by Barry Rubin
A 2002 poll indicated that over 64.5 percent of Iranians wanted renewed relations with the United States, contrary to their own government's policy. On the hostile side, 70.4 percent felt they could not trust the U.S. government, and 62 percent were suspicious of the real purpose of the U.S. war against terrorism. Yet 46 percent said that U.S. policies on Iran were "to some extent correct," while 45 percent even endorsed U.S. intervention as a possible way to fix Iran's problems.71 The government's response to these results was to close the National Institute for Research and Opinion Polls and to charge its director with criminal offenses.
Ironically, one articulate representative of this view was Hussein Khomeini, grandson of the ayatollah who had been one of the main architects of Middle Eastern anti-Americanism. The younger Khomeini told a Washington audience after the United States overthrew Saddam's regime, "I don't see any benefit [that America could have expected] from attacking Iraq.... It was just the hand of God that led America down to Iraq, to rid Iraqis of the tyrant." He hinted that the United States should do the same thing to the Tehran government. "America," he insisted, "should not be dispassionate about the misery and pain of Iranians. Rather, she should help Iranians gain democracy."76
Of course, this was the kind of pro-interventionist appeal that had often sparked U.S. involvement (and subsequent anti-Americanism) in the Middle East, including Iraq, and elsewhere in the world. The United States could use normal diplomatic behavior by dealing with existing regimes that might be unpopular and dictatorial, and open itself up to charges of backing repressive, unpopular governments. Or it could promote democracy and human rights, and open itself up to charges of being an imperialist power subverting legitimate governments.
The attempt, certainly well-intentioned whether or not it was misguided, to counter anti-Americanism by showing that the United States wanted to help the Arab people and Muslims by promoting democracy was one important factor in the decision to overthrow the Iraqi dictatorship in 2003. Before that war, Saddam himself had made a selfinterested anti-American argument that nonetheless reflected majority Arab opinion:
The United States wants to impose its hegemony on the Arab world, and as a prelude it wants to control Iraq and then strike the capitals that oppose it and revolt against its hegemony. From Baghdad, which will be under military control, it will strike Damascus and Tehran. It will fragment them and will cause major problems to Saudi Arabia.... This way the Arab oil will be under its control and the region, especially the oil sources-after the destruction of Afghanistan-will be under total control of the United States. All these things serve the Israeli interests, and based on this strategy the purpose is to make Israel into a large empire in the area.77
While some Arabs and more Iraqis welcomed the U.S. attack against Iraq, most in the first and many in the second group did not. Instead, the overthrow of Saddam was more often than not portrayed in the Arab world as an act of imperialist aggression, another reason for distrusting and disliking the United States. Coverage on al-Jazira and other Arab media of the U.S. role during and after the war was constantly hostile, placing Americans in the worst light as deliberately committing atrocities and having the worst of motives.78
Mahmoud Abd Al-Mun'im Murad, an Egyptian columnist, claimed that the U.S. plan was to turn "all human beings, into mute robots serving the American and the Israeli," and to destroy Iraq as part of its plan to control "the entire human race."79 The ruling Palestinian Fatah movement indicted Bush as a war criminal who killed Afghan and Iraqi civilians, supported Israel, wanted to "kill many of the world's children," and was trying to seize control of the globe's natural resources.80 Bu- thayna Sha'ban, official spokesperson for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, called the United States a terrorist that sought "to take control of the entire region.""' The government's official newspaper claimed that "greedy warmongering monopolist U.S. companies" wanted "more destruction and more devastation" so as to profit from rebuilding Iraq at that country's expense.82 The U.S. policy of paying for reconstruction itself without taking Iraqi funds was never mentioned.
The United States cannot find a solution for Middle Eastern antiAmericanism because the answer is not within its grasp. The problem is a product of the regional system itself, of the governing regimes and ideologies that find anti-Americanism to be so useful for their own needs. In this sense, it is like the state-sponsored anti-Americanism of Communism and fascism and different from the far more marginal varieties seen in Europe and Latin America.
Hatred of America is thus used to justify a great deal that is bad in the Arab world and helps keep it politically dominated by dictatorships, socially unfree, and economically less successful. Blaming national shortcomings on America means that the Arab debate avoids dealing with the internal problems and weaknesses that are the real cause of their problems. It justifies the view that the only barrier to complete success, prosperity, and justice for the Arab (and Islamic) world is the United States. Instead of dealing with privatization, women's equality, democracy, civil society, freedom of speech, due process of law, and twenty other issues the Arab world needs to address, attention can be diverted to conjuring American conspiracies and threats.
