Why They Dislike America

...Chief among these errors is the heralded policy of "liberation," as opposed to "containment," of which much has been made since the campaign...

...The consequent animus is therefore "natural" enough, even though it expresses itself in implausible accusations which appear to us to be wholly unjust...

...Never before in history has there been such a sharp contrast as we have now between the wealth of one nation and the poverty of the world...

...We must not count on it both for the reason that gratitude is beyond the moral competence of nations, and because their actions do not deserve as much gratitude as the ostensibly generous nation assumes...

...The present administration assures us in the cheerful words of Vice President Nixon that "we are winning the ideological war...

...This problem is particularly acute for France because of the latter's position in Indo-China...

...This power is actually exercised in the context of contemporary history and within the framework of our common struggle against Communism...

...But we must not put too much emphasis upon the causes of animus against us which are independent of our faults and which would manifest themselves even if we were ten times wiser and more modest than we are...

...America has the rabies," the French existentialist, Jean-Paul Sartre, recently declared...

...The final source of anti-American sentiment has existed for a long time but has been accentuated by the Republican Administration...

...It was an inevitable hazard of our responsibility for strengthening Europe that we should have failed to satisfy France when we helped to restore Germany...

...The fact that every common burden we bear will not be as great for us as for our poorer allies adds to the resentment...

...That is the consensus all over the world when dealing with McCarthyism...

...But the incident fits perfectly into the preconceived notion of a heedless nation, too irresponsible to handle the lethal weapons which we have developed and which may spell universal doom if not handled with great care...

...It is dangerous in the esteem of Europe because it accentuates what Europe considers a general weakness in the American attitude, that is, a greater concern to defeat Communism than to avoid war...

...This ignorant foray into the complexities of international politics does serious damage to our standing, particularly among those nations which must trade or perish, and which have an initial prejudice against us because of our lack of reciprocity in trade...

...In the first category we must place the inevitable envy of our wealth and resentment of our power...

...Perhaps the mistake producing the most resentment was our precipitate decision in 1950 to arm Germany, without adequate consultation with Britain or France...

...But the whole of Europe and Asia seem to unite in the conviction that it is unwise to prevent the admission of Communist China to the United Nations as part of a general peace settlement...

...This advice is wholesome, and I should like to apply it to one ancillary problem which we Americans must face and prepare to bear without the hope of finding a permanent solution for it...

...General Clay was dubbed by the French "the most successful German statesman...

...For the wealth gathered by our technical competence and the abundance of our natural resources is beyond both Europe's and Asia's wildest dreams of avarice...

...Why aren't the nations more grateful to us...

...The animus against us is so widespread among our allies and friends, even among those who are rigorously anti-Communist, that it would be a mistake to attribute it purely to Communist propaganda...

...It seems to many Europeans that a nation as fortunate as ours could not possibly be either virtuous or "cultured...

...asked some youngsters of President Truman on a recent television program...

...This general feeling, that we are "trigger happy" and might catapult the world into an atomic war either by design or by inadvertence, has been accentuated by the "new look" policy of defense...

...One of the most important sources of anti-American sentiment is the rise of "McCarthyism" in this country...

...Both Germany and France could not achieve real wisdom because their counsels were disturbed by an ambivalence between admiration for and envy of Britain...

...It is ominous that the Secretary of State has been forced to face criticism by the right-wing Republicans over the necessary concession of meeting with the Chinese Communists at all...

...However, the opposition to our cooperation with German economic revival must not be credited to a particular fault of our statesmanship...

...In trying to understand this phenomenon, let us begin by distinguishing between the animus which is inevitable and not caused by any fault of ours and the forms of resentment which are due to mistakes on our part...

...They will rightly call attention to the fact that some of our seeming generosity is prompted by our reluctance to engage in reciprocal trade...

...Even if our generosity were less mixed than it is, we should not expect much gratitude for it, for the simple reason that gratitude is a rare grace even among individuals and is practically impossible of achievement for collective man...

...Today, the general disposition among Frenchmen to deprecate our "vulgarity" and to sneer at the mediocrities of our "technocratic" culture is partly motivated by envy...

...One shudders to think what they will say about any settlement which may come out of Geneva...

...When we sort all the various roots and causes of anti-American animus, it becomes apparent that our primary problem is to bear the unjustified attacks against us with sufficient patience so that we may learn from the justified criticisms...

...Of this policy, the London Economist, otherwise a very pro-American paper, has declared that it is either meaningless or dangerous...

...It must be mentioned in conclusion that even such minor incidents as the wounding of Japanese fishermen by ashes from our atomic blast in the Pacific have become sources of a new wave of anti-Americanism in the Orient...

