militant Zionist Irgun.
Gee, I wonder who’s working for whom?
I see someone has an obsession. It’s off topic to this thread.
BTW, I noticed Netanyahu bleating on yesterday about the “double threat” of Iran, both near and far.
If Obama keeps going along with these right-wing nuts in the new Israeli government (he was already being a good puppet during Gaza last month), it will be much sooner than two years before the world hates us again.
“I see someone has an obsession. It’s off topic to this thread.”
Quite the opposite.
It’s just such kind of disingenuous statements that make the world hate us so much.
Mel Gibson? Is that you?
Predictable, ergo quite boring.
“I, for one, resolve to take perverse pleasure from documenting the end of the liberal illusion that Obama can make us loved again, and the greater illusion that it really matters. “
While the much of the world watched and celebrated the election and inauguration, I don’t think anyone liberal, conservative, or in between expects the honeymoon to last long. If you have links to a number of well-known, influential liberal voices claining otherwise, I’d love to see them.
It doesn’t get any more predictable than this. Still no evidence to support your point, I see.
Still no evidence that you are aware of a massive intellectual blindspot in your blog: On the one hand you are passionate about speaking out against gulags and concentration camps in North Korea; on the other hand, when someone points out that the US spends billions a year and massive political capital to prop up a brutal apartheid regime in Palestine, your only response is to play the anti-Semitism card.
Not only boring, but rather embarrassing as well. How is anyone supposed to take your blog seriously with that kind of approach?
You’re certifiable. Are you seriously comparing the Palestinian territories to North Korean gulags?
You are arguing with someone who tried to provoke his North Korean guide and seemed genuinely surprised by the predictably angry response.
I’ll check back for those links tomorrow.
“Are you seriously comparing the Palestinian territories to North Korean gulags?”
Dude, IDF just massacred over a thousand innocent Palestinians just a month ago, the majority of them women and children. As for the West Bank, did you not see the 60 Minutes episode from two weeks ago in which the word “apartheid” was used? I am not holding a fringe view here.
As for America’s image in Europe after Bush took over, here’s a link:
http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol8_1/David%20and%20Ramel.htm
The third paragraph below certainly seems to echo my statements above:
“The Republican Party’s platform in the 2000 presidential elections set the administration’s tone on this issue. It called for a dramatic expansion of NATO not only in Eastern Europe (with the Baltic States, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania) but also, and most significantly, in the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The purpose is to develop closer cooperation within NATO in dealing with geopolitical problems from the Middle East to Eurasia. The program therefore takes a broad and rather fuzzy view of Europe.
“It would be premature at this stage to say that the US administration has had a fundamental change of heart and shed its long-ingrained reflexes in dealing with Russia.
“When it comes to the future of Europe, Americans and Europeans differ on key issues. The differences seem to point toward three fundamental values which underpin the Bush administration’s image of Europe. The first is unilateralism, of which the missile shield is a particularly telling example. The American position flies in the face of the European approach, which is based on ABM talks and multilateralism. An opposition is taking shape here between the leading European capitals, which want to deal with the matter by judicial means, and the Americans, who want to push ahead and create a fait accompli.”
Here you go, Sonagi:
CNN: “Obama poised to rebrand America, experts say”
ABC News: “Could an Obama Win Restore America’s Global Image? Obama Candidacy Helps Revive America’s Sagging Image Abroad”
Marian Kennedy, Democrats Abroad: “Obama Will Restore America’s Image Abroad”
Glenn Greenwald: “The Obama Administration, Guantánamo, and Restoring America’s Standing”
American Chronicle: “A Barack Obama Presidency Will Restore America’s Prestige”
Interview with Former FM Hans-Dietrich Genscher: “Obama Could Restore trust”
What those articles have in common is that, save one, is that they’re the views of Americans. Not coincidentally, they’re all from before the election, long before the current expectation-lowering phase. Hope and change are so last year.
“You are arguing with someone who tried to provoke his North Korean guide and seemed genuinely surprised by the predictably angry response.”
Wrong and wrong.
Have you even been to North Korea? You spend countless hours talking with your guides about all sorts of stuff, including politics. It’s perfectly normal and acceptable. My guide was far more well-mannered and polite towards me than the operator of this blog, in fact.
Um, no, the IDF killed some unknown number of Hamas’s human shields who had the misfortune of living or going to school at rocket launching sites. I suppose you think the Israelis are uniquely obligated to just absorb that. And if you’re comparing that to North Korea starving 2 million people to death and killing around half a million more in concentration camps, you, sir, are a moral retard.
But for the moment, you’re also a useful illustration of my point. You exemplify exactly that kind of attitude that indicts free societies for the offense of declining national suicide or subjugation by terrorists. You represent, in other words, precisely that kind of world opinion that America could never please, and should never seek to.
I’ll go out on a long limb and guess you agreed more often than not.
“Um, no, the IDF killed some unknown number of Hamas’s human shields who had the misfortune of living or going to school at rocket launching sites.”
Hilarious. Obviously you have drunk the Kool-Aid, too.
