This question was put to me by someone whom I believe was sincere in her inquiry which is to say that I do not believe that she was asking a rhetorical question. Often when I hear people discuss this issue their explanations fall upon matters of a temporal and contemporary nature. Those on the Political Right say that others are just envious and jealous of America and it doesn't matter why they hate this country, while those on the Left say that America is an international renegade nation and that George Bush is responsible for ruining America's image. If you believe that the world hates America because of George Bush then you clearly have no idea what was said about Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson or John F. Kennedy. If you believe that the world hates America because of the Iraq War then you have no idea what was said about the Cold War.
Fact is, the general global view of America is an inter-temporal issue and relates to matters that predated the actual foundation of this country. A thorough explanation will require much more than a contemporary understanding of world affairs or the US government, for the problem goes back to the Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment was one of the greatest periods in the history of man. For the first time in human history man had reached the point where his mind and body were released from the shackles of arbitrary authority. In the words of Peter Berkowitz, "For the first time the principle of enlightenment — that all men had an obligation to think for themselves and government had an obligation to protect their freedom to do so — had come into full view and could be seen clearly by reasonable people as binding on all humanity."
Due to the development of the printing press everyone from the poorest serf to the wealthiest oligarch could partake of information that was now readily available in his/her own language (primarily English, German and French). We also saw the refinement of two currents of thought for which the groundwork was laid during the Renaissance: Liberalism and Socialism. To avoid confusion, the Liberalism of the Enlightenment bears no resemblance to contemporary Liberalism, which is actually Socialism. The closest modern relative of Enlightenment Liberalism or Classical Liberalism is political Libertarianism and to a lesser degree, Conservatism.
Classical Liberalism was an outgrowth of the British/Scottish Enlightenment whereas Socialism was borne of the French Enlightenment. Although Socialism gave way to many different strains such as Solidarity, Communism/Utopianism, Christian Socialism, Feudalism and Mercantilism to name a few, Classical Liberalism developed along a much narrower course. One can find a great deal of disparity in the views of Rousseau, Condorcet, Saint-Simon and Fourier though all fall within the basic philosophical framework of Socialism per se. The views of the Liberals on the other hand were fairly, although not completely, uniform. What you see in the views of Liberals such as Hume, Locke, Smith and Burke is virtually identical. Simply stated, the entire intellectual movement of the Enlightenment was essentially a battle between these two philosophical schools.
In comes the American uprising against British and subsequent founding of a separate and wholly unique political monster: the democratic republic. The founders invested a great deal of time and effort to create a new nation out of the collected wisdom of the Enlightenment. But in the drafting of the Constitution, they fell squarely on the side of the British/Scottish tradition of limited government, individual liberty and rule of law. The Constitution was nothing short of a repudiation of the French Enlightenment philosophy of Socialism. Most of the world believed this new experiment in government would collapse within a rather short period time. Instead the US began to prosper much to the consternation of the French intellectual community. Alexis de Tocequville visited America in an attempt to gain an understanding of why the American experiment worked so well and his Democracy In America has henceforth remained the most thorough explanation thereof. America’s prosperity made it a beacon of liberty and prosperity for the rest of the world and the US population grew as a result thus expanding the territory of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean.
Unfortunately America’s glory days were numbered. For during the later part of the 19th Century, America would become embroiled in the international love affair with Utopian Socialism based largely on the works of German theorist Karl Marx which he co-authored with Fredrick Engels half a century earlier, The Communist Manifesto. Even Great Britain abandoned its long Liberal traditions under the influence of the Fabian Society lead by George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb and Beatrice Webb. By the early 20th century Socialism was the fastest growing intellectual movement in the world. It had even eclipsed the more Democratic Socialism long dominant in France. But Utopian Socialism remained for the most part a theory not a reality with many failed Communist experiments the world over (i.e. the Owenite commune in New Harmony, Indiana). The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia changed it all. This was the world’s first Utopian Socialist (Communist) government. Socialism swept into the hearts of minds of the German people as well, culminating in the election of Germany’s National Socialist Labour Party (Nazi Party). In America Roosevelt’s (Democrat) New Deal policies gained favour with the electorate although they had repeatedly been rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Various communist uprisings in China were threatening to move that country in the direction of an all out Communist revolution. Spain and Italy adopted Mussolini’s brand of Socialism known as Fascism. And the Islamic nations of the Middle East and North Africa were flirting with Stalin’s Communism and Hitler’s Nazism while creating their own unique brand of Socialism. The Socialists were of the belief that international socialism was becoming a reality. And rightly so.
The beginning of World War II however, demonstrated the inability of Socialists to reconcile their many divergent views under a single international banner. But it was the end of World War II that heralded the collapse of this dream altogether.
Stalin had taken control of Russia prior to the war and as a result, control of the international Communist movement which he was directing towards his own purposes. Through his declaration of a Popular Front he was successful in rallying Communists and its Fellow Travellers in nearly every country against those forms of Socialism which he found objectionable, namely Nazism, Fascism, Fabianism and Solidarity/Democratic Socialism. The United States began taking actions to combat the influence of Communists and other perceived threats of interest within its own borders; most of whom were in journalism, academia, entertainment, the arts, literature and the U.S. State Department. These actions included, but was not limited to, investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and investigations conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican). This movement split the American Socialist community, which had long been at odds over the issue of Stalin, along the lines of the pro-Stalinists and the anti-Stalinists (Trotskyites). The Communists and their international comrades vilified the US while the Trotskyites, though often critical of the tactics used, supported the US in its anti-communist “crusade.” This earned them the derisive label, Neoconservative. Notwithstanding, the anti-Communist movement forced the Communists to relocate overseas, go underground and/or shed their more overt radicalism.