In discussing the 2003 war in Iraq, the relatively moderate Jordanian Fahd al-Fanik claimed, "The world has not witnessed such blatant aggression since the days of the Tartars.... While pretending to save the Iraqi people it will in fact murder them."83 And a Gulf newspaper insisted that the United States should leave Iraq after murdering i million people there in "an unlawful embargo and a colonial war." That article ends by asking, "Are the Americans willing to admit their mistakes? This is the most important question of the 21st century, since much of the world's safety depends on it."84
Yet the United States has always been willing-even eager-to admit mistakes. It is part of that penchant for self-improvement and constant change that some of the world finds admirable and others find dangerous or sinful. One might better say that much of the world's safety and the course of the twenty-first century will depend on whether the world is willing to admit its mistakes about misjudging and hating the United States.
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AMERICA AS SUPER-VILLAIN
Yet today, it is the United States-in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere-which itself is assigned the role of Great Satan by the postCold War version of anti-Americanism. Hating America is no longer just an idiosyncrasy or historical footnote. It had become part of an ideology involving not only a view of the United States but also an allencompassing ideology explaining how the world works. And this perception, in turn, is more widely and deeply spread across the world than at any previous time.
The basic points of historic anti-Americanism have fused into a new powerful ideology that combines the stereotypes of two centuries with critical developments from recent times. On one hand are the internal factors of bad culture and society used to condemn America; on the other hand are the international sins of evil foreign policy and pervasive cultural influence.
All these factors relating to values, institutions, and policies are mutually reinforcing. To some extent, the intensity of anti-Americanism may prove to be a transient phenomenon related to specific events, U.S. policies or actions, and the personalities of U.S. leaders. But there are also deeper, longer-term forces involved as well.
From 1999 to 2003, the U.S. image plummeted in Europe from a good rating of 83 to 48 percent in England, 62 to 31 percent in France, 78 to 25 percent in Germany, and 76 to 34 percent in Italy.' Fifty-three percent of respondents in the European Union in late 2003 saw the United States in the same league as Iran and North Korea as a threat to world peace.2 By March 2004, anti-Americanism was hitting all-time highs in Europe with 34 percent of British having a very or somewhat unfavorable view of the United States, as well as 62 percent of French and 59 percent of Germans. But Europeans also drew a distinction between the American people and the United States as a nation, and when polled about the former, favor
able ratings were 73 percent in England, 68 percent in Germany, and 53 percent in France.3 President George W. Bush did not fare much better than Usama bin Ladin, with 85 percent in France and Germany having an unfavorable view of him, compared to 93 and 96 percent against bin Ladin.4
And yet there was more to the problem than just the mannerisms of George W. Bush and the controversial Iraq war. Much of the world was in search of a post-Cold War threat. Europeans had reached a critical point in their progress toward continental integration, with many seeking a common identity and a foe to set themselves off against. The Middle East, bogged down in domestic and regional paralysis-including a failed revolutionary Islamist movement that needed a scapegoat-was ripe for an even more extreme interpretation with the United States defined as its chief enemy. That was the whole purpose of the September ii attacks in the first place.
It was no accident, then, that this highest stage of anti-Americanism spread after the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union and its bloc collapsed. America was the world's sole superpower, an outcome appearing to be the ultimate proof of the United State's cultural, political, social, economic, and military success. And that was precisely the problem, for this was equally the moment when the long-feared American takeover of the world appeared credible. Even the spread of modernity throughout the world or "globalization" was widely seen, as it had been by nineteenth-century Europeans, as Americanization.
Post-Cold War anti-Americanism was inspired by the fact that now the United States was the world's sole superpower, deprived even of the justification of protecting others from Soviet imperialism. The immense power of the United States in itself was a cause for mistrust and alarm, upsetting people whose nation's or region's fate seemed to be in American hands.
Many countries, movements, and individuals could not imagine that a state finding itself in possession of such wealth and power would not seek global hegemony. They claimed to find ample proof to show that the U.S. ambition was to rule the planet in general and themselves in particular. After all, wasn't that what they would do in America's situation? In fact, though, the United States had not used its post-Cold War position of potential domination in a fashion deserving such a response. On the contrary, its response had been to reduce international involvement and focus more on humanitarian ventures.
Nevertheless, some charged that the world takeover had already happened, like the demagogic Pakistani-British Marxist Tariq Ali, a purveyor of anti-Americanism since the 196os, who now proclaimed that America's "military-imperial state" had already conquered all: "In the absence of a countervailing power since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been able to impose its model of economics, politics and culture on the world at large."5
Such ideas were mixed in with all the traditional complaints about American values and institutions, which some hated because they understood them correctly, while others hated because they interpreted them in wildly inaccurate ways. Objections to U.S. policy were systematized in a way that easily fit into historic anti-American critiques.
With the Cold War and the danger of Soviet domination past, that victory's costs now came under increasing criticism. Saving the world from Communist dictatorship had often required-or at least occasioned-compromises with unsavory regimes as well as immoral behavior. Real and imagined trespasses could now be judged harshly, especially when the lack of choice and dangers to be surmounted were ignored.