If Israel wants to continue its policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide (which has gone on for just about as along as DPRK has been in existence), at least the US doesn’t need to provide the military hardware and US taxpayer money to do so.
“You spend countless hours talking with your guides about all sorts of stuff, including politics. It’s perfectly normal and acceptable.”
Free speech in North Korea of all places? Who’d a thunk?
Gulp.
Gee, maybe it the US supplied free F-16s, Apaches and one-ton bunker busters to Hamas, we’d actually have an equal fight.
And you’re probably at least half serious, although your justification of Hamas using Palestinian women and kids belies the sincerity of any compassion you claim to have for them. No sane, non-suicidal change in U.S. policies by any electable American president would make you stop hating America, which is the very point you’ve unwittingly helped me prove. You’re not really anti-war, you’re just on the other side.
RE: the links
I browsed them and most communicated the no-brainer message that Obama will be a change from Bush. CNN and ABC New cautiously conditioned their expectations of an improved world image with plenty of ifs.
Funny thing is, I’m not seeing much of a change. Are you? I think it speaks well of Obama that campaign rhetoric notwithstanding, at least so far, he’s serious and responsible enough not to simply loose terrorists on the world, or (God forbid) on a legal system that’s ill-adapted for people captured in battlefield conditions or using top secret evidence.
“And you’re probably at least half serious, although your justification of Hamas using Palestinian women and kids belies the sincerity of any compassion you claim to have for them. No sane, non-suicidal change in U.S. policies by any electable American president would make you stop hating America, which is the very point you’ve unwittingly helped me prove.”
The first thing that struck me about your site is how much your inflated bellicosity is a mirror image of KCNA. Your predisposition towards trafficking in brain-dead cliches as in the above indicates to me that long-term exposure to NK propaganda and unrequited obsession over such a dark place has done you lasting psychic harm.
My diagnosis: A dialectical variation on Stockholm syndrome, in which you have become the inverse manifestation of very thing you hate.
Good luck with that, and Godspeed.
I really like your blog, North Korea is a fascinating subject and your analysis is quite illuminating (I’m a particular fan of the google earth stuff). However without wanting to get into a big long argument that nobody wins, I feel that unfortunately the kind of jingoism displayed above clouds your vision a little. I know obviously you’ll strongly disagree, and of course there are six billion different truths out there, but still, in my opinion, perhaps one should keep one’s own nationalism in check if one intends to fully critique a situation such as that in North Korea (a form of nationalism taken to a horrifying conclusion).
You’re nothing if not consistent Joshua. I really enjoy your NK posts, it’s just unfortunate that I have to wade through so many liberal-hating, euro-bashing posits to get to them.
This latest argument is ironic, because its precisely the sentiment expressed in it that leads so many people dislike Americans.
Let me first just dispel one of the more glaring and arrogant assumptions you’ve made:
I can’t speak for the Taliban, but Western Europeans, Canadians (all the countries in your graph, in fact) as well as Antipodeans don’t “envy” America at all, nor are they desirous of living there. Shocking, I know.
As for this:
Riiight. So people hate America because they envy it and because it got attacked and because it attacked the Taliban? You seriously believe this?
For starters, anti-americanism realy kicked off in 2000, as your graph clearly shows, the year George Bush was sworn in. Is it really so suprising that the international community would respond unfavorably to a president that held them in open contempt? It gathered pace after 2001 because of his Doctrine; the broader “War on Terror”, allegations of an “axis of evil”, and, in particular, the doctrine of preemptive war. The Iraq War kicked things along nicely.
Oh, and anti-Americanism will start to deline now Obama is president. And yes, it matters.
I can’t speak for the Taliban, but Western Europeans, Canadians (all the countries in your graph, in fact) as well as Antipodeans don’t “envy†America at all, nor are they desirous of living there. Shocking, I know.
No kidding. As a Canadian, I’ve never met another Canadian who really wanted to live in America. The same goes for Europeans. None of them certainly envy anything about America. What exactly is it that we’re supposed to envy?
I noticed the surge in anti-Americanism about a decade ago. I don’t really like the rift that has developed, but it’s more or less consistent with America’s image as overly conservative, backwards and out of touch with the rest of the world. Electing George Bush twice, invading Iraq (imagine if Canada invaded, say, Turkmenistan without a good reason) and landing Sarah Palin on the national stage are all part of that.
I do agree, however, that America’s image doesn’t matter too much for Americans, save perhaps those that travel abroad.
As a former “liberal” myself, I can attest to some of the feelings expressed above – however, the “passion” to speak on behalf of precisely those who do not have the freedom to express themselves exists not in “liberals” but in people like Joshua, and those soldiers who, when faced with stark reality of enslaved people, had the guts to do something about it.
I got tired of harboring “inconvenient truths” and pontificating to no avail. I suggest that, with Joshua helping us, we dig deeper, look beyond the surface realities to find the truth and move to action.
I just viewed yet another deniable “Truth of the Border Area” and agree that “one can only hope that the people who appear in the film weren’t put in danger by its broadcast in Japan, which is full of North Korean agents.”
