During the Cold War, I was forever frustrated that opponents of the Reagan administration always excused Soviet hostility (or the hostility of one of their puppets) because it was a natural reaction to some "hostile" statement issued by the president or one of his administration. That those statements were mild in their description of the truth wasn't accepted, of course. But the thing that got me was the assumption that the weak-willed foreigners formulated their foreign policies on a wildly swinging basis depending on the latest statements of President Reagan.
Now, of course, the resident cowboy is equally guilty of making our enemies be our enemies; or making allies into less-than-allies.
Hogwash. VDH puts it nicely:
Why, then, is Japan suddenly warm while Europe is so cool? Is the Bush administration clumsy in Berlin and adept in Tokyo?
No. Rather, the answer is the rise of China and the collapse of the Soviet Union. For the Japanese government, China and its nuclear patron, North Korea, are not abstract threats. Indeed, they are within tactical missile range.
If Europeans dream that Chinese break-neck capitalism means only lucrative business, the Japanese fear that such dynamism will more likely lead to a new bully in their own back yard.
If Japan was once experiencing bouts of anti-Americanism when its neighbor China was sleeping, then Europe was relatively friendly to us when we kept 300 Soviet divisions from its borders.
The moral? Trashing the United States can be a fun sport for some when one nearby communist enemy disappears, but not so for others when another is ascendant and close by.Of course, domestic politics, trade issues and clumsy American diplomacy also help to fashion the image of the U.S. abroad. Still, a government's anti-American rhetoric is often predicated on its perceived self-interest.
For all the furor over George Bush's "smoke 'em-out" rhetoric, there are a variety of historical and geographical factors beyond our control that determine the relative popularity of the U.S internationally.
Exactly. And I do not say this as a late convert. In 1990-1991, I taught introductory American history at a Michigan community college. When explaining how relations between the American colonies and Britain deteriorated between the French and Indian War and our Revolution, I noted that similarly, with the Cold War threat from Moscow gone we would see Europe pull away from America. This was going on through Bush 41, Clinton, and Bush 43. So stop blaming cowboy policies on Europe's refusal to help out more or more openly. Or explain our strenthening friendships with Japan, Australia, India, and others in the face of so-called clumsy American actions and diplomacy.
