Letters to Americans: the hidden treasure of the US vs the World

There were over eighty national elections in 2004, including thirty presidential contests.

But I just typed “Elections 2004” into my Google search engine and in the first twenty results, only one didn’t refer to the race for the White House.

Many described the 2004 US presidential election as “The World’s Election”. It wasn’t (the world didn’t vote; the more “American” candidate triumphed), but at times it sure felt like it. The global media saturated us with up-to-the-minute coverage. Our conversations brimmed with “This is the most crucial contest since Lincoln-Douglas” and “The world’s future is in the hands of a few hicks in an Ohioan bowling alley!” There was no escape. The long shadow of Bush vs Kerry cast itself across Planet Earth. Come 2 November, it was just a relief to get the darn thing over with.

The election transpired at a time when, as me and my colleagues put it, “the consequences and implications of US power are subject to intense and global arguments.” With about 30% of world economic output, more than half of all military expenditure, and a seemingly limitless cultural reach, America is the “universal country”, the “superduperpower”, the “colossal Empire”. The American president is ordained “the world’s most powerful man.”

Read all eighteen exchanges in openDemocracy’s "My America: Letters to Americans" project here

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The human race is infatuated with America. Some love it, some hate it, the majority appear to do both. Just how important is this age of American hegemony we cannot yet judge. History will make and remake its judgment and keep selling us its revisionist must-reads, but one thing I think we can say for certain: at the very least, the presidency of George W Bush has amplified the potency of global feeling towards America. Clinton felt our pain, but that’s not interesting. Bush is judged to either cause our pain or heal it, depending on your persuasion – and that is interesting.

Bush’s appeal to 51% of the American electorate is the reason he doesn’t appeal to (roughly) 99.99% of non-America (and vice-versa). Because the world doesn’t like Bush’s Americanness (talked of both by himself and his detractors as a “Texan swagger”), it’s hard not to think the world doesn’t like America. Whatever else he’s done, Dubya has heightened all of our sentiments about his country.

So how to get beyond simplistic and emotive criticism of the USA? As American voters sizzled in the heat of an increasingly fiery campaign, openDemocracy undertook the “My America: Letters to Americans” project with precisely this aim in mind.

From China to Pakistan

In the opening exchange of the series, writing to Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, hero leader of the Chinese democracy movement Wei Jingsheng dared suggest “cultural isolation makes Americans often appear like peasants in remote villages.” Even pro-Americans like myself knew what Wei meant. There’s the old passport chestnut (“Didn’t you hear? Somewhere between only 7% and 25% of Americans know there’s a world out there!”). London tourism rates plummet when the US attacks Britain’s “neighbour” Iraq. President Bush asks Brazil’s then-president, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, “Do you have blacks, too?” Quiet Americans drift right across America’s high-on-prozac plains.

Wei was faultlessly articulating the “Letters to Americans” project, wasn’t he? Well, no. There was a reason the project invited Americans to respond (very consciously, this was not “Letters to America” or “Bleat at the Big Gal and Blame Her for all Ya Woes”). Professor Slaughter, who owns a passport and uses it, insisted that American parochialism “is a function more of geography than personality”.

Chestnuts were already getting roasted, and the post-election holiday season was a long way off.

Right off the bat, Slaughter dished the dirt on what goes down when you’re on the receiving end of “global discontent”: “Americans hear nothing but criticism, and respond with defensiveness and increasing support for an ugly combination of isolationism and unilateralism.”

This was going to be complicated, darn it. On election eve, eighteen exchanges later, Steve Coll of the Washington Post lamented the lack of knowledge amongst his fellow Americans – “even those in government” – about “aspects of subcontinental Pakistan”.

Don’t even go there.

It was the peerless Thomas Jefferson who immortalised America as an “Empire of Liberty”. I mean, when you’ve got that much space, those many resources, that much variety, why in James Madison’s name would you care about the rest of the world?

If you’re not American, the answer appears obvious. We’ve got Venice. They’ve got The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas with its mock-up Piazza San Marco, clear-water “canals” and Nevadan Gondoliers. We’ve got the world. They’ve got the World Showcase at Disney’s Epcot Center. Lamentable it may be, but contrary to Tinseltown lore, not everyone in Germany is garbed in lederhosen, and not every African struts around naked but for a skimpy loincloth. Fact is, we all of us wear a whole lotta Gap. America’s “world” is cleaner, but we are the world. Americans and non-Americans are more alike and more different than non-Americans suspect Americans realise.

Or something like that.

In his exchange with social-democrat British economist Will Hutton, anti-tax crusader Grover “drown government in the bathtub” Norquist evoked some splendid interventionist-isolationism: “America is the successor to the European civilisation, not its extension. We fight our wars – the revolution, the war of 1812, the first and second world wars, and the cold war – to not be a part of Europe. Europe is where and what many of our ancestors left. On purpose.”

Ouch!

