America’s Self-Image and Values, and Global Anti-Americanism

John Tirman

Principal Research Scientist and Executive Director

Center for International Studies

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Cambridge, Massachusetts

TESTIMONY

11 June 2008

House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

America’s Self-Image and Values, and Global Anti-Americanism

Thank you to the Chairman and the subcommittee for this opportunity to testify. Very briefly I will describe how America’s own self-image and its political culture affect the anti-Americanism that the committee is exploring and which is skillfully analyzed in the draft report, “The Decline in America’s Reputation: Why?”

The self-image of the United States leads to a cognitive dissonance between how we view our role in the world and what we believe the rest of the world thinks about us. This lack of a connection between our self-perception and those of much of the remainder of the world, in my assessment, accounts in part for the origins of anti-Americanism and its recent resurgence and resilience.

Our self-image and the ideology that shapes it also lead to certain kinds of actions in the world—frequently violent or damaging—which are self-justified by the same ideology. We tend to be deaf to the legitimate concerns of others, and that, perhaps more than anything, is the font of the animus we now see growing.[1]

The fundamental self-perception of our mission and actions in the world, one we have carried for centuries, is that of the frontier—an exceptionally sturdy image for American politics, the backdrop for our national character and sense of purpose. For nearly 300 years, settling, cultivating, and “taming” the frontier drove the Europeans who came to this continent. When the frontier closed—when the last of the indigenous tribes was subdued and the land taken—it created a sense of crisis in American politics. Teddy Roosevelt in particular responded to this by looking outward, across oceans, to imagine frontiers abroad. Much of the ensuing century has involved America in such global frontiers. But now that frontier is also closing, and one troubling question is how does our frontier mythology equip us to meet the challenges we face in the world today.

The myth of the frontier is an architecture of American politics and how we frame our role in the world. As the cultural theorist Richard Slotkin describes this myth, “the conquest of the wilderness and the subjugation or displacement of the Native Americans . . . have been the means to our achievement of a national identity, a democratic polity, an ever-expanding economy, and a phenomenally dynamic and ‘progressive’ civilization.”[2] These ideas, so redolent in TR’s time, remain powerful: one can see the war on terrorism, especially in Iraq, in terms virtually identical to our continental expansion, the suppression of Filipinos in Roosevelt’s presidency, or the U.S. war in Vietnam.

The language used to encourage and justify this mythology also remains sturdy. John F. Kennedy famously invoked a “new frontier” for his presidency. John McCain, like Ronald Reagan before him, refers to America as a “city on a hill” to which all the world aspires, and Barack Obama invokes Kennedy, Truman, and Franklin Roosevelt as paragons of global leadership that must be renewed. These references not only assume that the whole world is our rightful domain of action, but that an innate, moral superiority guides and justifies this mission.

It is easy to see why many people in the world do not share these views, many of them from ancient civilizations with their own self-referential myths and narratives. Our insistence on the correctness of our own, often backed by military force or economic leverage, is a wellspring of resentment in many parts of the world.

Nor is it apparent among most U.S. political leaders that the world of the twentieth century—the American Century, as Henry Luce famously branded it—has changed so much that this vast realm of American dominance and action is closing. Three phenomena have diminished the global frontier of this American sensibility.

(1) The first is the end of the Cold War, which formed so much of America’s identity in the cardinal phase of our global involvement. The “twilight struggle” with Soviet communism, which began long before the late 1940s, still shapes much of how we structure foreign relations, institutions, military doctrine, public diplomacy, and our sense of self-worth. The conclusion of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry nearly twenty years ago drained American globalism of a paramount ideology—a way of seeing ourselves in the world—and the vitality that came with the waging of “savage wars” in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. It is with difficulty that we let go: that the war on terrorism closely follows and invokes this warrior myth—the fight for civilization against barely human and wholly alien “hostiles”—should come as no surprise, since it is the mission constructed by the Puritans and renewed throughout our history.

Since the United States has in living memory been active in so many places as a warrior nation, even a “Christian crusading” nation,[3] it should also come as no surprise that this attitude and reality of war-making, whether viewed here as defensive or not, should define how many in the world see us—a morally self-righteous power with a willingness to use force, including nuclear weapons.

