To Tom Friedman: Why Does Everyone Hate Us?

Dear Tom Friedman,

Thanks for your invitation to comment on "Why does everyone else hate us?" (IHT June 2, 2003). I am 57 years old, born and raised in USA, and have lived in France once (1980-85), and in England twice (1968-70, and 1990 to the present), so I have a somewhat European perspective on this question. Here are my thoughts:

First, I think it is more productive to ask why so many non-muslim foreigners disagree with us, rather than why they hate us. There is an unfortunate tendency in public debate to descend too quickly below the substance of an issue into the pit of ad hominem argumentation. You have earned widespread respect as a columnist by focusing on substance more than most of your colleagues, but you are nonetheless guilty of occasional lapses into the ad hominem pit which I, as a faithful reader, feel duty bound to bring to your attention.

Anti-American sentiments of the kind that erupted during the international debate over the wisdom and justice of invading Iraq have a long history, predating the end of the cold war and the emergence of USA as a hyper-power. These sentiments have been aroused by many things over time. To name a few:

Palestine

Many people around the world believe that USA policy in Palestine has been unjust. In 1949, many felt that, while the creation of a national home for Jews in Palestine had been a just and compassionate thing to do, the UN Security Council's decision to partition Palestine, create Israel and grant it sovereignty over 55% of the land was simply an injustice and not, as Chaim Weizman testitied before the UN Special Commission on Palestine a year earlier, a "lesser injustice" (compared to the injustice of the plight of the 250,000 Jews in refugee camps in Germany). Aand many people also thought it unwise, since it would clearly lead to war. People believed that the Security Council's decision was dictated by the Truman Administration with the support of the Stalin administration, and held USA responsible for the result. Ever since, most people have held USA responsible for funding, arming and giving political support to Israel's inexorable drive to realise the "manifest destiny" of rule from Dan to Beersheba.

Vietnam

Many people felt and still feel that the Vietnam War was an unwise, unjust, myopic exercise of American military power. You recently commended the Bush Administration's "muscular, principled" foreign policy. In the eyes of many, the Vietnam War is a tragic illustration of the dangers of combining American muscle with American principles. If you have any doubts about these dangers, just ask Robert McNamara.

Imperialism

The story of Colin Powell's remark at a meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury has made the rounds. When asked (not by the Archbishop) whether the US design for Iraq was not another exercise of American imperialism, Powell reportedly said, ""Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return." Though these are noble words, they beg facts of which many people around the world are very much aware: the USA currently has military bases in 58 countries. As of 1988 (the most recent year for which I could find figures in a brief surfing session, but I'd be surprised if the number has gone down since then) there were 794 such bases. I am told that the WSJ reported the other day that the Pentagon has decided to establish a "highway" of permanent bases from Germany to Korea.

Then consider the most recent National Security Strategy declaration that the US reserves the right to project military power anywhere it finds necessary to protect national security (as defined at the sole discretion of the USG), and that no nation in the world must ever again be allowed to challenge USA's military hegemony. Putting these things together, it seems a little silly for USG spokesmen and apologists to affect a wounded posture when foreigners brand us as imperialist. True, unlike the 18th-19th century European imperialists who sought to colonize and rule mainly for economic gain (though the colonial powers usually also insisted theirs were "civilising missions"), the objective of our imperialism has always been plainly to impose our principles (democracy, rule of law, defense of human rights as we understand them, and free market economics). Mandelbaum is right to point out that most people accept that our imperialism is more benign than the 18th-19th century variety. But given our insistence on the right to impose our principles by force if necessary anywhere we choose, our allocation of $400 billion per year to assure the means to do this, our declaration that we will not tolerate the emergence of any rival power who might restrain us from doing this, and our ability to persuade ourselves that almost any means justify these ends (Vietnam in the 1960's, Latin America in the 1970's), Colin Powell should neither be surprised nor take umbrage when foreigners apply the "I" word to us unflatteringly.

Capitalism

Outside the USA, Socialism is not dead, nor should it be. The American people by and large believe that the ideological war declared by Karl Marx has been lost by Marx's adherents and won by us. The people of no other country on earth (including the UK) believe this by and large. Elsewhere, majorities or large minorities believe in a social contract that requires the state to be far more aggressive than it is in the USA in defending the individual against what would happen to him if capitalism were otherwise allowed to have its way. This is one reason why the goals of US imperialism -- democracy, rule of law, human rights and free market economics -- make many people unhappy. Fourteen years after the collapse of the Soviet union, there are lots of people in Russia and elsewhere in eastern Europe, including especially East Germany, who continue to believe that that they lost more (in the form of social solidarity and security) than they gained (in being liberated from totalitarian states and seeing the police stations replaced everywhere by shopping malls). Given this ambivalence about the net benefit of the triumph of USA's ideals, you can see why it makes many people angry when we declare the right and the intention to use unilateral force to impose those ideals anywhere we chose.

Religion

Since we are not talking about why the Islamic world hates us, there is less to say about this. But it is worth noting that Europeans are by and large rather more secular than Americans. As they look across the Atlantic, the secular Europeans are becoming increasingly anxious about the role they see religion playing in the formation of state policy. While the legal and institutional separation of church and state is far more developed in the USA, Europeans believe that the influence of religious interest groups on US government policy -- especially the Christian right and the Jewish supporters of Israel -- is far more pronounced than in Europe.

A Few Other Things

As everyone knows, the rest of the world is angry at the Bush Administration for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, for refusing to accept the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, for refusing to require US pharmaceutical giants to offer drugs at discounted prices in the third world, for refusing the ratify the treaty banning land mines….

Now back to your Brief Theory of Everything. I think you are overstating the degree to which USA's critics in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America feel that the exercise of American power in Afghanistan and Iraq feel that they themselves have been affected by the exercise of that power. I think most people felt that the elimination of the Taliban and the scattering of al-Qaeda's leadership made them somewhat more secure, certainly not less. I think most people felt that the elimination of Saddam Hussein made them somewhat less secure -- by further inflaming Islamic fundamentalist passions -- but only marginally so. These people aren't upset with USA because they feel USA's unilateral military actions a threat to them. They are upset because they feel that more and more of USA's actions are either unwise or unjust. They are upset because they disagree both with guiding principles of this Administration's foreign policy, and with the muscular means by which we are pursuing those principles.

Here are my ideas for managing USA's relations with the rest of the globe:

• Adopt a more principled and muscular approach to rolling back Israeli's progressive occupation of more and more of Palestine;

• Renounce the use of unilateral military force to replace repressive regimes with democratic ones, and announce that overthrowing repressive regimes is still an important goal of American foreign policy, but that in future USA will only pursue this goal when a substantial majority of the UN supports us;

• Re-assert the right to take unilateral military action where there is a meaningful risk to USA's national security;

• Acknowledge that this was not the case in Iraq, and that both in foresight and in hindsight, a policy of intrusive inspections would have been far wiser than the course we chose to pursue.