On September 12, 2001, Jean-Marie Colombani, the editor of Le Monde, famously wrote, “Today we are all Americans.” Three years on, it seems that we are all anti-Americans. Hostility to the United States is deeper and broader than at any point in the last 50 years....After firing the obligatory anti-Bush missiles, Zakaria settles down to the task at hand. First, he notes that anti-Americanism has a natural market among the discontented. That's certainly true in the U.S. as well as overseas. Discontented left-wingers in this country are about as anti-American as they come.
[A]nti-Americanism fills the void left by defunct belief systems. It has become a powerful trend in international politics today -— and perhaps the most dangerous. U.S. hegemony has its problems, but a world that reacts instinctively against the United States will be less peaceful, less cooperative, less prosperous, less open, and less stable.
The wave of anti-Americanism is, of course, partly a product of the current Bush administration’s policies and, as important, its style....
By crudely asserting U.S. power and disregarding international institutions and alliances, the Bush administration has pulled the curtain on decades of diplomacy and revealed that the United States’ constraints are self-imposed: America can, in fact, go it alone. Not surprisingly, the rest of the world resents this imbalance and searches for ways to place obstacles in America’s way....
There is always a market for an ideology of discontent -— it allows those outside the mainstream to relate to the world. These beliefs usually form in reaction to the world’s dominant reality. So the rise of capitalism and democracy over the last 200 years produced ideologies of opposition from the left (communism, socialism) and from the right (hypernationalism, fascism). Today, the dominant reality in the world is the power of the United States, currently being wielded in a particularly aggressive manner. Anti-Americanism is becoming the way people think about the world and position themselves within it....
Much has been written about what the United States can do to help arrest and reverse these trends. But it is worth putting the shoe on the other foot for a moment. Imagine a world without the United States as the global leader. Even short of the imaginative and intelligent scenario of chaos that British historian Niall Ferguson outlined in this magazine (see “A World Without Power,” July/August 2004), it would certainly look grim. There are many issues on which the United States is the crucial organizer of collective goods. Someone has to be concerned about terrorism and nuclear and biological proliferation. Other countries might bristle at certain U.S. policies, but would someone else really be willing to bully, threaten, cajole, and bribe countries such as Libya to renounce terror and dismantle their WMD programs? On terror, trade, AIDs, nuclear proliferation, U.N. reform, and foreign aid, U.S. leadership is indispensable.
The temptation to go its own way will be greatest for Europe, the only other player with the resources and tradition to play a global role. But if Europe defines its role as being different from the United States -— kinder, gentler, whatever —- will that really produce a more stable world? U.S. and European goals on most issues are quite similar. Both want a peaceful world free from terror, with open trade, growing freedom, and civilized codes of conduct. A Europe that charts its own course just to mark its differences from the United States threatens to fracture global efforts—whether on trade, proliferation, or the Middle East. Europe is too disunited to achieve its goals without the United States; it can only ensure that America’s plans don’t succeed. The result will be a world that muddles along, with the constant danger that unattended problems will flare up disastrously. Instead of win-win, it will be lose-lose -— for Europe, for the United States, and for the world.
Then he observes two central truths that foreign and domestic anti-Americans ignore at their peril: The world would be a much worse place if America weren't the hyperpower. And if Europeans, acting out of envious anti-Americanism, succeed in blocking America's efforts to make the world a better place, the world will become a worse place -- and Europe will suffer for it.
Amen to all that.