(2) The end of the global frontier is also evident in the rise of rivals for economic dominance. Globalization cuts many ways, and the European Union, Japan, China, India, Russia, and others are developing economic power that crowds out U.S. control of markets and the seemingly limitless potential that came with such dominance. But American pre-eminence, which remains potent, often has carried a heavy burden for a large segment of the developing world in particular. After the Second World War and until the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the United States largely facilitated the hybridized approach of developing countries that used markets, government subsidies, and other improvisations to build national industry and wealth. The “Asian tigers” were paragons of this strategy. But with Reagan, market dogma ruled the roost at the Treasury and Commerce Departments, the World Bank, IMF, and other powerful institutions of trade and development. The result was policy, including high interest rates in the late 1970s and 1980s, that devastated Third World economies.[4] Those in the global south have not forgotten, as the election of a string of leftists in Latin America demonstrates. But we act, through the international financial institutions and bilateral relationships, as if the disproven and destructive market ideologies of the past remain the aspiration of all peoples. The rise of rivals and the continuing resentment of unfair U.S. economic practices both diminish America’s standing in the developing world.

(3) Most important is the third sign of the close of the frontier—the limits of the Earth itself, the biological capacity that is now collapsing with frightening speed. This is a consequence of the “taming of the wilderness,” which has certainly been tamed and is now wreaking its revenge. The longstanding notion that resources were ours for the taking, and for using promiscuously, is no longer viable. The closing of this frontier not only impedes economic growth built on this attitude (the engines fueled by cheap oil in particular), but have other costs as well—the health and safety challenges of rapid climate change, among many others. Yet, again, as a nation we consume more resources per capita than any other, resist necessary changes in lifestyles or the application of energy efficiency in our own economy, and reject international efforts to curb greenhouse gases as if they are a plot against American prerogatives.

So we now face the closure of the global frontier in three ways—ideological, economic, and biological—and they sometimes combine with particularly destructive force. The war in Iraq, with its mendacious rationales, the hundreds of thousands dead, and the undeniable undercurrent of a war against Muslims, is not only a continuation of the “savage wars” in which we have long engaged and a new “twilight struggle,” but is both a “resource” war for control of oil and a “development” war to tame the last region resistant to American-led globalization. And the result now includes a run-up in oil prices worldwide, which has devastating impacts in the developing world and is contributor to the world food crisis.

This war is also emblematic of another lesson of this frontier mentality: just as the wars against the Native Americans of this continent became more violent and invasive as the frontier began to close, our foreign involvements appear more self-interested and violent as the global frontiers as we once defined them are also closing. In other words, the “war on terror,” inequities in our economic policies, and the refusal to recognize the collapse of the ecosystem all have the scent of desperation about them, last gasps at forceful stratagems that compile one miscalculation upon the other, earning new waves of anti-American sentiment with each one.

So in answering the question regarding the decline in America’s reputation, we need to look at policies and how they flow from several cultural or political predispositions. The policies exist for a reason, they do not come from thin air. We speak approvingly of American values, but what values, specifically, are we extolling? The freedoms embodied in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, certainly; the ingenuity and enterprise that Americans have so frequently demonstrated; and our openness to immigrants and our social diversity, although contested by reactionary forces, remain vibrant. But freedom, ingenuity, hard work, and diversity are not exclusively, nor primarily, American values. Those of us dismayed by American missteps of this decade would nonetheless err if we fall into the same trap of “American exceptionalism” that leads us into wars and economic predation. It is, for example, one small step from “promoting democracy” through USAID, a deeply flawed approach in itself,[5] to promoting market dogma, no matter how disproven in practice, to interventions based on the desire to remove certain authoritarians. American exceptionalism is the permissive attitude that leads from one self-gratifying moral conviction to another.

On the other hand, can it be said that our conception of important political values is shared by large numbers of the rest of the world? Are housing and food and jobs and health care and education part of a legitimate scheme of “democratic rights”? Not in the universe of “American values.” Is environmental sustainability an “American value”? No evidence would support such a claim. Is global problem-solving pursued through multilateral institutions an “American value”? When it suits us, yes; when not, no. On these crucial matters of values—of human security, ecological survival, and global governance—the United States evinces none of what is required now for moral or practical leadership. And these attitudes lag behind much of the rest of the world.

