Anti-Americanism and the American World Order

2. Two Theories on Anti-Americanism

chapter two Two Theories on Anti-Americanism Introduction If shelves in university bookstores count as reliable indicators of the fundamental political questions faced by a society, the message they convey in the early years of the twenty-first century is clear: the position of the United States in the world has emerged as the central issue for international relations scholars. Title after title promises to define, explain, promote, or oppose a new phase in the history of international relations in which the United States is the hegemon, the new imperial power, the guarantor of stability, or simply the indispensable nation (Bacevich, 2002; Ferguson, 2003; Johnson, 2004; Mann, 2003; Odom and Dujarric , 2004). Gone are the days when Richard Rosecrance (1976, 11) could write, “Once so dominant in the international arena, America has become an ordinary country in foreign relations.” Also distant are the intellectual reflections that in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War envisaged a new political era, in which international law, collective security, and the United Nations would define the fabric of the international community, as was the case in the doctrine of the new international order most fervently advocated by President George H. W. Bush.15 Few commentators, if any, dispute the primacy of the United States in all the dimensions that define the power status of a country: military, economic, political , and ideological. Even the doomsayers predicting a rapid collapse of America ’s dominant position in the international state system concur that the United States towers over the world with its military might, its economic wealth, its political influence, and its ideological appeal (see for example Kupchan, 2002; Todd, 2003). The nature of the American world order, though, is the subject of much controversy. Opinions and conjectures clash over the stability of this order, the way it operates , and the extent to which it commands the allegiance of the people in “subordinate ” countries. The essays in John Ikenberry’s (2002) volume on the balance of power in theory and practice in the era of the Pax Americana illustrate how erudite scholars struggle to make sense of the American world order. What ensures Two Theories on Anti-Americanism 33 the stability of the international system in one point of view is the factor that, in another perspective, will bring the American era to an end; and what diffuses the sense of insecurity entailed in unbalanced power also makes America an existential threat, challenging the institutional identities and the cultural mores of weaker countries. America, as its sublime poet Walt Whitman said of himself, is large and contains multiple dimensions that might contradict each other.16 Popular anti-Americanism is similar; it is a protean entity that takes different forms and has different contents at different historical times in different countries . The anti-American attitude of a Marxist professor in a Western European institution of higher education is not directly comparable with the anti-American attitude of an unemployed worker in a developing country, nor is it comparable to the anti-American attitude of an Islamic extremist who commits terrorist acts against American people. Not only are the reasons behind a negative assessment of the United States likely to vary in these three cases, but they are also likely to vary in terms of levels and intensity of opposition. When opposition to American values, symbols, and practices becomes politically salient within countries that are friends or allies of the United States and share its normative values, democratic institutions, economic practices, and individualistic lifestyle, anti-Americanism, then, can be seen as an expression of what Sigmund Freud would call the “narcissism of small differences.” It may consist of the construction of minor differences between people that are otherwise alike into the basis for feelings of strangeness and hostility.17 A separate situation exists when opposition to the United States emerges from cultural, religious, economic , or political divides. These are the allegedly “major differences” that set America’s identity apart from that of other nations. Most of the debate about the perception of the United States in foreign lands takes place under the subtext of one pointed question: “Why do they hate us?” Despite the centrality of that question in the current political debates, however, no simple answers can be found. Instead, any attempt at an answer should address all three elements of that question: Who are “they”? What beliefs or behaviors are subsumed into the emotion of hatred? What exactly about “us,”—America and...