Americans and Anti-Americanism: US Foreign Policy's to Blame

Although a little dated, the public opinion report below, by WorldPublicOpinion.org, at the University of Maryland, buttresses arguments presented in USBlog yesterday concerning the sources of "anti-Americanism" or, more accurately, opposition to US foreign policies.

Citing US Department of Defense and Council on Foreign Relations reports, yesterday's post indicated full awareness among US administration officials that Muslims in the Middle East were opposed to US foreign policies in the region and not to American people or American values. Despite that, however, US administration officials continue to treat opponents of US power as motivated by irrational resentment, hatred of US values, or envy. The blogpost also noted that "Anti-Americanism" in the main was viewed by US administrations as an inevitable and bearable cost of American power.

The polling data below indicate the other side of the picture: what Americans think about the reasons why so much of the world holds negative views and images of the United States. The findings complement the data from surveys of overseas opinion: Americans generally believe that negative views of the United States are sourced in American foreign policies. Large majorities also indicate they do not consider negative views to be in the interests of the United States.

US Role in the World

Americans' Assessments of World Public Opinion on the United States

Large majorities believe that the US is viewed negatively by people in other countries and see this as derived primarily from the current US foreign policy not American values. Most see goodwill towards the United States as important for US national security. Most Americans believe that people around the world are growing more afraid that the US will use force against them and that this diminishes US national security and increases the likelihood that countries will pursue WMDs.

This negativity was largely attributed to the Bush foreign policy. Asked in a WPO/KN October 2006 poll whether the way the Bush administration has been conducting US foreign policy, on balance, has increased or decreased "goodwill toward the US", 78% said it had decreased goodwill and just 18% said it had increased.

Americans tend to believe that dislike of the US stems from its policies rather than an inherent dislike of American values. Asked in the October 2006 WPO/KN poll if negative attitudes toward the United States in the Middle East were based mostly on their "dislike of American values" or "dislike of American policies in the Middle East," more than 62% said that dislike of American policies in the region were largely responsible. Only one-third (34%) said that it was dislike of American values.

Negative views of the US concern Americans. A September 2006 Public Agenda survey found 87% saying it that it was important to US national security that "the rest of the world sees the United States positively." A WPO/KN October 2006 poll showed nine out of 10 (87%) saying it is very (47%) or somewhat (40%) important "for people in other countries to feel goodwill toward the United States."

Even when given counter-arguments against viewing goodwill as an important factor, a very large majority continues to affirm its value as a tool for US security, rather than something that would inhibit pursuit of US goals. The November 2006 WPO/KN poll presented respondents with two arguments: 1) "Goodwill toward the US is important in order to obtain cooperation in dealing with important threats to US security, and because...hostility towards the US can lead people to actively work against the US." 2) "Goodwill is not really critical for the US because it is so much stronger than all other countries. Trying to be popular can tie the US's hands and distract the US from pursuing its security." A very large majority-80 percent-rejected the view that the United States was so strong it did not need to be concerned about maintaining other countries' goodwill. Only 17 percent saw goodwill as not critical for US security.

Americans believe that people around the world increasingly view the US as a military threat. The November 2006 WPO/KN poll found that 63% assumed that over the last few years countries around the world have grown more afraid that the United States will use force against them.

A majority views this growing fear of US military power as negative for US security, even when presented the argument, sometimes made in policy circles, that fearing American military power will make other countries more responsive to US preferences. Respondents were asked whether "as a general rule, if leaders of some countries grow more afraid that the US will use military force against them," on balance, this tends to be good for US security because such leaders are "more likely to refrain from doing things the US does not want them to do", or bad for US security "because it makes them seek out new means of protecting themselves from the US, such as acquiring weapons of mass destruction." By a two-to-one margin (63% to 33%), a majority thought that rising fear of US force was bad for US security (WPO/KN November 2006).

When asked, in a later question, “if leaders of some countries grow more afraid that the US will use military force against them, this tends to increase or decrease the likelihood that countries will try to acquire weapons of mass destruction,” a very large 80 percent said it increased the likelihood foreign governments would pursue WMD.

Anti-Americanism and Public Diplomacy

Anti-Americanism is a label used with some extravagance and frequency but is rarely worn as a badge of honour. It is a pejorative label applied by one's opponents: it indicates that the individual voicing an opinion critical of US policies or leaders is biased, prejudiced, irrational. The label is designed to close off debate. The-then UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, you will recall, levelled the "anti-American" charge at Lib Dems' leader Nick Clegg during one of the televised debates ahead of the May 2010 general election. Julian Assange, head of the Wikileaks organisation, is currently the World’s Number One "Anti-American" although, today, that label appears insufficient to some, like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich, who call Assange a "terrorist" and "enemy combatant".

