Contributing to this report are John N. Maclean who has served as The Tribune`s foreign editor; Ray Moseley, London bureau chief, who has reported from Rome, Cairo, Belgrade, Moscow, Brussels and Africa; Moscow correspondent Howard Tyner who has served in London, Vienna, Bonn, Frankfurt and Warsaw;
Timothy McNulty, Mideast and Peking correspondent before joining the paper`s Washington bureau; Peking correspondent Joseph A. Reaves who has reported from London, Vienna, Warsaw and the Middle East; Janet Cawley, Toronto correspondent, who has also reported from Montreal and London; and Vincent J. Schodolski, Mexico City correspondent, who has also served in London, Stockholm and Beirut.
Two-hundred-and-nine years ago, a rag-tag bunch of outcasts, misfits, malcontents and ne`er-do-wells decided that they were sick of British tourists.
America was born.
In the intervening centuries, we`ve been cursed in a hundred languages, burned in effigy around the world, and hailed as the greatest nation on Earth. At least we`re not boring.
On this week of our birthday, we asked The Tribune`s foreign correspondents to appraise the stock of the United States in the world market. Where is it rising, and where is it falling? Is the Ugly American dead? Have we learned anything about being good guests? And how do our hosts around the world talk about us among themselves?
Viewing the American giant to the south, Canadians sometimes remark, with a touch of asperity, ”big and strong and never wrong.” Viewing the same giant from the south, Latin Americans often refer to what they see with a touch of envy as ”the colossus of the north.” They find it upsetting that anyone refers to the United States as ”America,” considering that they and Canada claim more land mass on the American continent than does the U.S.
Neither most Canadians nor most Latin Americans are blatantly anti-American. But neither is without reservations. The U.S. is so big and so rich that it makes an uncomfortable friend as well as a formidable enemy.
Practically everyone has an opinion about the U.S. Many admire the democratic Western values and robust economy of which the U.S. is the leading symbol.
But leading symbols make easy targets.
Anti-Americanism can be so virulent that it can become a major prop of a government, as it is today in Iran, Cuba and Nicaragua. Or it can be a wistful envy, the sort of complimentary resentment often run across in poor countries. ”You are so rich,” is a phrase traveling Americans hear repeated many times, and not without rancor.
People across the world expect something special of the U.S., something good and noteworthy, and when the U.S. falls short, the reaction can be far more negative than with other major actors on the world scene of whom little is expected except greed and cynicism.
A Lebanese journalist with strong ties to the Phalangists at the time the American marines were sent into Lebanon remarked how gratified his group of Lebanese felt at the development. ”You see,” he said, ”we`ve had experience with the marines. We know that in the end they will leave again.” He thought the marines would help his outfit calm things down and then would go away and leave them in charge.
There`s a pattern here. People expect the Americans to be good-hearted, to make a noble gesture, and then to get out. (For individual Americans, the noble gesture often is the spending in a foreign country of the world`s most common currency, the dollar.) People expect the Russians to come in, offer some military aid, and then overstay their welcome.
Sometimes it actually works this way. Western Europeans old enough to remember World War II remember as well the Marshall Plan which followed, generally recognized as one of the most magnanimous and cooperative gestures in the history of international relations. But gratitude has a short life, seldom enduring one generation let alone being passed to the next.
The mistrust of America today as leader of the Western nations, especially among Western Europe`s younger generation, is born of more recent experiences such as Vietnam.
When the biggest guy on the block makes an apparent mistake, he can expect to take more guff than if he were a smaller guy. How many people harbor resentment against the French for their earlier role in Vietnam?
Yet many foreigners regard Americans with a mix of envy and admiration.
”For us, you are our big brothers,” said one Saudi Arabian who had studied in the U.S. and returned to the kingdom tobecome a successful businessman, capable of buying and selling most Americans several times over. America is seen as the protector of Saudi Arabia, a relationship which several developing nations enjoy. Go to South Korea or Taiwan and you will receive a most flattering welcome. These countries have performed economic and political miracles under the protective wing of the U.S.
Even enduring friendships can become difficult to bear. Americans certainly are made welcome in Great Britain and Israel, for example. But the British love to look down their noses at their brash American cousins. And Israel resents its dependence.
In a heated discussion once on the subject of Israel`s policies toward Arabs on the West Bank, an Israeli brought matters to a close by declaring,
”When the time comes, we will show you. We have a bomb for Cairo, one for Amman, one for Damascus. And if we can, we will send one to Washington, too.” The seeds of anti-Americanism certainly lie buried in the sort of relationship in which one nation is wholly dominant and the other is subservient.
