Through Our Friends' Eyes -- Defending and Advising the Hyperpower

Students of modern German history will note resemblances between the anti-Americanism Joffe describes today and the anti-Semitism of the Nazis. Joffe welcomes the comparison. In both Europe and the Arab world, anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism frequently travel together, as Joffe ably shows. He believes that the relationship between the two ideologies stems from the representation of Americans and Jews as symbols and agents of modernity and globalization. American and Jewish cultures (exemplified by Hollywood), U.S. and Israeli power, and U.S., Jewish, and Israeli economic success all permeate the world and force others to adapt. As a result, the losers from globalization blame everything they dislike about globalization and modernity on the Americans and the Jews.

Joffe's argument fairly neatly explains regional variations in levels of anti-Americanism. In Latin America and the Arab world, where the costs of globalization and modernity loom large and their benefits seem difficult or impossible for ordinary people to grasp, anti-Americanism is potent. In Europe, where the experience of globalization and modernity has been less negative, there are growing fears not only that the increased competition of the U.S.-led international economy will overwhelm the European social model, but also that the rise of Asia will further endanger Europe's place in the world. And one finds perhaps the deepest hatred toward the United States outside of the Muslim world among certain strata of Russians who still resent the loss of the influence they enjoyed during the Soviet empire.

But other regions have had different experiences. In India and China, for instance, large numbers among both the elite and the population at large have come to view globalization and modernity, and thus to some degree the United States, more favorably. As both countries have opened up to the world economy, their poverty rates have fallen while incomes have increased, and their ranks in the international pecking order have risen. In India, once a hotbed of dependency theorists, strategists of nonalignment, and Marxist critics of all things American, there has been a dramatic and widespread decline in anti-Americanism in recent years. A poll conducted by the BBC in January 2005 showed that 64 percent of respondents in India believed that Bush's reelection in 2004 made the world safer. In China, Japan has replaced the United States as the primary object of nationalist ire. Plenty of opposition to specific U.S. policies remains in both countries -- especially to the Iraq war in India and to U.S. support for Taiwan in China. But at least in China, the atmosphere is noticeably freer of the kind of all-encompassing anti-Americanism present after the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.

BOND THEM LIKE BISMARCK

Joffe never quite defines the connections between anti-Americanism, the hatred and fear of capitalist modernity that uses Americans (and sometimes Jews) as scapegoats, and international great-power opposition to the United States. He clearly worries, however, that heightened anti-Americanism will facilitate the efforts of lesser powers to contain the United States. To avoid such an outcome, Joffe argues that the United States must "balance like Britain," "bond like Bismarck," and supply international public goods (IPGs).

Joffe contends that just as the United Kingdom maintained the balance of power in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the United States needs to be a force for stability not only in Asia, where it must limit Beijing's aspirations, but in much of the rest of the world. Even Europe still needs U.S. involvement, Joffe writes, because European reconciliation continues to depend on the security structures the United States erected during the Cold War. And Joffe proposes that just as Bismarck sought to prevent an anti-German coalition by forming deep ties with both Austria and Russia, the United States should work with Russia and China to form a strategic triangle and serve as the central power in a "hub-and-spokes" arrangement that keeps India and Pakistan off a collision course.

But these strategies will not be enough by themselves to secure U.S. primacy. Although the United States is far more powerful than any other international actor, it will fail to achieve its goals if other countries do not see its power as legitimate. Joffe quotes the dictum of Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass that "the United States does not need the world's permission to act, but it does need the world's support to succeed." The United States can bolster its legitimacy by producing IPGs that other states want. Much of international security, for example, is an IPG provided by the United States, as are various economic public goods, such as monetary stability and a liberal trading order. An Atlanticist such as Joffe is well aware of the degree to which the production of IPGs was a major element in U.S. strategy during the Cold War. Because the United States historically placed a higher priority on IPGs than the United Kingdom under Lord Palmerston or Germany under Bismarck did, it became a greater power than either ever was.

On this point, however, Joffe shifts from admiring analyst to critic. Since 9/11, he writes, the United States has "flagged as an investor in global public goods." The United States is relying increasingly on bilateral trade deals rather than strengthening the multilateral system, dodging or disregarding international institutions that do not help it, and allowing its trade deficit to continue to expand. And Joffe notes that the international community sees many U.S. policies, such as certain aspects of the war on terrorism, as international public bads. These "public bads" heighten opposition to U.S. power.