Peter Cuthbertson talks about the one of the
newest right of centre blogs to hit the internet:
America in the World...
It might appear to be an easy job to identify the major trouble spots across the globe today. They range from a rising China and a bellicose Russia to a nuclear North Korea and a would-be nuclear Iran – not forgetting the Islamist terrorist groups threatening almost every Western nation.
But according to a Pew poll two years ago, more British people identified the United States’ involvement in Iraq as a threat to world peace than said Iran or North Korea – results repeated in France, Spain, Russia and across Asia and the Middle East. To say that global anti-Americanism is now a major phenomenon is merely a statement of the obvious. There is an anti-American element to the thought of so many ideologues. Islamists see America as the Great Satan. Communists and neo-Nazis can blame America for her role in defeating the Third Reich and the USSR. Socialists are infuriated by the success and meritocracy of a supremely capitalist society. Anti-Semites can blame America for defending the Middle East’s only democracy.
But those who cherish Western civilisation, the free economy and liberal democratic values are right to look to the United States as the leader of the free world. While no nation is perfect, and America can be criticised for her mistakes like any other country, she remains Britain’s number one ally when it comes to military cooperation and intelligence sharing, our top trading partner and the engine of the global economy. In terms of research and development, medical innovation and private aid to developing countries, America is the global leader. When it comes to democratic values, the free market and religious tolerance, America - like Britain - has set an example that has been replicated across the world by countries hoping to be both prosperous and free. America is the policy laboratory for the world: when countries decide they must reform welfare and get to grips with problems such as failing schools, suffocating regulation, urban violence and family breakdown, it is to the United States they tend to look first.
The benefits of American global leadership become clear when considering the proposed alternatives – China, the United Nations and the European Union. China’s brutality may make that country’s authoritarianism most stark. But there is also no such thing as world opinion or European public opinion. This ensures the United Nations operates as a ‘legitimate’ voice of the oppressor and the dictator, while the European Union advances as a power in its own right only by ignoring the wishes of citizens of the very different countries that make it up. These supposed alternatives – corrupt, undemocratic and consistently failing to act against global threats or genocide – make clear the value of America’s continuing role in the world.
Is Barack Obama the man to restore the world’s faith in America? Obama is popular in Europe now, but polls have already identified how soft and contingent this support is. When 2,000 people in Britain were asked their view in August, 70% said they would think less of Obama if he adopted some of the protectionist measures that he has called for during his campaign. 51% said they would think less of him if he approved military action against Iran – but 52% also said they would think less of him if he failed to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Keeping American troops in Iraq would similarly put them off Obama, but so would a withdrawal followed by increased violence. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. No wonder anti-Americanism has informed (or debased) political discourse since at least the days of President Eisenhower. Twenty five years ago, fewer than 40% of Europeans said they trusted President Reagan more than Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov. Anti-Americanism is not about one President, and it cannot be solved by another.
Some of the work must be done by non-Americans. Some of us determined to do this work have come together to produce America in the World, which launched in August 2008 at www.americaintheworld.com. Offline, we will host debates, events and lectures. Online, our aim is to be one of the first places journalists, bloggers, politicians, academics and students come to when they do an internet search for phrases like ‘anti-Americanism’. We will put the other side of the argument across. We aim to show in fifty, fact-rich web briefings that the American economic model offers the best route to prosperity, that the American soldier continues to ensure a safer, more peaceful world, and that non-Americans would soon come to regret a more isolationist United States.
We seek also to combat so many of the myths that fuel anti-Americanism. For our launch poll in August 2008, we asked two thousand British people to say if they thought certain statements about America were true or false. The results were stark:
- 80% thought the United States had sold Saddam Hussein more than a quarter of his weapons
- 58% thought polygamy was legal in some states
- 52% agreed that America had sided more often with non-Arab countries against Arab countries and with non-Muslim countries against Muslim countries since the Second World War
- 45% said Americans are more likely than people in Europe to deny having anything in common with people of other races
- 31% thought that emergency treatment was only available to Americans who had paid insurance premiums or hospital fees
At the heart of so much anti-Americanism are notions like these: that by comparison with other Western societies, the United States is consistently anti-Arab and invariably pro-Israel, that American society is more violent, more racist, more inward-looking and less generous. These beliefs are demonstrably false.
In fact, Saddam Hussein bought most of his weapons from Russia, and many more from France and Russia. Just 0.46% of all his weapons were bought from the United States. A 2002 study of major global conflicts found that since 1945, the United States had sided with Arab states against non-Arab states, and with Muslim states against non-Muslim or secular states, eleven times out of twelve. Polygamy is illegal in all fifty states. Emergency treatment is available by law to all Americans.
Far from being a more violent society, almost every crime except murder (by a long way the rarest serious offence in both countries) is far less common in America, with personal assaults twice as common in Britain and Australia than America – largely because of their high prison population and their quaint notion that serious crimes should mean tough sentencing. Although Americans are presented as uniquely parochial, ill-travelled and backward on race, 34% own a passport - a comparable figure to Canada’s 41% - and more Europeans than Americans tell pollsters they have little in common with people from other races and ethnicities.
For every myth used to denigrate the United States, the facts tell a different story - and for so many advances in policy, in technology, in medicine and in the spread of democracy around the world, America can claim the credit. America in the World will ensure that in future, these facts inform the debate.
Peter Cuthbertson is Director of America in the World.
Those who wish to support the project can begin by sign
America in the World’s global declaration against anti-Americanism
at www.americaintheworld.com.