The World and Washington Need to Have a Talk

By Rami G. Khouri

July 5, 2006

Lebanon - Daily Star - Original Article (English)    

Public opinion polls around the world routinely show that public perceptions of the United States have deteriorated consistently. More noteworthy, we learn this week that the British public - the other half of the "special relationship" - also has broadly negative views of the United States and its foreign policies.

Citizens and governments around the world are responding to the flexing of U.S. military, economic and diplomatic muscles by rejecting what they see as a hegemonic American foreign policy. This rejection occurs on at least three separate but parallel tracks that often feed off one other, and drive many aspects of global power politics.

One: A small number of militants and terrorists (a la Osama bin Laden) use indiscriminate violence. Two: A few governments - Syria, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, among others - explicitly, often theatrically, defy Washington, and explore ways to forge a movement of global political resistance against it. Three: the largest response comes from billions of ordinary citizens who don't resort to violence, but quietly reject what Washington says and does.

Two polls in recent weeks confirm this continuing trend. The 16-nation Pew Global Attitudes Survey released last week shows that despite minor improvements, "the United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed, and the opinion of the American people is not as positive as it once was. Indeed, opinion of the U.S. continues to be mostly unfavorable among the publics of America’s traditional allies, except Great Britain and Canada. Even in those two countries, however, favorable views of the U.S. have slipped over the past two years." .

The second, more striking, poll of British public opinion published by The Daily Telegraph on July 3 , showed that most Britons feel the United States is doing a bad job in Iraq and is indifferent to what the rest of the world thinks. More than two-thirds of respondents said that their overall opinion of the United States had worsened in recent years. When such close U.S. allies and war-making buddies as the Britons express this kind of disrespect, perhaps after the July 4 celebrations and the baseball All Star Game are over, Americans should ponder it a bit more seriously.

Many Americans find it easy, if sincerely so, to simply write off the growing worldwide criticism as a combination of jealousy, obsession, spite and a manipulated diversion of their simple minds by their own autocratic Third World governments. Others will criticize writers and politicians who raise these irritating issues. Right on cue - thanks to the neat predictability of hegemony - this is what the American Embassy in London did two days ago when, commenting on the British poll, it charged that the British news media had ignored success stories about the United States.

But perhaps the truth is, as repeated global surveys suggest, the real story is that a growing majority of people around the world feel that Washington routinely ignores their concerns and their rights.

Regardless of anthropological or psychological analyses of global perceptions of the United States, the important thing is to reach some sensible consensus. Either American power is applied abroad in accordance with accepted global norms - as happened in the war to liberate Kuwait - or it must be checked and sheathed in accordance with the same norms.

Otherwise, we may all pay a very high price for letting current trends drift toward greater chaos, threats and militarism, as is evident in Iraq, Palestine, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan and other troubled lands.

It is certain, since the evidence is clear to see, that demagogues and nationalist leaders will exploit growing resentment of U.S. policies to forge defiant anti-U.S. policies, perhaps leading to more confrontation and senseless war.

A fine analysis of this issue has just been published by Graham Fuller, former vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA. In his article "Strategic Fatigue" in the Summer 2006 issue of The National Interest . According to Fuller, the global system of states cannot embrace a unipolar world for long. We may now be witnessing the backlash from "genuine global concern with the overwhelming character of American power," as the world chips away at the current unipolar world order.

Washington has alienated its foreign partners and public opinion alike, because of the controversial and often questionable strategy, tactics and style of its foreign policy. Therefore, Fuller believes that America's "strategic fatigue" will likely grow. "In the last few years, diverse countries have deployed a multiplicity of strategies and tactics designed to weaken, divert, alter, complicate, limit, delay or block the Bush agenda through death by a thousand cuts."

The idea that the United States only promotes goodness, freedom, democracy and light around the world is rejected by most of the world, at a time when most of this same world sincerely covets goodness, freedom, democracy and light.

Sounds like we have a mutually desirable topic for discussion here - for those inclined to listen, ponder and talk, rather than threaten, invade and shoot.

VIDEO FROM LEBANON: PALESTINIAN MILITANTS LEARN FROM HIZBOLLAH

AL-MANAR TV, LEBANON: Excerpts from interviews with Palestinian militants from various factions in Gaza, wherein they talk of how they were influenced by Hizbullah, May 25, 00:02:16, MEMRI

"The Lebanese resistance has shown us what the the psychology of a fighter should be in the course of resistance. Now this model has entered our academies for fidayeen, and we are following in their footsteps."

Palestinian Militants Speak