In many ways, this is dangerous work, Joshua – thank you for your courage, committment and willpower to persevere – when I read your posts, satire and all, I don’t feel depressed anymore – on the contrary, I feel encouraged that things will get better soon…keep up the good work and don’t hold back one iota.
Correction! obviously, “deniable” was meant to be “undeniable” in above comment – sorry, am in a hurry!
I would tend to guess the tendency for envy was more of a previous generational thing of the post-WWII period than it is today – at least on the surface. Call it the De Gaulle Syndrome – hating the US and wanting to oppose it as some type of knee jerk reaction to the fall of their own empires and global power.
And as I said in my other comment in this thread, also during this time Euro-centric academia and intellectualism created the dominate vogue of post-colonial studies that marvelously shifted the bulk of the resentment and corresponding blame for their own colonial past onto the United States. That was beautiful. I mean, really. In a Machiavellian way, that was absolutely beautiful….I have to tip my hat to them……it worked like a magic charm….
….and that, more than envy, is one key reason, if not the key reason, why the Europeans and Euro-centrically educated around the world (including in the United States) hate us.
For a very, very long time, Europeans were raised with pride in the grandeur of their empires, carrying the torch of enlightenment around the world, until they lost the ability to do so through two massive internal bloodlettings. Then, suddenly, empire was a dirty word, something that had to be fought, and the best target of all was not any one of their own empire builders but the current Rome – the USA, right?
(I guess it was just coincidence it was this “new Rome” (the one they had to fight against – intellectually speaking – for the rest of the 20th century and continuing today) whom they had had no choice but let humiliatingly save them from their totalitarian members in WWII. No. Surely there was no sense of envy mixed in, right?).
Coupled with this, of course, and again best exemplified by France under De Gaulle, was the Cold War fact they could rest assured under the close military alliance with the United States that America would not sit out the crucial first years of any third Euro-centric world war like it had WWI and WWII. After the second one, American society was convinced the threat of totalitarianism gaining the whole resources of Europe was too great for us to be out of the game when the first shot was fired, so we tied ourselves to European national security, even as they hated us and rallied the world to hate us. (Other peoples in the world had their own reasons to hate us, like in the Middle East, but what was the thread that linked many of these groups together? Well, one was communist theory — but post-colonialism was strong (and overlapping) as well and has proven the more durable theory to go with).
It was Machiavellian brilliance again when De Gaulle kicked NATO troops out of France. (I knew a librarian at my liberal college who nonetheless detested France so much she told me I should pick a different place to study abroad in, because she had been in France with her military family in that period, and she vividly remembered the manner in which the French kicked the bastard Americans out). —- France is saved from Nazi rule but just a few years later pisses on the GIs as it arrogantly tells them to get the hell out — but beautifully comforted by the fact that – there was no way in hell the Soviet Union or any of the Soviet-bloc would ever go to war with France without the US joining it. If there is a textbook definition of having your cake and eating it too – De Gaulle’s France was it…
And it has been the French way ever sense.
They love to detest American power – except for the times in which they want to use it. They hate American capitalism – except when they want to use it.
The United Nations is the primary symbol of this (and its law enforcement arm – NATO).
Bosnia-Kosovo coupled with Afghanistan is perhaps the best example: The first a Euro-centric affair where America didn’t feel any significant national interest. But, the Euros wouldn’t band together and put their own blood and money into trying to solve the matter militarily. Not unless it was an American-led NATO affair. (And militarily is the only way it would be solved). And America finally agreed.
But, later when the United States finally reaped the reward of allowing Afghanistan to openly host large terrorist training camps for years, how quick were our European allies to pump in large number of troops to help us out? How about now that their friend and American savior Obama is in the White House?
It will be interesting to see. If the US is successful in Afghanistan, which is a big if, what are the chances the next generation of European intellectuals will cite it and Bosnia-Kosovo, along with Iraq, as further examples of American neo-colonialism in the 21st century?
Lastly, I also love the idea that Bush’s election in 2000 is the real reason they hate us. Europeans new that much about Bush? Really? They knew he hated them and that’s why they hated him? Really?
No. The Europeans reacted — to the idea of Bush — just like the Euro-centric, Euro-educated American press did – just like they did Reagan and Nixon and nearly every conservative post-WWII American leader. —- And the foundation for such hate was nothing Bush did — it was the foundation laid by Eurpean-dominated intellectualism that defined the United States as the new, terrible Roman Empire. The two driving forces in post-WWII Western intellectualism have been communism/socialism and post-colonial theory (which can overlap). This is the thought that has been pumped into the brains of each new generation for a few decades in universities around the world, including the US, and that is a key reason they hate us.
(I’d say envy is a part of it. It certainly was when these theories really began to solidify their hold on societies, but by this time, it is so ingrained, and the dreams of renewed empire so long crushed, they don’t recognize it).
And what about Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians Usinkorea? Neither of these countries have any reason to “envy” the US in any sense of the word. They weren’t humiliatingly “saved” by the US in ww2, they don’t have superceded empires, and they don’t covet American lifestyles. (Also, England wasn’t “saved” by the US in WW2 – in fact, you could argue that they did more to defeat Germany than America did, since they were fighting the nazis from the very beggining)
Yet the downward trend in feelings towards the US in Australia, England, Canada and New Zealand mirrors that of other European states. Why?
