I'm planning my next big project, something to think through, to write while I'm travelling. My time here in the States has definitely prepared me to talk about Americans, Europeans, Brits, and the differences between them. The mutual disdain between Americans and Europeans is palpable here in DC, thick enough to cut with a knife. The Brits remain aloof and faintly amused by it all, but it's worrying too.
According to some of the more radical Americans I meet - people who are asked to address groups because of their supposed erudition - the nations of "old Europe" - France and Germany mainly - view the world purely in terms of realpolitik, only getting involved when they have something to gain, supporting whatever dictator or democrat can give it to them.
Americans on the other hand, they posit, have a Wilsonian tradition of intervening to make the world a better place. America is a great liberator, a great democratiser, it has core values that other countries don't have. America hasn't always acted that way, they admit, but the reason for that is because the realpolitik-thinkers at the State Department and the CIA have made America act like a European country, betraying its roots, they say. These kind of evangelical democratisers revel in the "missionary spirit" of America.
I don't think the sort of Americans who talk about value-led foreign policy, about democratising the Middle East, speak for most Americans. I think most Americans are still sitting on the fence, I think they'll be hard converts to Imperialism, I think they'll reject the label and the responsbilities of the job of being the world policeman, even if they like the benefits of Empire. I guess for a lot of them there are no benefits - their jobs are being outsourced to Delhi or wherever. What do they care about the outside world? With oil prices at $40 per barrel, what has it done for them lately?
At this moment of skyrocketing anti-Americanism, I think it's of great importance for Americans to decide whether this government, and the foreign policy evangelists that influence it, are speaking for them. It has to be put more fairly than I have put it here thus far, so I'll briefly lay out a more balanced view.
Should Americans seek to make other countries democracies, or at least pluralities, where all men and women are equal, where power is derived, to some considerable extent, from the people? Should America use its great might in the service of right? Should it prevent genocide, for often it can be prevented. Should it prevent wars of aggression? Should it remove dictatorships that are too entrenched for their people to overthrow?
I suspect most Americans would answer yes to some or all of these, qualifying their answers with "depends ..."
This is an eminently sensible and moral viewpoint. We should try hard to help others when we are confident that we can succeed, that we won't do more harm than good, and that we won't destroy ourselves in the process. We need to be better at communicating and implementing our good intentions.
But I also detect a belief in Americans that people in other countries should solve their own problems. This is actually rooted in a widely-shared sense of humility in Americans that foreigners would be rather surprised to discover. Contrary to the evangelists, who believe that America is a beacon of light in a dark world, most Americans believe that people of other nations are absolutely capable of freeing themselves, of eschewing the desire to conquer or slaughter each other. Most Americans have very little of the missionary in them. Unsurprisingly, most of the foreign policy evangelists are white Anglo-Saxon males.
In the flabby liberal fringe of the American middle classes, however, I tend to meet the most despicable, and worst-informed of all the types of isolationists present in this country. Mindless anti-authoritarianism and deep-seated hostility towards pragmatic people of all kinds (leaders, soldiers) are their defining and only features. Though they read the Washington Post every day, all the liberals in America combined boast less intellectual curiosity and analytical honesty than one Washington cab-driver.
Who will reclaim the hallowed middle ground between radical evangelists and kneejerk liberals?
Who will advocate the realistic idealism that could make America both great and good?
Not Takoma Park liberals, and not those lunatics in Rumsfeld's office either!