It is a significant matter that “anti-Americanism” is almost invariably seen by scholars and US administration officials, by definition, as an irrational, unreasonable or prejudiced response to American culture. This is so much the case that even Francis Fukuyama, who accused Neocons of not recognizing that American policies must take part of the responsibility for generating opposition to the US, actually labels the phenomenon as “anti-American”. That is, it is embedded in the very language that is used to categorize all opposition to the US as irrational, even when an individual might actually hold a reasoned differing view.

They hate our values and resent our success. This is the most conventional explanation of opposition to US policies.

Very occasionally, however, the nearly-unthinkable appears in print from within the inner sanctum of US power (this is not a reference to leaked secret cables etc…). A report a few years back from the US Defense Science Board (Task Force on Strategic Communication, 2004) was very explicit. It noted that American public diplomacy could only be effective if weighed in the context of actual US policies, “conflicts of interest, cultural differences, memories…. [that] shape perceptions and limit the effectiveness of strategic communication.” It also recognized that Muslims’ perceptions of the United States were overwhelmingly negative, citing polls showing that Muslims saw the US as trying to weaken Islam and to dominate the Muslim world. The Report further argued that among Muslim masses there was “no yearning-to-be-liberated-by-the-US groundswell…. except to be liberated perhaps from what they see as apostate tyrannies that the U.S. so determinedly promotes and defends.” The Report went on to argue that “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom’, but rather they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support of Israel and against Palestinian rights… and support for… tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States.” The idea that America is bringing democracy to the region was seen as “self-serving hypocrisy… [because]… in the eyes of Muslims, American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq has not led to democracy there, but only more chaos and suffering.”

Put simply, the Defense Science Board Report concluded, the US has “a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none – the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam.”

As Osama Siblani, publisher of America’s largest Arab-American newspaper, argued, “They [the US] could have the prophet Muhammed doing public relations and it wouldn’t help.” The Obama effect, while real enough, has not prevented high levels of Muslim dissatisfaction with US policies.

But the dominant view in the foreign policy elite mind set, hardwired and unalterable, is the fundamental belief in the rightness of America’s cause and its right to use its power however and whenever it deems necessary to maintain a preponderance of power and to prevent the emergence of rivals. As a Council on Foreign Relations report noted, the “United States must further broaden and sharpen the message and the messengers we use to persuade the peoples of the world of the justness of our cause,” and not permit “the foreign opinion tail to wag the dog of American foreign policy.”

This raises a key question: if extending or at least consolidating its power is the principal purpose of US foreign policy, could anti-Americanism be seen as a cost worth bearing? Opposition to United States’ foreign policies has been high for decades in the Middle East and south Asia, and moderately or very high in parts of Europe. If anti-Americanism increases as a result of the post-9-11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, especially among populations that already oppose or “hate” America, does it really matter? After all, the “costs” of Muslims’ opposition to American support of Israel have been borne for decades. This point is, in fact, implied in the Council on Foreign Relations report in which they recommend public diplomacy officers to get involved in foreign policy-making not in order to “change its [America’s] policies to suit others’ wishes… [but to make Washington]… aware of the cost of [resulting] anti-Americanism….”

This clearly suggests that cost-benefit analyses are being applied to foreign policy, much as they routinely are to domestic issues, and that the administration may consider the costs of “anti-Americanism” bearable.

Yet, American administrations continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into public diplomacy to convince the world of the justice of its cause. Why?

There are two logics that appear to determine administrations’ efforts to “combat” anti-Americanism. The first logic is domestic opinion – media, Congress, and public – demanding action from the White House to curb rising hostility to the United States, the self-evidently “good” country. The second logic, however, is the logic of viewing anti-Americanism as an absorbable cost, too low normally to matter in the world of power politics. The two logics would suggest the policies rolled out to combat anti-Americanism are likely to be, despite the fanfare, superficial, lacking consistency and coordination, unsystematic, inefficiently administered, and relatively cheap. They are followed largely to mollify public opinion, Congress, media critics, and the political opposition, rather than as a serious attempt to solve the problem:

That would require modification or abandonment of US policies and is therefore unthinkable.

US Reactions to Wikileaks: A Terrorist For Opposing American Imperial Power?

US Reaction to Wikileaks: A Terrorist For Opposing American Imperial Power?

