Posted on 10/22/2003 9:26:16 AM PDT by knighthawk
When President George W. Bush addresses parliament today, he speaks to a nation that is in some ways typical and in other ways exceptional.
If one were to take seriously the opinions of most Australian media pundits, one would conclude that Australia's close alliance with the US runs counter to the worldwide trend of anti-Americanism. It does not. Moreover, the popular impression of massive global anti-Americanism is an exaggeration, and where it does exist it is sustained by ideological myths.
True, anti-Americanism exists everywhere. But it's both widespread and deeply rooted only in the Muslim world. For the time being, it is widespread in some major countries: Russia, Greece, France, Spain, Germany, Brazil and Argentina.
It is also true that affection for the US has sharply declined worldwide in the past two years - caused by the muscle flexing and subsequent military assault on the sovereignty of Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti clan-based tyranny. But US popularity was phenomenally high before the Iraq invasion. Thus, despite a relative decline in popularity, the world's only superpower is still greatly admired throughout the non-Muslim world.
Public opinion polls show that a majority of Australians admire and respect not only Americans as people but the US itself, and want to remain allies. But in this they are not extraordinary. Polls by Pew, Roy Morgan, the German Marshall Fund and Gallup International show that so, too, do a majority in the English-speaking nations, as well as in all of the East European nations except Serbia and Russia. The majority of Italians, Dutch, Danes, and even Muslim Albanians, Kosovars and Kuwaitis are all favourably disposed to the US.
During the mid-1950s, Australians were extraordinarily pro-American. Today that breadth of sentiment has slipped, but is still substantial. In May, Pew found that 60 per cent of Australians had a favourable view of the US, identical to the percentage of Italians. Just below 63 per cent of Canadians and 70 per cent of British did as well. All these numbers are substantially down from mid-2002. Australians are, however, like most non-Muslim Asian, most Latin American, and especially most African nations, still mostly favourably disposed to the US.
Numbers aside, what ties Australians to America is a combination of self-interest and sentiment. As a small, isolated, wealthy and still primarily Anglo-European enclave at the perimeter of an unstable region of impoverished millions, Australians feel insecure and capable only of limited self-defence. The US has been coveted for its protection.
But Australians are also connected to Americans, as to the British, by common values: a love for democracy, liberty and the rule of law. We also share a common language. That is why, even leaving aside the crucial issue of the US's preponderant military power, engagement with Asia serves Australia's economic purposes but can never provide a popular, credible military alliance.
Thus the phenomenon of anti-Americanism, so virulent in the Green Party, on the Left of the Australian Labor Party, and in sectors of academe and journalism, is totally alien to the sentiments of the majority of Australians.
When I speak of anti-Americanism, of course, I do not refer to a critical attitude to any particular US policy, nor even to criticism of aspects of US society. Most Americans, like Australians, criticise their government's policies and their social problems at various times.
Anti-Americanism is a systematically resentful, often hateful, ideological outlook. It is characterised by a belief that US foreign policy is motivated only by malevolent self-interest, and that US policy is the principal source of evil in the world. In the anti-American world-view, American leaders and their willing allies are engaged in systematic mendacity to mobilise public support for their evil policies.
What is at the core of the harsh case made by the anti-Americans? Mainly, that it has supported right-wing dictatorships or political movements around the world and attempted to undermine left-wing ones. During the Cold War, in the context of a vital strategic struggle with the Soviet Union, this was true, up to a point. The US was, like all powers, merely pursuing its strategic interests. But when, after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, it had a chance to find a political settlement, it offered a solution based on internationally supervised elections. And in each case (Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cambodia) the US's enemies could not win a free election.
On close examination one finds that anti-Americans are themselves hardly models of intellectual consistency or moral purity.
The most vociferous have themselves been supporters of or apologists for dictatorial regimes. For example, those leaders of the moratorium marches against the US during the Vietnam War had little to say about the fate of human rights in Indochina after the communist victories. And many Australians - such as Labor ministers Tom Uren, Clyde Cameron and the recently deceased icon Jim Cairns - were naked apologists for totalitarian dictatorships in China and Vietnam.
The same is true for those American intellectuals who have made the case for hating the US. Noam Chomsky spent much of the 1970s denouncing the Carter administration and trying to discredit reports of massive human rights violations in Vietnam and a holocaust in Cambodia.
When human rights activists, including the pacifist Joan Baez, raised these great moral issues in petitions published in The New York Times, Chomsky did not sign, and denounced such public protests against tyranny as serving the interests of US imperialist ideology. Chomsky, like his anti-American cult followers, is a Stalinist wolf in libertarian sheep's clothing.
Today the US faces a complicated challenge. It has been attacked by a fanatical movement whose goals are not an equitable settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but the total liquidation of Israel, and of all Jews and Christians, and the creation of Islamic theocratic dictatorships worldwide.
That is why the jihadists not only fly aeroplanes into buildings to slaughter thousands of innocent Americans and others in New York and Washington, but also kill engineers from France in Pakistan, and countless more Arabs in Morocco and Saudi Arabia. In such a dangerous climate one may disagree with the wisdom of invading Iraq, but one cannot deny that there were reasonable concerns about the Iraqi dictator's possession and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
To accuse Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard of lying about WMDs, as both the anti-Americans and local anti-Howard obsessives have done, is absurd. Not only the US, Britain and Australia, but all governments concerned, including those opposed to invading Iraq, believed that Hussein had such weapons. UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix believed it. Former UNSCOM chief inspector Richard Butler believed it. Australian defence guru Hugh White believed it. Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett believed it. Why? Because we know that Hussein once had such weapons, and refused UN demands that he show evidence of their disposal. The fact that we have not yet found the weapons is a puzzle that needs to be answered, not a valid reason for moral outrage.
On a broader perspective, we should not forget that when the US exercised military power in the 20th century in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it was pursuing its strategic interests, but it was also on the side of freedom. That may explain why a Pew study of Vietnam's urban population in 2002 showed that, despite a 30-year war and decades of contrary propaganda from the communist government, 70 per cent was favourably disposed to the US. This is identical to the support found among the population of America's defeated former enemy, Japan. That may also explain why in 2002 almost 90 per cent of people in former American colony the Philippines felt the same way.
When the US Army has prevailed, prosperity and greater freedom have soon emerged. That is one reason why most people in the world still admire the US. And that is why the leader of our ally, Bush, deserves to be treated with respect.
Stephen Morris, an Australian citizen, is a senior fellow at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.
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