Why the U. S. Is Disliked
MADARIAGA, SALVADOR DE
Why the United States Is Universally Disliked London The fact in itself cannot be doubted. The Americans are disliked everywhere. There are people who rejoice in it. Some Americans, who do not...
...But what is grave indeed in the psychological situation today is that one sees everywhere the truly free sector of the world, liberals, Socialists, Christian Democrats, shrugging their shoulders and crying: "Hopeless...
...I remember pointing out in a radio broadcast just after the war that the United States had for years been spending brain, brawn and treasure in manufacturing expensive bombs to drop on Europe...
...As for the foreign American-baiter, hate may at times be as enjoyable as love...
...Suddenly the cowboy left the screen and mixed with the audience...
...For the ungrateful forget the boon...
...This kind of thing is difficult for individuals to swallow...
...A sidelight, by no means trivial, was the resentment caused in many countries by the chaos in the local domestic-service market which well-paid American officials, both military and civilian, tended to create...
...Yet, it would be foolish to overlook the fact that the moral—as distinct from the economic—after-effects of the Marshall Plan were speedily overtaken by the law of diminishing returns...
...It was a superb piece of statesmanship, one of the highlights of the history of mankind and a title of nobility which nothing foreseeable can wrest from the people of the United States...
...Now gifts with advice, in the eyes of the recipients, are apt to look very much like orders...
...The first, most universal motive is no doubt the reaction against benefits received...
...now was the time to turn the process to non-warlike purposes and start dropping gifts of peace over the parched soil of Europe...
...That the United States should be disliked by Communists, fellow-traveler...
...There are two reasons for their impatience: The first is that they do not want to be fooled again by grandiloquent words which the big powers do not really believe in but use merely for their recruiting value...
...The more so as the Marshall Plan involved a much closer intimacy than ever before between the United States and the favored nations, an intimacy in terms not merely of policy and papers but of personal relations as well...
...First, perhaps, a lack of balance as between the claims of the hot and cold wars which has led to concentrating on weapons and metals and neglecting ideas and ideals...
...I shall not enter into a detailed study of local national tensions: Britain's disappointment at being dethroned by her eldest daughter-nation, the intellectual fastidiousness of the French, and other shades which here and there color the general antagonistic attitude...
...slavery—but a war of power— the United States against Russia...
...For instance, no military argument should have been allowed to prevail over the essential condition that dictators of the Right or the Left are unacceptable as allies...
...In the end, it all comes to this: The United States is disliked because it is a leader that does not lead...
...Europe knew Americans on the screen...
...But, at this stage in human affairs, the universal dislike of the United States is nothing short of a disaster, for the United States is and must remain By Salvador de Madariaga the leading nation of the free world...
...Aid without strings" is not a practical proposition...
...Of such pitifully small things life is apt to be made...
...The benefactor was soon found irksome and cumbersome as such...
...Some Americans, who do not feel comfortable outside their shell of isolationism, would seize on this universal dislike as a heaven-sent pretext to shut themselves up again with a haughty disdain for the outside world...
...What is behind it all...
...By and large, the trouble comes from the fact that the generosity and political disinterestedness which inspired the Marshall Plan were unable to resist the wear and tear of daily political life...
...Anti-gratitude" might be a better word...
...I am recalling this to illustrate how precisely the Marshall Plan fulfilled general expectations...
...This in itself was serious enough...
...The "realistic," pragmatic juggling with words to which this all leads, the inflation of the verbal currency of the West, caused a grievous loss of that moral authority which the United States enjoyed at the time of the Marshall Plan...
...It is best to concentrate on essentials...
...It produced the conviction that the struggle was not really a conflict of ideals—freedom vs...
...It became more serious yet when American views and policies took shape and evolved in such a way as to alienate the sympathy of precisely those who should have been the best friends of the United States...
...for nations it is quite impossible...
...The "strings" were bound to emerge sooner or later, if only in the form of an inevitable and natural preference for their own views 011 the part of the givers...
...Owing to the considerable gap in money rewards between the United States and other countries, it often happened that the American in Europe moved at social levels considerably higher than his own in culture and refinement...
...This led too often to hasty generalizations about America's lack of cultural and social gifts...
...For surely that is what mailers...
...The fact, nevertheless, must be counted as one of the deepest tragedies of our era...
...No man in his senses would deny that a strong, efficient military apparatus was indispensable precisely to "neutralize" the hot war...
...The second is that, in the H-bomb era, power politics is as obsolete as oxcarts on Broadway...
...Every one of his deeds was a reminder of his superiority...
...in this case, the boon is only too well remembered...
...But no hot-war step should have been taken that would injure the overriding interest of the cold war...
...Ingratitude...
...ultra-nationalists and fascists is quite in order...
...No man in his senses can draw any satisfaction from a situation in which a particular nation, any nation, is disliked...
...This led to sociological consequences as difficult to foresee as they were to cure...
...And it does not lead because it does not really practice in international affairs that democracy which is its pride at home, nor that imaginative creativeness which is its pride in applied science...
...True, we have seen power wars before, but the people of the world cannot stand this kind of thing any more...
...The picture is complex and the motives are mixed...
Vol. 40 • May 1957 • No. 18