Another thing I think you’ve overlooked in your haste to paint the picture of hateful euro intellectual socialist post-colonials – in 2000, in France Canada Germany Britain and the Antipodes; most – in fact, for more than 60% in all those countries (over 80% in Britain and Australia) – held favorable opinions of the US.
That’s alot of friendly people. I agree that there are some elements that will dislike the US for any reason they can think of (see my letters in response to an anti-american american here: http://www.ghosttreemedia.com/?p=99) but I think you’ll find America’s image will bounce back along with its new president, and I think you’ll find most people actually like American people. And for any of the vitroil coming out of europe there is just as much flying back across the pond the other way.
usinkorea, Joshua’s spam trap seems to have swallowed my post. Let me summarize it: your theory is only good for for continetal european countries. How do you explain the fact that sentiment towards the US in Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand has followed the same course as France, Germany etc?
Are you sure they’d tell you if they did? By the way.
Puhlease. You don’t have to wade through anything. Nearly everything here is about Korea, and if you don’t want to read the rest of what I post and don’t enjoy an argument now and then, then just don’t read it. Are you really so offended by the existence of opinions you don’t agree with that you can’t just skip past them?
And yet the converse has never occurred to you? Let me give you an illustration of something you’ll never see happen: Cletus, Bubba, and Jimbo are sittin’ on the tailgate of the pickup talking, and decide to orchestrate a letter writing and editorial campaign to Holland against the barbaric Dutch practices of legal hash smoking, euthanasia, gay marriage, and soccer. The barbarity! We must bring the Dutch into alignment with Global Righteousness(tm)! Enlightened world opinion insists that America — and pretty much America alone — must sua sponte conform itself to its own values, without an instant’s consideration of either the converse or the mutual tolerance of differences. Yet when Euro-Canadian liberalism clashes with, say, Islamic conservatism, the British go so far as to recognize a legal double standard so as to shrink from accusations of cultural imperialism, and Canada sics the power of the state on free speech.
Point of order on the graph: I just noticed that it does not have a 2001 data point, so one can’t separate the 2000 and 2001 trends. Would genuinely love to see some detailed on long term data on this — starting in the Clinton years, please — if anyone can find it.
My regards to your militant alter-ego Van Midd, by the way.
“And what about Australians and New Zealanders and Canadians Usinkorea? ….Yet the downward trend in feelings towards the US in Australia, England, Canada and New Zealand mirrors that of other European states. Why?”
Reread my comment….I believe I put enough in it to answer that question.
“in 2000, in France Canada Germany Britain and the Antipodes; most – in fact, for more than 60% in all those countries (over 80% in Britain and Australia) – held favorable opinions of the US.”
Such polls don’t mean much in themselves. My memory of the relations between American and other Western societies isn’t based on snap polls of a few thousand people designed, so the statisticians say, to accurately tell me what the whole of an entire population thinks or feels.
“but I think you’ll find America’s image will bounce back along with its new president, and I think you’ll find most people actually like American people.”
The attitude of people in the Western democracies will not fundamentally change. Any bounce Obama’s election gives will be fleeting, shallow, and unimportant.
The people will still think and feel based on their perceptions of their national interests and their world view — a world view that was decades (if not more) in the making, as I argued in my last comment.
The more the United States shares their world view in its policies, the more favorable they will be, but even then, they will distance themselves from the United States because their sense of balance-of-power doctrine is so ingrained.
I think One Free Korea’s paragraph in his last comment that includes the sentence “Enlightened world opinion insists that America — and pretty much America alone — must sua sponte conform itself to its own values,” falls into this area. Why do the societies led more exclusively by Euro-centric intellectualism bend over backwards to placate the sensibilities of Muslim societies but love like hell to bash American society? — It’s tide in key ways to the old balance-of-power thinking that has been a key element in Euro-centric thought for a couple of centuries.
Also, there are certain key items in which the US will never side enough with the Europeans on to win favor with them — like America’s “one-sided pro-Israel policy”…
“And for any of the vitroil coming out of europe there is just as much flying back across the pond the other way.”
Very true.
Americans, due to a wide variety of circumstances, some of which are the amount of relative power and wealth the nation has and the sense of responsibility, view its national interests differently than do the lesser but important powers of the other global democracies.
And as long as this remains true — and it will until America collapses as a global power — the societies will often butt heads when it comes to global security and economic matters.
Hans Blix once said in the run up to Iraq War II that — he feared global warming much more than he did the potential use of any WMDs by Iraq.
I guess if I were Swedish, I would have too…..
On the polls and balance of power thought and such:
In the 1990s, during the era of President Clinton and the shake out into a Post-Cold War reality — Euro-centric intellectualism, which includes Australia and New Zealand, as far as I can tell, and reaches into the United States — talked a lot in the press about the need for a post-Cold War growth toward a “multi-polar” world system — as opposed to the bi-polar Cold War divide or the “unipolar” environment of the 1990s.
