Rise of Anti-Americanism

Scott Van-Newhouse

GVPP

Book Review: Andrew Kohut

America Against The World

Rise of Anti-Americanism

There are many conversations and explanations on why America has encountered an anti-American backlash in recent years. In reading Andrew Kohut’s America Against The World, I found it particularly useful to debunk the misconceptions that current foreign policy makers and news personnel both вЂ"explain as the reason why America is being viewed in such a negative light. Kohut’s book is a collection of statistics, graphs, and opinion polls from the Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project and U.S. Gallop Poll Studies; he gives the reader a crash course in where Anti-Americanism came from, and why it has come to the fore front of politics recently. The rise of anti-Americanism in Kohut’s book seem to derive from American self interest in all global matters, American interference in State matters, and of course poor diplomacy. He explains the basic need as to why the general public should be aware and concerned about the rise of anti-Americanism, why it is growing and what this means in regard to policy changes at home and aboard.

Currently the world does not focus on Washington being the center of bad policy choices, but on the American people themselves for their lack of attention and concern for others in the world. While many in America are still waking up to the complexity of a more aggressive anti-American sentiment in the world; with constant threats of terrorist attacks in the U.S. and on it’s establishments abroad, Andrew Kohut writes about the need for an end to the long standing idea of “American exceptionalism”. (American exceptionalism- is the idea that the U.S and the American people hold a special place in the world, by offering opportunity and hope for humanity, derived from a unique balance of public and private interests governed by constitutional ideals that are focused on personal and economic freedom; also can mean moral superiority.) With these core principles espoused by America’s past, American exceptionalism today is seen by many surveyed in the Pew Attitude Polls, more as a bullying affect on other countries. If the U.S. would examine its foreign policy over the last 30 years, it would find itself morally bankrupt, on account of the American interest and self determination to dominate the world. The U.S. having a great military power and being among the richest nations in the world has led many to believe the growing definition of American exceptionalism to mean American superiority in all contexts. This has led many to conclude: American exceptionalism is now fashionable for American nationalism and, in turn, an intellectual basis for claims that the nation has embarked, intentionally or not, on the creation of an American empire (9).

The statement Kohut presents of an “American Empire” correlates in what many policy analyst have described as an aggressive direction of American foreign policy from the Bush administration on global interest. Andrew Kohut goes on to describe the Bush White House where anti-American sentiment was fueled to the highest point in U.S. history with the invasion of Iraq. Kohut uses the Iraq invasion as an illustration of the American “go it alone” attitude no matter what other world leaders think. President Bush had received a surplus of world wide sympathy and support following September 11, 2001. The French daily paper Le Monde declared that: "in this tragic moment…we are all Americans" (15). This pro-American interlude did not last. By the time the United States invaded Iraq with out the global communities support in 2003, both the American foreign policy stance and the American people were increasingly unpopular, even among longtime allies.

With this shift in international public opinion it is critically important to gage why America and Americans have fallen so low on every world wide attitude poll conducted since the invasion of Iraq to the infamous “Axis of evil” address. Andrew Kohut explains this phenomenon as arising out of the events leading to the siege of Baghdad in 2003: including failure to find weapons of mass destruction, that were the principal justification for the war, U.S. credibility has declined with, many countries believing that the Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction, and had ulterior motives of controlling of oil resources and many Arab nations think the protection of Israel. This credibility problem extends beyond the war in Iraq to the war on terrorism, why it led to Afghanistan, and most importantly what was the principal reason for the attacks on the U.S. in regards to the U.S. foreign policy. The way President Bush handled the war and the procedures he maneuvered around to go to war is seen as direct disrespect for the international community.

Another factor for the shift in public opinion is from the U.S. position it is “spreading Democracy;” however, when the U.S. goes into a region and helps set up a democracy like in Palestine and Iran, where the U.S stated it was to spreading democracy, when the people took to the polls to vote for a President, but did not pick the choice the U.S. wanted, the U.S. simply did not recognize the winner, but set up a pro American leader instead. The book also points out this same phenomenon in regards to the Guatemala coup in 1953, then the Colombian coup in the 1970’s. You can see other examples of how the U.S. was not really interested in spreading democracy, but in spreading its own bottom line. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The love of wealth is….at the bottom of all that the Americans do…It perturbs their minds, but it disciplines their lives.” President Calvin Coolidge put it more politely in the 1920s, “the chief business of the American people is business” (132). Ironically after President Bush’s State of The Union address and his call for greater democracy in the Middle East and all the U.S. aid for tsunami victims in South Asia all these action did little to improve the U.S. image (29). The Pew poll asked people around the world to judge Americans on seven character traits, three of them positive and four negative the results are as followed-- negative traits: greedy, violent, rude, and immoral; Positive traits: hardworking, inventive, and honest (31). But as shown, the generosity following the