{"id":1125,"date":"2006-06-20T05:09:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-20T05:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:09:48","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:09:48","slug":"kagan_on_antiam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1125","title":{"rendered":"Kagan on Anti-Americanism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robert Prather, writing over at James Joyner’s ‘Outside the Beltway’ has an interesting post<\/a> up on anti-Americanism. It’s a riff on a column by Robert Kagan in the Post<\/a> and concludes:<\/p>\n

My own theory about these resentments includes the fact that, yes, we have done some things that were hurtful, but generally when our choices weren\u2019t good in any case. One instance is our interference in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s. We were engaged in an existential struggle with communism and, as part of that struggle we opposed communist dictatorships and supported other types of dictatorships. It is clearly resented in Latin America, but I can\u2019t say I would do things differently given what we were facing. The whole world was a chess board with us playing the Soviet Union in a series of proxy conflicts, at least in part because if we fought one another, the outcome would have been horrendous.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My other theory is that much of this comes from envy. Some of it is relatively benign, like French politicians using the U.S. as a whipping boy to get elected. I\u2019m sure that stuff doesn\u2019t go unnoticed, but most people understand that\u2019s how politics works. The other things, like the African dictator\u2019s son damning us for acting in one instance (Bosnia) and not in another (Rwanda) is simply throwing up things to see if they will stick. There is a market for this kind of nonsense in Europe and elsewhere, and given the detachment from reality and\/or stupidity of the accusers, I\u2019m not overly concerned with that either. We will be resented by someone no matter what we do simply because of our current place in the world.<\/p>\n

\nOne instance that demonstrates what we should do is the tsunami. We figured out the right thing to do, and we did it with the help of Japan and Australia. We had ships on the scene shortly after the catastrophe to help by flying people out of soaked areas, bringing fresh water and food to others and various other things. While we were doing this, to distract from their own incompetence, the UN had Jan Egeland complaining that we didn\u2019t give enough of our GDP to international institutions. While they were having conferences about setting up more conferences, we were helping people. That\u2019s how I believe we should handle these matters: Decide the right thing to do and do it; let others bicker over insignificant side issues. We should probably accept that no gratitude will be forthcoming when we do help. It\u2019ll be another reason to criticize us later on.<\/p>\n

\nWe should help anyway. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In case you’re wondering, I agree.<\/p>\n

But I also think that we have to be working toward international institutions that work as they should and have some measure of effectiveness and legitimacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Outside the Deltway has an interesting article on anti-Americanism, and what to .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}