Sarah Palin, a likely Republican candidate for the presidency in 2012, has called for Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange, to be “hunted down in the way armed forces are targeting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda”. Assange, according to the potential next leader of the free world, is “an anti-American with blood on his hands”. Secretary of State, Clinton, suggests that Assange has attacked the entire “international community”. Other US leaders have assailed Bradley Manning, the youthful US army intelligence operative who passed secret cables to Assange, and called for his prosecution and even execution. Wikileaks, having been dismissed by Amazon and other internet service providers, has found refuge in Switzerland.

For some, it is impossible to oppose US foreign policy without being an irrational, backward, evil, fanatical terrorist, who is against all things decent. It is automatically to be branded “anti-American” – against Americans per se and, therefore, almost “racist”. The construction is not dissimilar to what some Israeli leaders say when anyone criticises their country’s behaviour in Gaza and elsewhere: you are an anti-Semite. In the latter case, a Jew who criticises Israel is labelled “self-hating Jew”. An American who criticises his country, like Bradley Manning, is smeared as “un-American”. Such an approach to criticism unites a broad range of Americans – liberals to conservatives to neo-conservatives, state agencies and private philanthropic foundations: it is a core element of an informal but powerful operational code that brooks little opposition and declares any criticism of the imperial hegemon as an attack on God himself or, in Clinton’s secular term, “the international community”.

As God, or the world community, the US is ordinarily used to controlling outcomes – at least that’s the operating myth. They are used to doing what they want and also portraying it they way they want. Al-Jazeera is bad enough but the wikileaks episodes have exposed America’s vulnerability at a particularly bad time. Having one’s secrets laid bare is galling but the knowledge that there’s more to come is truly frightening. And coming at a time when American power is meeting stern resistance all around the world – Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, from a burgeoning anti-war movement inside the US itself – and the American economy is failing to produce jobs and growth, more fully exposes US vulnerability.

Imperial powers rarely see anything in isolation. They tend to believe in the interconnectedness of things. They see the world as an interdependent system; when something goes wrong in one part of the system it has knock on effects across the system as a whole. Hence, wikileaks is seen as an attack on the entire “international community”, of which the US is self-appointed head. And imperial hegemons do not appease aggressors.

It is difficult for the US to carry on “business as usual” even if the wikileaks episode has been dismissed by some as of little or no consequence. Things have changed. For Americans brought up on the myth of America the ‘exceptional’ country, the City Upon A Hill, the beacon of light pointing the way to the rest of the world, the eschewer of wicked power politics, wikileaks is nothing less than a reminder that the United States is like any other imperial power in history. In a deeply conservative nation, the American myth remains powerful: wikileaks’ revelations chip away at American self-confidence, adding to the woes of lost status – an expensive budget-busting war in Afghanistan, economic relative decline, rise of China, a faltering American dream, and so on. And all that plus being led by a black president – who is believed by disturbingly large proportions of the electorate to be Muslim and foreign-born, an outsider – who fails to deal with an ungrateful world in quite the same way as George W. Bush or a Ronald Reagan.. or a Sarah Palin?

At a conference on anti-Americanism a couple of years ago, it was said by one delegate that we should “take America out of anti-Americanism”. That is, expressions of opposition to US policies abroad revealed more about the speaker than they did about the USA. It revealed the speaker’s own psychological inadequacies, political motives, irrationalities. It echoed George W. Bush’s comment that anyone who attacks America does it because they “resent our values and envy our success”. It’s not America, it’s YOU.

Yet, American administrations must take heed of “anti-Americanism”: the issue occupies a myriad of Washington, DC, think tanks and public diplomacy experts, in and out of government. It vexes the American public – “why do they hate us?” – and it gives the opposition party a stick with which to beat the administration. And in some of the weighty reports produced by blue-ribbon commissions headed by state intellectuals, there is a flicker of recognition, some credibility afforded to the notion that opposition to the US in the Middle East and elsewhere might actually be rooted in American behaviour – the deployment of lethal military force over time, costing millions of lives - over large parts of the Third World, a failure to match deeds with lofty ideals. After all, the reports note, such large majorities like American films and culture and even wish to settle in the US – so they’re not actually anti-American. They say that they don’t like our policies, such as unequivocal support for Israel.

But the policy implications of that insight are simply too radical to pursue. Support for Israel reflects a core interest, as do so many other national security policies. Opposition to the US that results from defending and promoting core interests is considered inevitable and viewed as a bearable cost of American power. Great powers have been and will be hated. But they must continue to pursue their vital interests. Anyone who opposes imperial power in pursuit of core interests is, by definition, evil and, in the age of Guantanamo, a terrorist.