This need for leadership and the challenges at its root could be the stuff of a 21^st century frontier: America, with extraordinary economic power, admirable political institutions, and unparalleled scientific and educational resources, could lead the way cooperatively to secure a broad agenda of political, economic, and social rights, to implement a new “green” revolution in the way we utilize the Earth’s resources, and to help invent new modes of global decision making, inclusion, and equity.

Those kinds of values and the policies that flow from them would make anti-Americanism a relic of the past.

John Tirman

Curriculum Vitæ

Education

B.A., Political Science, Indiana University, 1972

Ph.D., Political Science, Boston University, 1981

Professional Activities

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Executive Director, Center for International Studies, October 2004 – present. Academic appointment: Principal Research Scientist. The center is a research and training institution, with a strong international education program. The Center’s research and education activities include human rights, the Middle East, security studies, international migration, U.S. foreign policy and several other areas.

Social Science Research Council, Program Director, Program on Global Security and Cooperation, Sept. 2000 - Oct. 2004, and Washington Office Director, 2001-04.  This academic think tank engages in a very broad range of research activities; in the global security program this included migration and security, globalization, international law, democratization, and other areas.

Fulbright Senior Scholar, Republic of Cyprus, December 1999 - September 2000.  Focusing on conflict resolution, included the creation of a Web site that developed a unitary historical narrative of the conflict.  Taught graduate seminar on conflict at Intercollege. 

Winston Foundation for World Peace, Executive Director, April 1986 - December 1999, Boston and Washington.  Grant making (averaging $1 million annually) on conflict prevention, arms control, human rights, peace education, sustainability, and civil society building.  Managing Consultant to the Henry P. Kendall Foundation in 1989-92, which supported environmental protection, education, and international security issues.  Grants Manager in 1990-94 of the CarEth Foundation, Boston, which supported NGOs working on social justice and disarmament.   

Union of Concerned Scientists, Cambridge, Mass. Senior Editor and Director of Communications, 1982-86. 

New England Regional Commission, Boston, Senior Energy Policy Analyst, 1980-81. New England Governors' Council. 

Time magazine, reporter, 1977-79, New York, reporting on energy, national politics, and business and economics.

Boston University, Teaching Fellow, 1972-75, College of Liberal Arts.  Metropolitan College Scholar, 1974.  Taught or assisted in courses on American politics, international relations, and others.

Other Professional Associations & Activities

•  Trustee, since 2002, of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (London), which trains journalists and reports from Central Asia and the Balkans (U.S. board chair).
•  Trustee, 1999-2005, of International Alert (London), NGO dedicated to preventing conflict, with projects in Asia, Africa, and the Caucasus.
•  Director (1991-98), and Chair of the Board (1993-97), Foundation for National Progress (San Francisco), which published Mother Jones magazine.

Publications, public policy topics

1.  Books

•   Terror, Insurgency, and the State (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), co-editor and
contributor
•   Multilateralism under Challenge? Power, International Order, and Structural Change
(UN University Press, 2006), co-editor and contributor. 
•   100 Ways America is Screwing up the World (Harper Perennial, 2006) 
•   The Maze of Fear: Security & Migration After September 11th (The New Press, 2004), editor
and contributor
•   Making the Money Sing: Private Wealth & Public Power in the Search for Peace
(Rowman & Littlefield, October 2000)
•   Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade (Free Press, 1997)
•   Sovereign Acts: American Unilateralism and Global Security (Harper & Row, 1989)
•   Empty Promise: The Growing Case Against Star Wars (Beacon, 1986), editor
and contributor
•   The Militarization of High Technology (Ballinger, 1984), editor and contributor
•   The Fallacy of Star Wars (Vintage/Random House, 1984), editor and contributor

2.  Articles  (> 1200 words) selected list

“Diplomacy and the War in Iraq,” Strategic Insights (March 2007)

“Immigration and Insecurity: Post-9/11 Fear in the United States.” MIT Center for

International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom (June 2006)

“The War on Terror and the Cold War: They’re Not the Same.” MIT Center for

International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom (April 2006)