In short, there was a lot of earnest talk among intellectuals, that made its way into the public view of regular people who pay attention, and through things like pop culture, about how terribly it was to be in a “unipolar” world order —- with – of course – that “unipole” being — The United States.
Shared cultural aspects, shared democracy, shared economic models, shared ideas on free trade, —- all those things linking Western Europe (and places like Australia) with the United States — be damned!!
We need more poles!!!
And feeling significant anxiety — even once the threat of global nuclear holocaust came to an end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Cold war —- because the United States stood alone as the only “superpower” —– is not exactly loving the United States, now is it?
Casting your eyes to China, which happened a lot in the 1990s, hoping it will rise and “balance things out” — despite the differences between China and Western democracies — isn’t exactly loving the United States is it?
Kicking into gear the dragging desire to unify the power of Western Europe (the EU) to create an alternative pole – for the sake of having an alternative pole – isn’t exactly the heart-felt desire of a good friend is it?
Funny thing is, I’m not seeing much of a change. Are you?
He’s been in office three whole weeks, and Americans are still getting pink-slipped and foreclosed on. What’s he waiting for?
During his first few days in office, Obama reversed Reagan’s ban on funding to organizations that provide any assistance with abortion, including giving information. I believe he has also lifted or will lift restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and eliminated federal funding of ineffective abstinence-only sex ed programs. Can’t wait till Duncan gets his hands on NCLB.
America is a global empire that, more often than not, fails to practice what it preaches to others (American exceptionalism in a nutshell).
It’s hard to see why others wouldn’t resent such self-serving, shallow hubris. Is it really so complicated?
I also don’t expect Obama to significantly alter this fundamental paradigm, since U.S. foreign policy is controlled by powerful interests that often supersede whomever happens to occupy the White House. The US defense budget, for example, exceeds the entire GDP of South Korea (about a trillion dollars), if you include the costs of the Iraq War. The US military industrial complex, in other words, is itself roughly the tenth largest economy in the world. Money talks, BS walks, etc., etc.
I’m quite certain that most European eggheads are also well aware of all of this. Oh, and they’re probably not too fond of the fact that we single-handedly destroyed the global economy.
Sorry world!
So, that is what hope for change to a post-partisan American looks like? Flipping conservative pet ideas back to liberal ones…
…change to post-partisanship means within the first three weeks — turning back on tax payer money for foreign abortions in Africa, Mexico, India and the like so would-be mothers can be more free to get rid of individually-unwarranted children on the cheap (and free would-be children from life) — using bits of individually-unwanted life for scientific research — directly taking over the manipulation of the Census — creating the most expensive, pork-filled spending bill in American history with almost zero input from the other party — and more —– This is what post-partisan leadership is supposed to look like? Who knew?
It looks to me like Obama and the liberals are exercising the mandate the voters gave them to push through a long and deeply held liberal wish list…….
I don’t really mind it. But it doesn’t seem like much of a change to me….
I hate most of the policy items, but the voters didn’t just vote Obama in over a moderate-liberal Republican — they gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress to go along with the White House. You get what you vote for — even if you voted for “hope and change” to a “post-partisan” political environment.
And I’m not disappointed in the lie itself — because I didn’t believe it to begin with….
Liberals aren’t the only folks who want to keep abortion safe and legal and use stem cells from discarded embryos to develop new medical treatments. Public polls consistently show that a majority of Americans support these positions. Americans want term restrictions on abortion, but they do not want to see it outlawed. We overwhelmingly favor embryonic stem cell research regardless of how the question is worded by pollsters.
usinkorea,
I don’t even know what euro-centric intellectualism is. It sounds like conservative code for smart lefties. To be honest, I think most antipathy between America and the rest of west is the same antipathy between domestic political parties, like the dems and the Republicans, ie, the left/right divide. The fact is, America and Americans are more conservative than Europenas and Antipodeans, so naturally they’re not going to see eye to eye on a great deal of matters, and like most people who stare across an ideological line, however narrow, may even tend to dislike one another.
The Bush presidency with all its chest-thumping cowboy rhetoric, arrogant browbeating of soveriegn democracies, was a lightning rod for this antipathy. I won’t even touch Iraq and the WMD rubbish, except to say, why aren’t any of the chickenhawks clamoring to invade North Korea now that it has nukes and the ability to land them in alaska?
And I still think you’re overstating Anti-americanism.
Who thinks China would be a good hegemon? There might be some fringe loonies, but seriously, at least here in Australia, China (or at least the CCP) is regarded, including in liberal circles with at best mild suspicion, at worst outright loathing.
Why do you expect unconditional support/homage in absolutely every respect as a precondition for friendship? Every nation – every nation – has ambitions towards advancing their power even in small degrees (and power has many facets, not just the hard stuff). As I’ve already said, the EU is more liberal than the US; they would prefer to be able to rely on themselves than forever be beholden to a state they rarely see eye to eye with (at least when the Nixons and Bushes are in power). This is not something to be poo-pooed or to be threatened by. Think about it this way: how would you feel if France was the sole world power and the French were endlessly belittling America for its petty ambitions and its reliance on them for military support?
