Saturday, September 13, 2003
Rising anti-Americanism? Not really.
Fouad Ajami, professor at SAIS, writes in Foreign Policy about the falseness of rising anti-Americanism and argues that anti-Americanism was in fact a well-entrenched feature well before Sept 11th. I dont necessarily agree with a lot of what Ajami says, especially the parts where he sounds like his former boss, Paul Wolfowitz, but its still an interesting article.
To come bearing modernism to those who want it but who rail against it at the same time, to represent and embody so much of what the world yearns for and fears— that is the American burden. The United States lends itself to contradictory interpretations. To the Europeans, and to the French in particular, who are enamored of their laïcisme (secularism), the United States is unduly religious, almost embarrassingly so, its culture suffused with sacred symbolism. In the Islamic world, the burden is precisely the opposite: There, the United States scandalizes the devout, its message represents nothing short of an affront to the pious and a temptation to the gullible and the impressionable young. According to the June BBC survey, 78 percent of French polled identified the United States as a "religious" country, while only 10 percent of Jordanians endowed it with that label. Religious to the secularists, faithless to the devout— such is the way the United States is seen in foreign lands.
Interestingly, the same issue of Foreign Policy is also carrying a review of Au Revoir to American Empire, a book that seemingly tells a different story from Ajami's.
But if a nation is willing to become so indispensable to the world, isn't that nation in desperate need of the world? In exchange for its stabilizing efforts, the United States imposes an economic yoke on the entire planet—what Todd calls servitude volontaire (voluntary servitude). U.S. citizens annually consume $450 billion more in goods and services than they produce domestically. U.S. businesses absorb $865 billion a year in foreign investment, and the U.S. government feels free to borrow as much as it sees fit. For Todd, the United States has become "a kind of black hole, absorbing goods and capital but incapable of providing, in return, equivalent goods." Thus, "America cannot do without the world" and "has objectively become a predator." This attitude, hardly to be found among Europeans even 15 years ago, now dominates intellectual reflections throughout the Old World.
This combination of political omnipresence, military aggressiveness, and economic vulnerability predestines the United States to failure. So, Todd asks, how can the world manage a superpower that is economically dependent and politically useless? Two of his prescriptions for taming the United States' imperial ambitions make this book indispensable for U.S. policymakers.
Though the book has some interesting points to make, I personally dont see a EU-Russia-Japan axis emerging anytime soon. And unlike Todd, I happen to think the countervailing force to the United States, if it ever emerges, will be Asia (riding on Japan, China and India) and not a demographically challenged Europe or Russia.
To come bearing modernism to those who want it but who rail against it at the same time, to represent and embody so much of what the world yearns for and fears— that is the American burden. The United States lends itself to contradictory interpretations. To the Europeans, and to the French in particular, who are enamored of their laïcisme (secularism), the United States is unduly religious, almost embarrassingly so, its culture suffused with sacred symbolism. In the Islamic world, the burden is precisely the opposite: There, the United States scandalizes the devout, its message represents nothing short of an affront to the pious and a temptation to the gullible and the impressionable young. According to the June BBC survey, 78 percent of French polled identified the United States as a "religious" country, while only 10 percent of Jordanians endowed it with that label. Religious to the secularists, faithless to the devout— such is the way the United States is seen in foreign lands.
Interestingly, the same issue of Foreign Policy is also carrying a review of Au Revoir to American Empire, a book that seemingly tells a different story from Ajami's.
But if a nation is willing to become so indispensable to the world, isn't that nation in desperate need of the world? In exchange for its stabilizing efforts, the United States imposes an economic yoke on the entire planet—what Todd calls servitude volontaire (voluntary servitude). U.S. citizens annually consume $450 billion more in goods and services than they produce domestically. U.S. businesses absorb $865 billion a year in foreign investment, and the U.S. government feels free to borrow as much as it sees fit. For Todd, the United States has become "a kind of black hole, absorbing goods and capital but incapable of providing, in return, equivalent goods." Thus, "America cannot do without the world" and "has objectively become a predator." This attitude, hardly to be found among Europeans even 15 years ago, now dominates intellectual reflections throughout the Old World.
This combination of political omnipresence, military aggressiveness, and economic vulnerability predestines the United States to failure. So, Todd asks, how can the world manage a superpower that is economically dependent and politically useless? Two of his prescriptions for taming the United States' imperial ambitions make this book indispensable for U.S. policymakers.
Though the book has some interesting points to make, I personally dont see a EU-Russia-Japan axis emerging anytime soon. And unlike Todd, I happen to think the countervailing force to the United States, if it ever emerges, will be Asia (riding on Japan, China and India) and not a demographically challenged Europe or Russia.