“The Washington Consensus and Armed Conflict: Impacts on health care and education,” Development 48:3 (September 2005)
“Security the Progressive Way,” The Nation (April 11, 2005)
"Mistrusted Muslims" National Catholic Reporter (January 14, 2005)
“Banned in America,” AlterNet (September 1, 2004), on Tariq Ramadan
“Homeland Security: The Fear Factor,” Washington Post (August 29, 2004)
“The New Humanitarianism,” Boston Review (Dec. 2003); reprinted in Papeles de
            Cuestiones Internacionales (Madrid), Spring 2004
“What Lurks in the Ruins?” AlterNet (April 10, 2003), on the future of Iraq 
“Providing Resources for Peace,” in J.P. Lederach et al, eds., Into the Eye of the Storm (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).  Chapter contribution.
 “How the Cold War Ended,” Global Dialogue (Winter, 2001-02)
 “Cyprus: Peace at Last?”  Greekworks.com (Jan. 1, 2002)
 “Unintended Consequences,” AlterNet (October 2001). Reprinted in After 9/11: Solutions for a Saner World, D. Hazen et al, eds. (San Francisco: IMI, 2002)
 “Nationalism in Exile,” Boston Review (Summer 2001)
“International Mediators Should Forget Cyprus,” Wall Street Journal Europe (Aug. 4,
2000)
 “How We Ended the Cold War,” The Nation (Nov. 1, 1999).  Reprinted in After the Fall: 1989 and the Future of Freedom, G. Kastsiaficas, ed. (N.Y.: Routledge, 2001)
 “No Arming of Freedom Fighters in Kosovo,” Insight  (May 3, 1999)
 “Forces of Civility: The NGO Revolution and the Search for Peace,” Boston Review (December ’98-January ’99)
 “The Ankara-Jerusalem Nexis,” The Nation (January 4, 1999)
 “Improving Turkey’s ‘Bad Neighborhood,’” World Policy Journal (Spring 1998)
 “Who Needs Weapons?” Boston Sunday Globe (January 4, 1998)
 “Ataturk’s Children,” Boston Review (December 1997)
 "Habitat for Inhumanity," The Nation (June 24, 1996)
 "Beyond the Cold War," Boston Sunday Globe (April 2, 1995)
 "Les is More," Boston Sunday Globe (May 9, 1993) Aspin at the Pentagon
 "Nuclear Decrepitude: The Nuclear Future Must Cope with its Failed Past," Nuclear Times (Autumn/Winter 1992)
 "Shifting Balances Point to New Spurs for War," Boston Sunday Globe (Dec. 21, 1991)
 "A Second Nuclear Age," Boston Sunday Globe (January 20, 1991)
“International Monitoring for Peace,” Issues in Science and Technology, IV:4 (Summer 1988)
“Space and National Security,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Jan/Feb 1988
“Reinventing America,” Boston Review October 1987.
 “The Inevitability of the Atomic Bomb,” Boston Sunday Globe, February 15, 1987
“U.S. Hurts its Defense by Scuttling SALT,” Boston Sunday Globe, Nov. 2, 1986
“Fostering Arms Control: The Role of Unilateralism,” International Spectator (July 1986)
“Star Wars’ Technology Threatens Satellites,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (May 1986)
“Boosting Star Wars,” Christianity and Crisis, May 27, 1985
“Unilateralism: A Way to Break the Deadlock,” The Nation, February 16, 1985
“Energy Talk: No Magic in this Marketplace,” The Nation October 20, 1984
“Walking Out of Star Wars,” Esquire, October 1984
 “Star Wars: From Scenario to Fact,” The Nation, December 23, 1983
“Ronald Reagan and the Nuclear Renaissance,” Boston Review, October 1983
“America, the New Nuclear Salesman,” The Nation, October 16, 1982
“The Militarization of Route 128,” Boston Globe Magazine August 15, 1982
“Investing in the Energy Transition: From Oil to What?” Technology Review, April 1982