Once the Cold War was set in motion it became official US policy to direct domestic and international efforts toward combating the spread of communism and the Soviet Unions international influence. One of the first confrontations was the splitting of Germany along Soviet and Allied lines and the blockading of Berlin. Then came US operations in Korea. This was followed up by increased involvement in Vietnam. By the 1960’s the US was challenging Soviet influence in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Central America. But the 1960’s also saw the rise of the NeoMarxist movement. The largest of these movements (in the US at least) was an organization known as SDS or Students for a Democratic Society. SDS though a good deal radical was a organisation almost exclusively concerned with agitating for social change. But when the US changed its conscription policy to wit full-time college students would no longer be free from the draft, SDS became radicalised to oppose the Vietnam War. What began as a criticism of the Vietnam War quickly morphed into a vitriolic attack upon the country itself: its history, its foreign and domestic policy, its institutions, its bona fides. The nature of the attack lead many reasonable people to presume that the anti-Vietnam War Movement had been highjacked by entities whose concerns went beyond US involvement in Vietnam. It ultimately pushed the Trotskyites further away from their Leftist comrades and by the 1970’s most were adopting the Neoconservative label for themselves. As the NeoMarxists took over the Democrat Party the Neocons and many traditional Democrats grew disillusioned with the direction the Party was taking. It was becoming apparent to Sociliasts both in and outside of America that the Democrats were allies to the same degree that Republicans were their devout enemies.
The international Socialist community, particularly the Communists, were becoming more and more fearful of America and its intentions with respect to the USSR. Even US Socialists began to stoke the embers of fear. Although the USSR had been responsible for fomenting Communist revolutions throughout Asia, Africa, South America and Central America, resulting in the deaths of countless millions all in the name of social justice, it was the US that the Socialists feared. In the minds of the Socialists both domestically and internationally the United States was an international pariah, and an arrogant bully whose attempts to halt Soviet expansion would only lead to a global nuclear conflagration. The US was also increasingly demonstrating its impatience with and distrust of one of the Soclialist's most respected institutions, the United Nations.
The election of Jimmy Carter (Democrat) was a moment of hope in minds of Socialists. His rather concilliatory demeanor with respect to the Soviet Union suggested that he might be open to moving America from détente to unilateral disarmament. Finally the world could breath easily knowing that America had come to its senses and would scale back its anti-Soviet ambitions. However the world underestimated Americans' distaste for Communism. Carter’s economic and foreign policies had weakened America militarily, demoralised the American people and alienated many of America's long-time friends and Cold War partners. When Americans elected Ronald Reagan (Republican) to the Presidency in 1980, the world became convinced that the majority of Americans were intellectually unenlightened and incapable of enlightenment, opposed to social justice and dangerously militaristic. Reagan made the mistake of unambiguously articulating his position with respect to communism in general, the USSR in particular. He began a movement to deregulate industries, scale back social welfare, reduce taxes and improve the nation’s defensive and offensive military capabilities. The later included placing short-ranged ballistic missiles in Europe and developing a missile defence system. He formed close relationships with European Solidarists and a host of anti-Communist organizations in South and Central America resulting in his own brand of a Popular Front against Communism. Moreover, he appointed Jean Kirkpatrick, an avowed critic of the UN, as US Ambassador to the UN. Ronald Reagan challenged the Soviets at every turn.
The Left feared that Reagan’s tactics would lead to war. Reagan believed that his tactics would lead to peace for in his own words, “peace is a goal, not a policy.” Reagan’s policies increasingly set America, in the eyes of the international community, on the wrong side of history and progress. His overwhelming re-election victory over Walter Mondale cemented this view of both Reagan and American people.
As a result of Reagan’s policies, the USSR did collapse. This was the end of Soviet Communism but did nothing to shake the faith of other Socialists around the world. In fact, without the constant threat of nuclear war with the Soviets, Socialists in America and elswhere became more dogmatic in their quest to form a more egalitarian world union. Another unfortunate byproduct of the USSR’s collapse was the end of Soviet economic and military aide to Thrid-World nations including Islam. Since these countries depended heavily upon Soviet aide, a dependency which the Politburo & KGB were all too willing to exploit during their reign, the dependent nations had yet another justification for the demagogic accusation that the United States was insensitive, if not hostile, to the interests of the world’s least fortunate people. As Americans continued to show opposition to this movement by giving control of Congress to Republicans in 1994 for the first time in nearly fifty years, impeaching President Bill Clinton (Democrat) and electing another Republican, George Bush, America was seen to be deliberately moving against international currents in social progress and egalitarianism.
Today there is a growing consencus among the world’s Socialists as to what Socialism is, what it seeks to achieve and how it must be implemented. And while there is no official leader of the movement as in the days of the Soviet Union, both the United Nations and the European Union have been vying for the title.
What is the outlook for America? Well, America has continued to stand opposite the world’s view on issues such as the environment, Israel and international social welfare. These positions certainly do not endear the nation to the rest of the world. For world Socialism appears to have an affinity for anyone and everyone who declare themselves an enemy of the United States. Witness the rather unconscionable deference accorded radical Islamists despite the fact that their views stand in stark contrast to everything Socialism purports to represent. While I personally believe that America is currently on the right side of the debate, there is no doubt that her international image has suffered tremendously as a result thereof.
Yes, there exists a plethora of contemporary political abstractions plaguing the image of America (e.g. Abu Ghraib, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility, Universal Healthcare, Halliburton), but they all emanate from a single philosophical worldview.It is a sad fact that the world will not see the US as its partner until there is no Republican in the White House and the US changes its official positions with respect to such issues as the environment, Israel and global welfare to a stance more consistent with world or shall we say, Socialist, opinion.