The EU is also about trade power and the management of wealth. Are you really begrudging the Europeans for trying to improve their competitiveness? Or would you sooner the euros, know their place, to shut the f___ up, never veto anything put before them by the US in the UN, resign themselves to being cheese-eating surrender monkeys who suckle off uncle-sam’s teat?
Are you getting my point? As an Australian I can see both sides of the euro-US argument. I agree that Europeans can be arrogant and ungrateful (to a point – I don’t think they should have ww2 thrown in their faces whenever they offer an opinion contrary to the US) and I think part of the problem is the attitude on display here, which is partly reactive, but also quite provocative.
Van Midd ~ (PS, militant, Joshua? I would have said combative, personally 😉 )
As if. For one thing, I would like world opinion to be half as sophisticated as it often pretends to be: for example, 80% of Britons believe that from 1973 to 1998, America was a major supplier of Saddam Hussein’s weapons; and 73% believe the polygamy is legal in some U.S. states. Many Europeans believe America is more racist than Europe, but what European country would elect a black president or has as much racial diversity among its political leaders? Who has seen the stats on anti-semitism and Islamophobia in Europe these days?
I also expect the “allies” who are reliably there when they need us to awaken from their hedonistic parasitism and think seriously about their own security rather than living la vie en rose under Uncle Sam’s security blanket. I often doubt that that will happen without us pulling away the tit. South Korea is the perfect case in point: despite the utter parasitic dependence of its security and economy on America, South Koreans are far more anti-American than other nations in the region. South Korea contributed nothing in Iraq … but did contribute generously to the Taliban.
And what of those innocent lambs in Gitmo who are a cause celebre to Hoju’s
militantcombative sock puppet? We know that they’re just as happy to bomb nightclubs full of Australians, the London underground, or Spanish trains. Do Europeans really want those people loosed on the world, and how does giving terrorists the freedom to wantonly slaughter innocents advance the causes of human rights or civil liberties? What would Hoju, Sonagi, and (God forbid) Baeksu do with these people, or do to stop them from carrying out their plots? I don’t see Barack Obama rushing to free them, but as the polls tell us, Obama will eventually be damned by Europe regardless of what he does.Tell me, Hoju, can you name a single occasion since 1945 when anyone stopped a genocide or an aggressive tyrant or conducted a major humanitarian relief operation without America? Would the global economy rise and fall with America’s if America hadn’t propelled much of the world to prosperity? Is it good for the world you live in if America turns more hostile (like, say, me?), isolationist, or protectionist? That will be the result of facile anti-Americanism.
So part of the “problem” begins with America accepting some basic truths: that much anti-Americanism is a function of its cultural, economic, and military importance; and of the incurable realities of ignorance, stupidity, and irrationality. Just read pretty much anything King Baeksu has ever written.
And need I remind you, Sonagi, that we’re in this economic mess because of our government’s redistributionist intervention in the financial marketplace, forcing lenders to lend to people who couldn’t afford the payments?
What would Hoju, Sonagi, and (God forbid) Baeksu do with these people, or do to stop them from carrying out their plots? . . . And need I remind you, Sonagi, that we’re in this economic mess because of our government’s redistributionist intervention in the financial marketplace, forcing lenders to lend to people who couldn’t afford the payments?
Once again I implore you, Joshua, to quit lumping together everyone who ever criticized the Bush administration into one giant strawman named Liberal. Our financial troubles go much deeper and wider than zero-down payment, ARM loans.
It wasn’t my intention to lump, but simply to draw out answers from a diverse range of critics. You’re all capable of speaking for yourselves, and I’ve been as ferocious a critic of Bush as any of you — well, except Baeksu I suppose — albeit for different reasons. You always give an intelligent defense of your views, and so does Hoju (mostly) and Baeksu (almost never).
Even so, I don’t think you can offer any practical solution to a problem that can’t be imagined out of existence. There really are evil people in this world who, unless caged in remote places, would kill as many men, women, and kids as possible. We’re holding 245 of the very worst at Gitmo, and a lot of the people who are clamoring loudly for their release also happen to rank very high on the list of desireable targets. These unserious people, ironically, are also beneficiaries of the very security they’re bitching about. See what happens when we release them? And if you think the judicial system can handle them, clearly, you’ve never prosecuted a criminal case and dealt with the myriad of evidentiary rules, foundations, and exclusionary rules that make ordinary prosecution — a very difficult thing under any circumstance — a practical impossibility when you’re dealing with battlefield conditions, secret evidence, and the crossing of international borders.
“You always give an intelligent defense of your views, and so does Hoju (mostly) and Baeksu (almost never).”
That’s pretty funny. I guess calling me an “anti-Semitic, Juche-loving, crypto-commie un-American” is your idea of an intelligent defense?
“What would Hoju, Sonagi, and (God forbid) Baeksu do with these people, or do to stop them from carrying out their plots?”
You’ve already tried to rewrite history in this post, so I know this may be hard, but why don’t you look a bit more closely at US foreign policy in the Middle East since 1945 to see why blowback can be such a bitch.
Are you familiar with Operation Ajax, in which the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected president of Iran in 1953? No wonder they hate us, and giving weapons support to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War didn’t help either.