3.  Short articles, opinion pieces, etc. selected list

“We Can Learn Something from The Dead In Iraq,” National Catholic Reporter
(January 12, 2007)
“In Iraq, the losses Americans don't see,” Newsday, (December 31, 2006) “Regionalizing Iraq,” Boston Sunday Globe (November 26, 2006)
“Study: More than 600,000 Dead in Iraq,” AlterNet (Oct. 11, 2006)
“Tales of Homegrown Terror,” Newark Star-Ledger (Sept. 26, 2006)
“The Trouble with Turkey,” Boston Globe, (November 30, 2005)
“The Heavy Price of Censorship,” International Herald Tribune, (November 22, 2005)
“The Future of American Foreign Policy," response to Stephen Walt, Boston Review
(February-March 2005)
"A focus on facts ought to dispel mistrust of US Muslims," Christian Science Monitor
            (January 31, 2005)
“One Island, Divided," Wall Street Journal Europe (April 2, 2004)
“Forms of Democracy,” Boston Globe (November 6, 2000)
“Heroes Who Have No Day,” Los Angeles Times (May 30, 1999)
“Shooting Down Arms Spending,” Los Angeles Times (January 8, 1999)
“Italy Has a Chance to Help Both Turkey and Kurds,” International Herald Tribune (Nov. 24, 1998)
“Another Problematic Extradition Question,” Los Angeles Times (Nov. 19, 1998)
“A Message from the U.S. to Saddam Hussein,” Los Angeles Times (August 19, 1998)
“A Foreign Policy Double Standard,” The Record, New Jersey (March 15, 1998)
“Good Philanthropy: More Complex Than Computers,” Chronicle of Philanthropy (Jan. 15, 1998)
“Perspective on Turkey" Los Angeles Times (Dec. 19, 1997)
“GOP Takes on Clinton from the Left,” Los Angeles Times (Oct. 23, 1997)
“Turkey’s Overblown ‘Islamic Threat’” Washington Post (March 1997)
"What U.S. Philanthropy Can Do in Bosnia," Chronicle of Philanthropy (May 30, 1996)
"Back Off the Witch Hunt," Los Angeles Times (February 22, 1996)
"'Friendly Fire' Accusations Miss the Mark," Los Angeles Times (April 17, 1994)
"Cuba Still Awaits Softer U.S. Line," Chicago Tribune (February 1, 1992)
"Two New Crises," Chronicle of Philanthropy (Jan. 29, 1991)
"Grant Makers Are Missing Opportunities” Chronicle of Philanthropy (July 10, 1990)
 "Go Small and Clean, Not Big and Green," Los Angeles Times (July  9, 1990)
 "Paying Ourselves War Reparations," Chicago Tribune (March 21, 1990)
“Star Wars is Dead,” Los Angeles Times (April 23, 1987)
“Nuclear Industry, Heal Thyself,” Wall Street Journal (December 30, 1983)
“When Markets have Little Reason to Save Energy,” Wall Street Journal (January 6,
1981)
“Austerity as a Guide,” New York Times (Nov. 9, 1980)

4.  Other media
•  The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: A Mortality Study (MIT and Johns Hopkins U., 2006), editor; and the web site, “Iraq: The Human Cost” (http://mit.edu/humancostiraq)
•  Crisis of Governance in the Gulf: Legitimacy and Stability in a Dark Time (MIT, 2006), report.
•   "The Cyprus Conflict," educational Web site, 2000 - present.  <www.cyprus-conflict.net> Editor and contributor.

The MIT Center for International Studies currently receives no funding from the U.S. Government.

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[1] This is most evident in the “public diplomacy” efforts of recent years, which typically depict a need for us to tell the rest of the world about ourselves and intentions, instead of listening to their concerns. For an example, see Richard C. Holbrooke, “Get the Message Out,” Washington Post (October 28, 2001), a slightly more sophisticated version of the Bush administration’s actual effort (cf., John Brown, “A Failed Public Diplomat,” TomPaine.com, October 6, 2005).

[2] Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998): 10.

[3] This was how a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, stationed in Shanghai, said the Chinese viewed the U.S. in the 1990s. Personal communication.

[4] See Dani Rodrik, “Good and Bad News on Economic Development,” Audits of Conventional Wisdom, MIT Center for International Studies, April 2008; and Alice Amsden, Escape from Empire: The Developing World's Journey through Heaven and Hell (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007).

[5] This agency had never evaluated the effect of its “democratization” programs until very recently (and inadequately) and still sustains a view of democratization that is exceptionally narrow. It promotes parliamentary training, political party development (but only some political parties), civil society development (but, again, in a narrow ideological range), rule of law (as an anti-corruption device), and elections; at the same time, it promotes marketization that destabilizes countries at the very time they are expected to enact political reform, a combination that has often proved disastrous.