Take Nicaragua for example.
Anastasio Somoza, the son of the dictator the U.S. marines installed in Nicaragua in the 1930s, gave the U.S. what it wanted in Nicaragua for many years, namely stability. And then he tried to hang on too long. The U.S., in a temporarily self-righteous period under Jimmy Carter, cooperated in throwing him out.
But the U.S. got little or no credit among the Nicaraguans, who under the leftist Sandinistas found themselves inevitably drawn away from a friendly relationship with the U.S.
The American citizen, wandering the Earth, is preceded by these perceptions of America. And he must deal with them, the good and bad, for they come with the passport.
Ray Moseley, the Tribune`s London correspondent, reports: Peter Jenkins, the political columnist of the Sunday Times of London, was recently in Woodstock, England, near Oxford, a favorite haunt of American tourists. A young couple passing in an automobile shouted at him: ”Go home!” They had evidently assumed he was American.
Jenkins cited the incident to illustrate his belief that there is growing anti-Americanism in Britain. It would be surprising if that were not the case in many countries of Europe at the moment. The strength of the dollar has resulted in the most massive invasion of Americans in history, and it is perhaps understandable if Europeans are a bit put out when they can`t get theater tickets because the Americans have bought them up or when they find their favorite restaurants overrun with Americans.
It is difficult to gauge how deep-rooted this feeling is. I have lived in Europe, at different times, for 20 years and I have seldom encountered any hostility based on my nationality. Many Europeans admire America and like Americans for their optimism, their lack of class consciousness and their openness. At the same time my European friends have never hesitated to express their annoyance, or amusement, at the tribal peculiarities of American tourists.
The old notion that travel broadens understanding between peoples is not entirely accurate. Europeans who visit America almost invariably return enthusiastic about the country and slightly overwhelmed by the friendliness of the people. But as tourists, Americans probably rank only slightly behind the Germans in the low esteem they inspire in Europe.
The stereotypical European view of an American is that he chews gum incessantly, a habit offensive to European sensibilities; that he looks bizarre (men in plaid slacks, and women of incredible girth); that he talks too loudly in restaurants and other public places and that he betrays an abysmal ignorance of European culture, history and languages.
No doubt only a minority of Americans fit the stereotype, but they are the ones who are noticed, and they confirm Europeans in a belief, especially widespread in Britain, that Americans are a people without culture.
Philip Norman, a British writer who has lived in New York for the past two years, has virtually made a career of writing articles for British newspapers and magazines on this theme. The British lap this up, ignoring the fact that it is Britain, not America, that has given the world skinheads, punk and soccer hooligans.
European attitudes toward Americans are colored, of course, not only by what they see of American tourists but by such diverse factors as U.S. government policy, violence in American society, American influence in their own lives, and history. Some people in Spain are broadly anti-American in outlook because they have never forgiven the U.S. for depriving Spain of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the Spanish-American war. Some Europeans find American accents grating, and are not loath to say so. I once introduced myself to a woman in the government press office in Monaco and she shuddered. ”Ugh, that horrid accent,” she said.
American influences in Europe are impossible to escape, from television programs and movies to the fast-food restaurants that have proliferated in recent years and are especially popular with the young in Britain and France. Even some British pubs have been redecorated to give them more of the flavor of American bars. American football, shown on British TV for the last few years, has become wildly popular, and a number of amateur football teams have been formed.
In Britain, attitudes toward Americans are perhaps more divergent than anywhere in Europe. Left-wingers in most of Europe, for example, tend to be critical of current American policies and especially of U.S. nuclear policy. But they feel it necessary to point out that they do not consider themselves anti-American. On the British Left, that is often not the case. Some of them seem to relish flaunting a kind of visceral anti-Americanism, like the woman in the peace movement here who told me at a dinner party, ”I don`t find I particularly like Americans, you know.”
Anti-Americanism is not limited to the left wing, however. Enoch Powell, a right-wing member of Parliament best known for his opposition to black immigration to Britain, once muttered to a friend, while attending a function at the American Embassy, that he was ”on enemy territory.” But for every Enoch Powell there is a Margaret Thatcher, constantly exhorting her fellow citizens to emulate the entrepreneurial spirit of the Americans. She personifies the many people in Britain who admire America and value the special relationship between the two countries.