Are you familiar with the Operation Cyclone and the genesis of Al Qaeda, which sprang from the Soviet War in Afghanistan in the 1980s and our desire to use mujahedeen fighters as a check on Soviet expansion?
As for the financial crisis, it is conventional wisdom that it was Greenspan’s policy of low-interest rates after the dotcom crash that led to the credit bubble and subsequent implosion of the U.S. economy last year, not low-income subprime mortage holders (you are confusing symptom with the cause here, tsk tsk).
Restistribution of wealth? There are studies that during the Bush years, something like 70% or 80% of the wealth “created” during that time went to the top 1% of U.S. society.
Your Faux News talking points are going to fool anyone with half a brain around here.
I love how you keep insulting me, because when people start calling others names, that just means they’re usually wrong, and therefore I must be right!
Joshua, for starters, that example you linked to is a biased breakdown (the london centre for the study of anti-americanism anyone?) of a very badly constructed poll; it asks for true/false answers to specific (often very difficult and disingenious) questions. Take the one on weapons supplies to Saddam:
From 1973 to 1990 the United States sold Saddam more than a quarter of his weapons.
True
False
Here’s how the question is a clever one: “weapons” are broken down into individual arms, otherwise how did the total come to 43,000? So in effect, in this poll, a handgun is given the same weight as one WMD payroll.
The poll answer sheet says that the US supplied only 200 weapons, or 0.46%; what it doesn’t mantion is that that that 200 included payrolls of anthrax, VX nerve gas, West Nile fever germs and botulism, as well as germs similar to tuberculosis and pneumonia. Other bacteria sold included brucella melitensis, which damages major organs, and clostridium perfringens, which causes gas gangrene. The US even supplied technology to assist in Iraq’s missile-system programs. This is all in a US Senate report. And the US even supplid these weapons after 5000 Kurds were gassed to death.
They might have supplied fewer units of weapons, but they supplied the most dangerous stuff – the WMDs and the missile tech. The european public was aware of this, since their media reported on it at a time when the US administration was using WMDs as a pretext for invading Iraq; is it so surprising that they would get caught out on such a trick question?
The rest of the poll was cherry picked by the anti-american study group. It’s hardly surpriing that your average european would get some of this stuff wrong; I’d be very interested in seeing a similar poll of Americans regarding europeans and see how that panned out. I think you’d find there would be at least as many (prejudiced) mistakes.
As far as your argument about european islamophobia, I’m no expert on it, but it hardly jives with Usinkorea’s question,
Anyways, this is a tricky one, which is Australia is also wrestling with. I assume there are probably more muslims living in Oz and Europe as a percentage of the populations, and that this is a cause of friction. I could be wrong.
Uncle Sam does nothing unless it is in Uncle Sam’s interest. America doesn’t operate with the interests of its allies in mind, unless that interest co-aligns with its own. Every country is the same on this count. For the record, I agree with your comments on South Korea; I think there are many ingrates here, since I have a good grasp of Korea’s modern history and a good idea of anti-americanism in the ROK from direct experiences.
But for my own country I reject the idea that we’re hedonistic parasites. Need I remind you that we’ve been in every major war America has since ww2 (which we were involved in 2 years before America) including vietnam and iraq, and have operated as peace-keepers in places like East Timor and the Solomans. We pull our weight, in other words.
I’m not going to touch Gitmo; I’ve been there and have nothing else to say.
Let me just firstly say that I’m a big fan of the US, particularly in its role as victor of the Cold War. But your question is unfair; you might just as well switch it around; when has America stopped a genocide or an aggressive tyrant or conducted a major humanitarian relief operation without the help of her allies?
And when has American actively supported aggressive tyrants and been implicit in genocide as a result of proecticing its self-interests?
I’ll also point out that the US falls very low on the list of countries committed to giving governmental foreign aid:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_com_to_for_aid-economy-commitment-to-foreign-aid
Again, I believe in America, I’m pro-American, and I’m particularly thankful for the US on the Cold War and WW2, but I also understand that the US acts in its own self-interest, is motivated by Realpolitik, and that helping other countries is incidental to this main goal.
Hoju,
I’ll start with a summation:
1. The humanities at university have been dominated by European theorists and thought for a few decades – especially the French thinkers – and also intellectuals coming out of former Western European colonies. It is on the liberal/left side and does reach into the intellectual community in the United States, but it does not have the same adherence among the masses in the US as it seems to elsewhere.
2. The line about why not invade North Korea first is tired and to me shows a lack of interest in really discussing things.
3. In the 1990s, “China Rising” studies were in vogue and made their way into mainstream news and so on. And it was part of the “need for a multipolar world order” that was also much talked about.
4. “Why do you expect unconditional support/homage in absolutely every respect as a precondition for friendship?”
Whenever I come close to saying that, that might be a point. — That is a far cry from seriously talking a lot about the need to band together to offer the world a counter-pole to the US hegemon….