As one British writer charged in discussing this era, "The United States forfeited any claim to moral leadership long ago. It has a history of undermining international law, contempt for the human rights of others and promoting its own brand of international terrorism."6 The usual list of real or alleged American sins in Vietnam, Chile, and Nicaragua was recited as if this proved the case for that country's clearly evil nature. Even correct criticisms of specific past U.S. policies were often distorted by being made into basic and intrinsic traits of a distinctly American civilization.
In a far more moderate tone, the British scholar Timothy Garton Ash suggested America "has too much power for anyone's good, including its own.... Contrary to what many Europeans think, the problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power. "7
But why was such a view "contrary to what many Europeans think"? Why did they view the problem as distinctly American in origin? Here, the view of the United States as different, inferior, and dangerous came into play. The United States must be behaving as it did because it was the land of irresponsible cowboys, ignorant religious fanatics, greedobsessed capitalists, uncultured fools, intolerant buffoons, and so on.
At a minimum, America's ways were not those of one's own country, religion, or society. At worst, they were thought rotten in their own right. Whether someone was devoted to Spanish, French, or Arabic; Islam, atheism, or Latin American Catholicism; preserving tradition or utopian revolution, America could be said to block their dream of the future or replace it with a nightmare. A different style of anti-Americanism existed for every need or taste. America was too revolutionary and too counterrevolutionary, too elitist and too mass-oriented, too far left and too far right, the friend of one's enemies or the enemy of one's friends.
Along with the fear of American world dominance and the criticism of the United States for its nature or actions was a new poisonous element. According to the old views of anti-Americanism from the nineteenth century through the Cold War, the United States had been a failure despite its apparent success. Its people were miserable and its stability questionable. Yet what happened when these claims were no longer sustainable, when the competing systems collapsed or seemed to be left behind?
A different approach to anti-Americanism developed along the following lines: not only was America a threat to the world, but also its achievements were based not on the virtues of its system, ideas, and institutions but rather on the massive oppression and exploitation of the world. America's higher level of development was at everyone else's expense and, by the same token, the relative failure of others to duplicate it was due to America's sins. Rather than what it was in practice-a reluctant activist in the world-America was portrayed as a vampire whose life depended on sucking others' blood.
This response arose from various nonmainstream Marxist theories, mainly in Germany and France, as well as Third World doctrines pioneered in Latin America and independently developed in the Middle East. Yes, the new perspective agreed, America may have a successful system with relatively happy and well-off people, but its prosperity and joy comes at everyone else's expense. Its success was less the result of hard work and innovation than of theft and oppression. Moreover, by refusing to revolt against the system and actually benefiting from it, the American people, not just a small capitalist class, were the enemy. There was an intriguing hint about this notion from Lenin. American workers, he wrote in 1918, were merely acting as "hired thugs" for the "wealthy scoundrels" who really ran the country."
A comprehensive theory explaining why America was imperialistically different from all other capitalist or Western countries was built by intellectuals, academics, and journalists, sounding like a satire of traditional Soviet doctrine. While the last French anti-American generation had predicted that the United States was an imperialistic menace that would collapse, the task was now to explain how it still survived and flourished. Thus, Emmanuel Todd explained in a 2003 book how the system works: the United States deliberately fosters conflict "wherever it can" because it must keep up an inflow of loot to fund its voracious consumption. "It cannot live without the goods produced by the rest of the planet." So it invents bogus threats to justify its military presence and keep foreign clients in line. The fact that the United States actually runs a constant trade deficit and that military costs, many of which go to protect Europe, are a drain on its economy had no place in this analysis.9
It was hard to foresee such trends and ideas developing at
the beginning of this era. Despite the total victory in the half-century-long Cold War, the coalition success over Iraq in 1991, and the lack of serious disputes with Europe, a majority-but fewer than might be expectedliked the United States at the start of the 199os. In 1992, approval stood at only 66 percent in Britain and 51 percent in France.1° At the same time, when asked whether American culture was a threat to their own, 54 percent in France, 40 percent in Britain, and 38 percent in West Germany said "yes" in 1993. While a 74 percent popularity rating was recorded in Britain that year, the figure in France had fallen to 48 percent."
By 1995, while 78 percent in Italy and 72 percent in Germany had a favorable view of the United States (lower West German figures being increased by the merger with the more pro-American ex-Communist East), popularity in England stood at 62 percent and France at only 55 percent. Sixty-one percent of French people and 50 percent of those in England thought America to be a cultural threat.'2 In 2000, the favorability rating toward the United States stood at 83 percent of Britons, 62 percent of French, 78 percent of Germans, and 76 percent of Italians.13
As always, the ridicule of American culture was tightly linked to a fear that these characteristics, ideas, and products were successfully assaulting one's own country. This was even felt in England, where interchanges of ideas and culture with America were most common. In the 199os (as had happened in the 195os), the left responded to a pro-American orientation by the Labour Party's centrist leadership with a wave of anti- Americanism.14 At a debate held at a mid-199os British literary festival, 40 percent of the crowd supported a motion that "it is the duty of every European to resist American culture."15
