The Superpower They
Love to Hate
For many foreigners, anti-Americanism is
a reflex. But in this globalized age, every place is getting
more like every place else.
By Michael Elliott
Newsweek, January 31, 2000
Nothing quite like it had ever been seen
before. Gathered at the United Nations Security Council were
ambassadors, dignitaries and those just looking for a good
show. Jesse Helms, veteran chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, was in New York to give his audience a
lesson in language "a little more blunt" than they
were accustomed to hearing. The United States might be behind
in its dues to the United Nations, Helms said, but it was not
a "deadbeat nation." If America, as it did during
the Reagan years, decided to "lend support to nations
struggling to break the chains of tyranny," that was its
own business. In fact, argued Helms, if the United Nations
sought to "impose its presumed authority" on
America, it could face "eventual U.S. withdrawal"
from the organization. Then the members of the council firmly
made their own points—the United States had obligations of
membership; collective action was not the same as world
government. And Martin Andjaba, the ambassador from Namibia,
said that under the Reagan doctrine "some of us who were
legitimate and genuine national liberation movements were
called other names—terrorists."
It was a brief example of the way the world
is now often supposed to be. There, isolated, stood the United
States; arrayed against it was the rest of the world,
exasperated and offended by America's claim that it could do
what the hell it liked. And yet... there's another way to look
at the events at the United Nations. The mood was candid,
certainly; but polite. For Russia and China both, Helms's
insistence on the importance of national sovereignty rang
happy chords. And the disagreements between Helms and his
interlocutors were not what they once were; the right
contribution of the United States to the U.N. budget is a long
way from the tense hostility of the cold war. Indeed, at a
dinner the following night in honor of Richard Holbrooke,
America's U.N. ambassador, Helms and Andjaba greeted each
other warmly. The idea of the rest of the world enjoyably
throwing tomatoes at America looked too simple.
To be sure, it's not hard to find examples
of old-fashioned resentment of the American giant. Around the
world, there was widespread dismay last year when the Senate
rejected the treaty banning nuclear tests. Both Russia and
China saw NATO's war in Kosovo as a willful intrusion of
American power onto the sovereign rights of independent
nations. These are protests against the "hard"
manifestations of American might, expressed in geopolitical
and military terms. In addition, the twin phenomena of
globalization and the revolution in information technology
have helped create a new form of American dominance, one that
Harvard's Joseph Nye has christened "soft power." It
is the combination of these two sorts of force—one political
and military, one cultural and economic—that leads those
like French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine to christen the
United States a "hyperpower."
Yet there's less to this modern
anti-Americanism than meets the eye. In the geopolitical
realm, there is little sense of any organized opposition to
American power. In a certain sense, China and Russia may see
themselves as a rival to the United States; but they show no
inclination to make an enemy of it. Everywhere, the sheer
vitality of the American economy has spawned as many admiring
glances as resentment.
Similarly, in the field of soft power, all
is not what it first seems. American culture is not sweeping
all before it. Last week Disney announced that it was closing
its three retail stores in Germany for lack of business. The
most popular and valuable sporting franchise in the world is a
British soccer club, Manchester United. Throughout Asia,
Japanese pop-culture icons—Pokemon, Hello Kitty—are
shoving American ones aside. Anyway, what is American culture?
The United States, says Nye, is a cultural "sponge,"
a syncretic society that can assimilate influences from all
over the world and send them back home, subtly altered. Pizza:
American or Italian? Tacos: American or Mexican? Three of the
leading "American" music labels are owned by
Britain's EMI, Germany's Bertelsmann and Japan's Sony.
None of this means that American culture has
lost its power. The real point is that in a globalized world,
all culture is becoming a bit American, even as the United
States itself becomes ever more open to influences from other
nations. Immigrants from India, France and everywhere in
between, join U.S. Internet start-ups and then beam their
lessons back home. In Seattle, Starbucks imports Italian
espresso machines, makes coffee in Texas-size cups and then
sees the fashion imitated in a hundred foreign airports.
Those overseas can call such cultural
artifacts American, if they like; they can deplore them if
they must. But as Jesse Helms and the Security Council
discovered last week, we all now live on common ground. Here's
the message for the new century: those who hate America hate
themselves.
©
2000 Newsweek, Inc.
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