…as in “be beholden to a state they rarely see eye to eye with” — and the “what if” question about France as sole superpower pretty much says it all…
If they have good reason to seek to combine efforts to oppose cowboy America, fine. Just don’t pretend they aren’t seriously thinking about ways to do so — or more correctly – creating the intellectual thought that preaches such a need — and that that thought is also a method to bread and perpetuate such a need — and as I said before, De Gaulle clearly defined such a need way back in his WWII memoirs — so it is hard for me to pretend it is about Bush.
And that is the core problem I’ve been talking about – which you are now avoiding – at least somewhat:
“The EU is also about trade power and the management of wealth. Are you really begrudging the Europeans for trying to improve their competitiveness?”
It makes perfect sense for the nations of the EU to figure out ways to better the lot of their nation – and the masses in it — it is what citizens should expect.
But — why the need to include with this whole schools of thought designed to teach their masses, especially the college educated ones, that the US is a big bully behemoth – and that having any behemoth at all – that “lone superpower” – is in itself highly dangerous and objectionable?
Why not recognize that that the big bully behemoth shares not just much in the way of culture with the EU nations but also very similar political and geopolitical ideas and ideals?
De Gaulle argued that, if France was ever going to live down the defeat in WWII and more importantly regain as much of its former prominence in the world order — it had to find ways to disagree with the United States. He put this idea into direction action before France was even close to liberation by being a thorn in the side of the Allies throughout the war. Then, afterward, he continued the path by often seeking to be the champion of the third world nations that were not already dedicated to the Soviet Union as their champion.
To me, that set a major trend in how European and Euro-centric intellectuals has dealt with the US ever sense.
For myself, I don’t give two craps about France “owing” the US something for WWII. That was then, this is now.
I do care about the discourses in the intellectual community, that tend to bleed over into pop culture, that seem to follow De Gaulle’s lead – creating an antipathy toward the United States that has real world consequences. — For example, in more effectively dealing with global terrorism founded on Islamic radicalism. Or, for that matter, doing something about Darfur or putting into place more effective measures on things like Iran’s nuclear program.
Sonagi
“Our financial troubles go much deeper and wider than zero-down payment, ARM loans.”
Economics is my weak point, but really?
Economic downturns come and go — but it seems to me what has made this one special – and by special meaning much worse than run-of-the-mill downturns – has been the collapse in the housing bubble and its crippling of banks — with both stemming much more from Democrat and liberal pet ideas than anything else.
During the Enron days, it seemed to be more about corporate greed and cooking the books (and thus avoiding public and governmental oversight) – which tend to be Republican and conservative areas —- but the current crisis seems significantly driven by the Housing and Banking collapse and tied to Congressional Democrat ideas….
Lastly on what One Free Korea was saying…one thing I’ve said in comments the last few years and on my blog is — I don’t have solid answers for it, but I wish Bush and Congress had risen to the challenge of 9/11 and led an effort – a UN and multinational effort to — work on redefining guidelines and definitions and laws to deal with global terrorism that functions in a high tech, high transportation, high mobility, high finance 21st century world.
The old rules — and especially the old sensibilities – no longer function effectively.
But, we have failed to address this reality.
Instead, people pretend the Geneva Conventions say things they never did before and pretend the need for a new round of conventions doesn’t exist.
And much of the stumbling block is exactly this ingrained, decades old habit of working against the United States simply because of the amount of power it has (and the relative weakness of other major powers (former super-colonial powers all)….
“Liberals aren’t the only folks who want to keep abortion safe and legal and use stem cells from discarded embryos to develop new medical treatments. Public polls consistently show that a majority of Americans support these positions.”
I believe you side-stepped the point at hand.
More Americans are pro-Choice (for abortions being legal), but not an overwhelming or significant majority.
But, a significant majority are not in favor of tax payer funds going for abortions – at home or abroad — which was the point at hand.
On “significant majorities” — to me — 57%-43% is not a significant national majority. To me, that shows the people roughly divided about even but leaning more one way.
62%-38% is a significant majority to me. The same with – say – 57% to 33% with 10% voting for some other option(s).
So, if we look at this gallop poll — http://www.gallup.com/poll/114091/Americans-Approve-Obama-Actions-Date.aspx
to me — the fact that only 44% of Americans approve of Obama’s announcement to close Gitmo isn’t significant. I’m glad to see more Americans leaning my way on it, but to me, this says we’re divided about even. I’m not going to point to the 56% leaning my way and say “Obama is a dirty bastard going against the will of the American people!!” or that “most Americans don’t want Gitmo closed” or some such…
However, 65% against his move to use federal dollars to fund abortion and abortion-related activity abroad does say something strong.
I believe you side-stepped the point at hand.
More Americans are pro-Choice (for abortions being legal), but not an overwhelming or significant majority.
But, a significant majority are not in favor of tax payer funds going for abortions – at home or abroad — which was the point at hand.
I believe you are misinformed about the Reagan-era ban. It wasn’t limited to direct government funding of abortions. The ban extended to giving money to organizations that simply gave out information about abortion as an option.
You always give an intelligent defense of your views,
Always? The humble little elementary school teacher from Podunk is flattered, Counselor. 🙂 BTW, when you extended to me an invitation to dinner last week, you didn’t tell me about the impressive guest list of NK experts. Thank goodness I didn’t embarrass myself by attending.