As expected, Hutton played Euro-rationalist. The world has long thought that, while making mistakes, America “is essentially benign and a force for good”. But now all this is in question – and how self-defeating of the United States, “because the US, although awesomely powerful, is not an island.”

A force for good? “America may be great … but does it not also need to be good?” asked Antara Dev Sen from New Delhi, further complicating things as she listed America’s military escapades of the past fifty years and judged them all bad. A baffled Dinesh D’Souza, author of What’s So Great About America (no question mark), replied with the same list (though this time as a record of America’s achievements). “The United States has been a force for good in the world,” he concluded.

Good? Great? Boy, can distinctions between these things cause a whole lotta hooey!

Whatever the precise tag, it matters when Somali journalist Harun Hassan writes how “The warning of deadly catastrophe [in Somalia] fell on deaf ears until one man raised his hands: George Bush [Snr], president of the United States”, but then, after lamenting America’s “total lack of political foresight”, concludes that “[the US] intervention in Somalia was helpful, but I doubt if it was genuine.”

As the reactions to the photos of abuse at Abu Ghraib prove, America has a problem. People expect more from America than they do other nations – a better class of knocking. This is both hypocritical of America’s knee-jerk critics and a result of America’s own repeatedly declared lofty principles (America says it is better). OK, so people love to whinge, “I expected more off you, but you let us all down” – what better abrogation of personal responsibility? Nevertheless, as an Americophile, I feel a pang of regret at hearing how someone grew up loving and believing in America, only to now wonder what on earth this great nation is up to. If someone wants to be an anti-American, screw ‘em. If someone wants to cheer for America, but can’t find a reason to do so, this is not good, however blind at times.

Though whether there’s a way to turn global opinion in favour of the globe’s most powerful actor is exceedingly doubtful. It’s tough at the top. Comes with the territory. Only… I don’t know, there’s just this sense that America is doing the Hokey-Cokey, one foot in, one foot out. Which is it: the empire of liberty or the liberal empire? Until America decides (or in Niall Ferguson’s attractive argument, quits its self-denial) nobody will be happy. Not I. Not the disappointed guy.

As Michael Maren, the American respondent to Harun Hassan, said, America “is an idea and an ideal”. This theme runs through the entire series like a knobbly backbone. “A polity founded on a set of ideas and ideals,” is how Slaughter nailed it. A “people ‘of the book’ – the constitution”, preached Norquist. “A nation founded on splendid principles”, admitted Dev Sen. An “inspiring concept,” confessed Europhile Hutton. America is “a promise,” in the eyes of Jim Shultz. The US was “founded in opposition to cynicism”, wrote Chinese poet Yang Lian. “Like other nations, America is cynical, only less so”, blubbed West Bank settler Yisrael Harel. “From the very beginning, America, the land of freedom, has also been the world’s dream”, maintained Ramin Jahanbegloo from Tehran.

But is Jahanbegloo right? Is America also the world’s dream? Tehran’s dream? And if so, what should America be doing about it? Nothing? Exporting its democratic values? Toppling Saddam? Toppling the Ayatollah? Or how about we answer this question: is America truer to its “principles” when it goes to war with Iraq or when it does deals with the tyrant Saddam?

Hmm…

Writing on “gluttonous” US relations with Africa, the Nigerian activist and writer Ken Wiwa pleaded that “the nation of liberty respects the liberty of all the world’s citizens”, believing “many solutions to the deep and complex problems in Africa may lie in the democratic traditions and institutions of America.” But are these two separate, unconnected ideals? Does America respect liberty by forcibly promoting it and implanting its institutional model of democracy? Or does it leave people to be free to be unfree? And how do we ask these questions without sounding like Donald Rumsfeld?

In her response to Wiwa, Gayle Smith, who was senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council under President Clinton, suggested that “most of the resentment that has been unleashed around the world is, in fact, a plea for America to represent the idea of America that has inspired people for generations.”

So, this is about how America does things? There’s certainly some truth in this reason, but not enough. Strip international affairs down to its bones, and the US is undoubtedly in a no-win position: if it acts, it acts wrongly; if it doesn’t act, it is unforgivably irresponsible. That is not an excuse for acting badly, but it is meant to sober simple criticism. For nations and peoples who have failed (or, more commonly, never tried) to meet America’s ideals, to accuse America of falling from grace is a touch bogus. Many pay heed to this, but then repeatedly fall into the very trap they identify. We are all imperfect, I guess. We are all like America.

From Russia with love

“As a player on the world stage, America is at best inconsistent, at worst treacherous.” So wrote Sergei Markov from Moscow. You can almost see global heads nodding in agreement. Except, scratch below the surface, and Markov is making an essentially Russian nationalist assertion. America, in its superpowerful triumph, has punctured the pride of Mother Russia. How many non-Russians resent that, I wonder? Ask the Ukrainians amassed in Kiev’s Independence Square. “Most Ukrainians love the United States, and to be an American here – any American – is to be a rock star”, reports Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. “Protestors overhear me speaking English and line up to ask me to autograph their orange ribbons with a big ‘USA’.”

