Posted on 05/31/2003 3:54:12 PM PDT by Pokey78
As President Bush meets other world leaders this weekend, and tries to patch things up between America and the rest of the planet, I find myself looking back and asking: What's been going on here? After 9/11 people wondered, "Why do they hate us?" speaking of the Muslim world. After the Iraq war debate, the question has grown into, "Why does everybody else hate us?"
I've sketched out my own answer, which I modestly call "A Brief Theory of Everything." I offer it here, even more briefly, in hopes that people will write in with comments or catcalls so I can continue to refine it, turn it into a quick book and pay my daughter's college tuition. Here goes:
During the 1990's, America became exponentially more powerful — economically, militarily and technologically — than any other country in the world, if not in history. Broadly speaking, this was because the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the alternative to free-market capitalism, coincided with the Internet-technology revolution in America. The net effect was that U.S. power, culture and economic ideas about how society should be organized became so dominant (a dominance magnified through globalization) that America began to touch people's lives around the planet — "more than their own governments," as a Pakistani diplomat once said to me. Yes, we began to touch people's lives — directly or indirectly — more than their own governments.
As people realized this, they began to organize against it in a very inchoate manner. The first manifestation of that was the 1999 Seattle protest, which triggered a global movement. Seattle had its idiot side, but what the serious protesters there were saying was: "You, America, are now touching my life more than my own government. You are touching it by how your culture seeps into mine, by how your technologies are speeding up change in all aspects of my life, and by how your economic rules have been `imposed' on me. I want to have a vote on how your power is exercised, because it's a force now shaping my life."
Why didn't nations organize militarily against the U.S.? Michael Mandelbaum, author of "The Ideas That Conquered the World," answers: "One prominent international relations school — the realists — argues that when a hegemonic power, such as America, emerges in the global system other countries will naturally gang up against it. But because the world basically understands that America is a benign hegemon, the ganging up does not take the shape of warfare. Instead, it is an effort to Gulliverize America, an attempt to tie it down, using the rules of the World Trade Organization or U.N. — and in so doing demanding a vote on how American power is used."
There is another reason for this nonmilitary response. America's emergence as the hyperpower is happening in the age of globalization, when economies have become so intertwined that China, Russia, France or any other rivals cannot hit the U.S. without wrecking their own economies.
The only people who use violence are rogues or nonstate actors with no stakes in the system, such as Osama bin Laden. Basically, he is in a civil war with the Saudi ruling family. But, he says to himself, "The Saudi rulers are insignificant. To destroy them you have to hit the hegemonic power that props them up — America."
Hence, 9/11. This is where the story really gets interesting. Because suddenly, Puff the Magic Dragon — a benign U.S. hegemon touching everyone economically and culturally — turns into Godzilla, a wounded, angry, raging beast touching people militarily. Now, people become really frightened of us, a mood reinforced by the Bush team's unilateralism. With one swipe of our paw we smash the Taliban. Then we turn to Iraq. Then the rest of the world says, "Holy cow! Now we really want a vote over how your power is used." That is what the whole Iraq debate was about. People understood Iraq was a war of choice that would affect them, so they wanted to be part of the choosing. We said, sorry, you don't pay, you don't play.
"Where we are now," says Nayan Chanda, publications director at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (whose Web site yaleglobal .yale.edu is full of valuable nuggets), "is that you have this sullen anger out in the world at America. Because people realize they are not going to get a vote over American power, they cannot do anything about it, but they will be affected by it."
Finding a stable way to manage this situation will be critical to managing America's relations with the rest of the globe. Any ideas? Let's hear 'em: thfrie@nytimes.com.
D*mn straight!
Exactly why globalization is a good thing and why America must maintain military dominance.
A whiff of the grape and a touch of the lash.
Oderint dum metuant
Maybe Tom is too complicating.
Because England/USA has a military presence there, establishes their borders and selects their rulers, maybe they just don't want us there ???
Everybody else does not hate us.
It's all about do-re-mi.
Socialist and other barbaric economic systems can not compete with a republican system. We'll keep dominating until either we succumb to the siren of feudalism or they turn their backs on it.
"In the valley of the blind the one-eyed man is king."
Yes Tom, freedom is a wonderful thing. The rest of the world should try following the examples America has set.
>>> ... the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization (whose Web site yaleglobal .yale.edu is full of valuable nuggets),
I'll run right over there. NOT!!!
He's right about that. Bush could have launched those missiles, planes, and ships at anyone with any connection to terrorism and the American public would have supported him. I really don't care whether we leave Afghanistan and Iraq in smithereens....Bush's action will discourage anyone else from taking us on. And that's the unvarnished truth. Does that make me Godzilla?
Friedman was on PBS News Hour last week saying the most intelligent things about Iraq I've heard anywhere. (He was pro-war before the war.) He went to Iraq a week or so ago, flew over it, drove through it, talked to everyone, and reports that the country has obviously been a worse wreck from Saddam's regime than anyone could have imagined. Farms have not farmed for decades, business people have done no business...the country is horribly poor and dysfunctional. It's NOT our fault, Friedman stressed over and over. But now we're stuck with trying to fix enough of it to get it moving in some positive direction .....
We need that oil money to pay ourselves back for the cost of liberating Iraqis. And for the decades-long task facing us of educating those people so they don't blame everything on us. We really did not hurt them. Friedman said this quite plainly. But unless we start moving the country in a positive direction very soon, the Iraqis will turn their anger on us. Not good.
For myself I love your baseball, football, pick-ups, your political system, your heart, your bravery, your intelligence, some of your art and music, your Constitiution and your people but you can keep that rap cr*p, porn, and loose attitudes to sex, drugs, relationships and responsibilies that seems to permeate your current pop cuture. Hey I know it ain't all your fault but your previous Vice- President did invent the internet!!
:) Keep Smilin,
Mel
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