...The Marxist dogma, still powerful even among anti-Communists in both Europe and Asia, accentuates this animus generated by envy...

...That policy, which puts such emphasis upon the threat of "instant and massive retaliation" as a deterrent to war, is suspected by our allies (whose opinions the Canadian Foreign Secretary recently voiced) of containing the peril of enlarging a local war into a global atomic one...

...We could be much wiser than we are, and more humble, and we would still not be popular in the world...

...But Europe, with its previous experience with fascism and its predisposition to think ill of us, insists on regarding it as evidence of the fact that we stand on the brink of fascism...

...Our decisions are resented even if they are wise, for we are the agents of hard necessities (such as European rearmament) which can easily be made to appear to be our decisions rather than inexorable necessities forced upon us in common with our allies...

...Unless we try to understand the various roots of anti-Americanism and learn to live with the burden of this animus, there is danger that the resentment against us will generate an answering resentment until we imperil the unity of our free world...

...The French Left seeks to create the impression that France is waging war in Indo-China only at our insistence...

...Prime Minister Nehru of India has just read us a long lecture on this subject, particularly on our alleged conviction that war is inevitable...

...This ideological defeat is at least partly due to specific errors in our policy...

...That problem is the now well-nigh universal anti-American sentiment throughout Europe and Asia...

...Aneurin Bevan, the British left-winger, has no hesitancy in suggesting that our wealth is the fruit of "exploitation," though he would be hard put to substantiate the charge...

...Why They Dislike America Anti-Americanism is part justified criticism, part resentment of our power By Reinhold Niebuhr IN A MEMORABLE ADDRESS at Harvard University, Adlai Stevenson warned us that we must be prepared to live with unsolved problems for decades and perhaps for centuries...

...The inclination of the French to hold us accountable for their own weaknesses, including their penchant for equating their decadent capitalism with the more imaginative "free-enterprise system" in America, is a perennial source of animus against us in that unhappy nation...

...But the fact is that our prestige has sunk to a new low in both Europe and Asia...

...He suggested that American optimism--which assumed that every problem could be solved if we attacked it with sufficient resolution--was the source of much confusion in a nation which must bear heavy responsibilities in the leadership of a "free world" embattled with a ruthless totalitarian foe...

...Resentment against our impatience was mingled in France with the memory of our support of the phenomenal German economic revival...

...It will be difficult for Americans to appreciate the extent of the damage done to our prestige by this phenomenon...

...it is certainly too severe in its implications about our fundamental health...

...The judgment may not be too severe when dealing with the actual phenomenon...

...No one is trying to force our recognition of Peking...

...It is the feeling that we are inflexible and unrealistic in our attitude toward Communist China...

...No carelessness on our part may have been involved...

...We must not count on gratitude in international relations," the ex-President wisely replied...

...But it is not absent from such nations as Britain, which cannot be defined as "neutralist," for they are as deeply committed to the cause of freedom as we are...

...McCarthy is detrimental to our prestige not only in his main pursuit but in his insistence that we force our allies to refrain from every form of trade with nations behind the Iron Curtain...

...This will soon be a burning issue at the Geneva Conference...

...We did not gauge correctly the power and persistence of the fear of Germany, and we again revealed that impatience with the slow processes of history which is probably our most grievous fault...

...It is probably most prevalent in the two "neutralist" nations, France and India...

...But in politics, particularly international politics, the appearance of things is often as important as the reality...

...Though it may seem perverse to us, the fact is that this resentment will arise even if we are extremely generous from our viewpoint, for we will not be as generous in the esteem of our allies as we are in our own...

...The "mistakes" of the past are thus inextricably related to policies which may not have been mistakes but which produce reactions that must be regarded as the inevitable consequence of our wielding power...

...We may oppose McCarthyism with great vigor and yet have such confidence in our own traditions that we tend to put it in the category of a passing phenomenon...

...In addition to our wealth, we have the dominant power in the community of "free" nations...

...We can divide these mistakes into those which were committed previous to this administration and those for which we must hold the Eisenhower Administration responsible...

...As a matter of fact, the struggle in Indo-China would be more hopeful if French imperialism were not so stubborn, and if the French had as much imagination in their imperial connections as the British and the Dutch have manifested...

...There are many resentments which are due to specific mistakes on our part...

...Significantly, an administration which was ostensibly opposed to "handouts" in principle but is also devoted traditionally to a high-tariff policy was not able to respond to Europe's slogan "trade, not aid" a year ago...

...We might remember that Britain, which exercised hegemony in Europe for a century without gaining either our wealth or our power, was for the century of its hegemony the most despised and envied nation of Europe...

...We would rather keep poor nations relatively healthy by "handouts" than let down our tariff barriers...