But then there’s Asma Jahangir, one of the world’s foremost human-rights lawyers, writing from Pakistan: “I am no idealist. I realise that every nation will serve its own interest first … but – because the American people demanded it off their governments – they have stood their ground whenever human rights were violated and democracy subverted. This expectation seems to have disappeared.”

The problem, as I see it, is that Jahangir’s is emphatically not an argument against the basic logic of the (Wilsonian) ideology presently driving US foreign policy. What it is, recognisable or otherwise, is an argument for the global spread and protection of democracy – denied in Pakistan, in part thanks to Islamabad’s assistance in the “war on terror”. In some strange way, Jahangir’s is an argument for the practical realisation of America’s neo-conservative promise – an escalation of its agenda.

But this is not what Jahangir means to ask for – and that’s where things get knotty. “America may be more unpopular than ever before, but its hegemony really has coincided with a democratic revolution around the world”, wrote the philosopher Michael Ignatieff in a recent essay. You cannot satisfy all and sundry, that’s for sure, but if you could invent a way to further spread democracy, human rights and the handsome American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, without resort to violence or full-scale war, you’d sure as heck make a large share of global folks as happy as Larry.

Ultimately, there’s something unrealistic about the world’s opposition to the non-realist trend in US foreign policy. Unless, of course, there’s a viable alternative to neo-connery. And if there is, the world needs to come up with it. Quick. Some things only spread so far without the aid of a bigger knife. And the free world does face dangerous foes – is that at all in doubt?

Let’s agree that, by nature of its own ideals, America has an obligation to support pro-democracy movements. Now let’s debate what we mean by “support”. This is where the game is at. All else is a waste of time.

The global reaction to America’s neo-globalism appears, in the main, to suggest that the creed of spreading democracy has, in Steve Coll’s words, “helped discredit the very ideas that are the most enduring source of [America’s] global influence” – namely, “democracy, social equality, and human rights”. How on earth this can be – well, your guess is as good as mine. I’m going to the bar.

“Democracy, liberty, dignity, religious tolerance, freedom of expression – these are universal principles that people from all nations can share”, Anne-Marie Slaughter claimed in the opening exchange. If we are agreed on this, then the world is notably less divided than we might think. “Against their own narrative of fear, starting from the trauma of 9/11, Americans have unrolled an even more dramatic narrative of hope”, writes Timothy Garton Ash in his book Free World. For what it’s worth, my belief is that, after the fascistic and communistic horrors of the 20th century, for all its faults, if the United States of America is leading the world, openly debating whether or not it should spread liberty and democracy (however clumsily), we are heading in the right direction, and, frankly, we are pretty damn lucky.

The end of the beginning

openDemocracy’s “My America: Letters to Americans” series ended on 2 November 2004, the day George W Bush was re-elected President of the USA. Throughout the series, the personal mixed with the national, the national with the continental, and the continental with the universal (and that’s not mentioning the drinks). Even Faiza al-Araji, an Iraqi mother of four writing from Baghdad to former US marine Anthony Swofford (who served in the first Gulf war), couldn’t help noting how “one of the benefits of this war is that it has brought American people here.”

Expect surprises. Yisrael Harel writing from the West Bank, insisting that US policies are not sufficiently pro-Israel. Petr Mach from the Czech Republic accusing Europe, unlike America, of being fundamentally undemocratic. Jeremy Rifkin replying from the heart of Washington D.C. that America must learn from “the European dream”. From Sweden, Kajsa Klein shamelessly judging the American accent superior to “that restrained and complicated British”. Iranian Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi telling a deceased Eleanor Roosevelt that “For the first time in my life, I am happy to see someone no longer alive.” Grover Norquist signing off with the fighting words “those who wish America ill should keep their heads down and not stand next to those foolish enough to shoot at us.”

Dominic Hilton conveys his unique satirical perspective on global events in his “Bread & Circuses” column

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Lessons? The US would do well to see that non-America is as multi-dimensional as America. Check out Sabine Herold from Paris, head of the pro-American group Liberté Chérie. In her exchange with Kenneth Timmerman (author of The French Betrayal of America), Herold declared her desire for “demonstrations recalling the close ties that unite France and America”, instead of the anti-Bush street parades that marred her beautiful city.

And the rest of us? Well, first, let’s learn to apply the above logic in reverse – America is not homogenous or one-dimensional, but exceptionally diverse. Second, I suggest we quit obsessing about Uncle Sam for a while. It’s high time we kicked the addiction and took greater interest in ourselves. Americans aren’t fixated on us the whole time. Let’s take some of their medicine, and quit staring at their big ole butt. In the final analysis, as Jack Kennedy might’ve put it, in all its glory, the world needs to become a little more like America. I shall write more about this early in the New Year.

My America: Letters to Americans was made possible thanks to the hard work of Ying-Tzu Chen, David Hayes, Justine Isola, Julian Kramer and others at openDemocracy, with additional help from Paul Kingsnorth