Features » June 6, 2008

Does the E.U. Hate You?

Despite popular myth, anti-Americanism in Europe isn’t on the rise

By Paul Hockenos

On Feb. 15, 2003, protestors marched through the Bradenburg Gate in Berlin to demonstrate against the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In Europe, as in nearly everywhere else in the world, the image of the United States has taken a severe battering during the Bush years. Survey after survey shows that negative feelings toward America and U.S. policies have soared. Only 36 percent of Europeans, for example, view U.S. leadership in world affairs as desirable, according to a 2007 German Marshall Fund poll. Markedly lower is their approval of the Bush administration: a dismal 17 percent. In Harris polls since 2003, the majority of Europeans have even cited the United States as the greatest threat to international security — more so than Iran, North Korea or Russia.

But distinguishing between an all-encompassing animus toward the country and its people, and legitimate criticism of U.S. government policies, has proven extremely difficult. Only the former is anti-Americanism — an irrational, deeply embedded cultural aversion to a presumed American “national character.” A standard distinction between America-bashing and rational critique is between disapproval of what America is and what America does. Yet they inevitably blur into one another: After all, what one is informs what one does, and vice versa.

The Bush administration attributed the opposition of France and Germany to the Iraq War as a blunt expression of anti-Americanism. Even some left-of-center intellectuals, such as University of Michigan political scientist Andrei Markovits, claim that a virulent anti-Americanism is currently sweeping Europe — worse even than that during the Vietnam War or during the 1980s, when the United States deployed nuclear missiles in Western Europe.

However, the range of European issues with the United States is not wanton America-trashing but conflicting visions of how to organize society and conduct relations in the wider world. In the European Union (E.U.), citizens are voicing a preference for a greater European role in global affairs, with Germans (87 percent) and Spaniards (81 percent) at the top. As Jeremy Rifkin put it in his 2004 book, The European Dream, Europe’s vision for the future has replaced that of the American dream.

In the United States, many who backed the Iraq invasion would gladly echo Markovits’ conclusions in his 2007 book, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America. He writes that underlying Europe’s hostility to “everything American” is a “massive Europe-wide resentment of the United States that reaches well beyond American policies, American politics and American government.”

Markovits contends that the Bush administration’s contentious foreign policies have simply shot into overdrive a hatred for America that has long flourished in Europe, and is ultimately linked to anti-Semitism. On the right, European nationalists despise America as the epitome of the modern, a materialistic and hedonistic place run by Jews. The left’s anti-Americanism focuses on the United States being an imperialist power — and in league with Zionist Israel.

Markovits is not entirely wrong: Anti-Americanism is alive and well in Europe, and, among hardcore America haters, there is often an anti-Semitic element. But Markovits and his like are incorrect about how pervasive this sentiment is and the extent to which it dictates European attitudes about the United States. While some anti-Americanism is embedded in European opinion, it is actually quite thin: In France, Germany, Great Britain and Italy, it hovers around 10 percent (it is strongest in Greece), rising at times of transatlantic political friction, like the present.

Yet more than a quarter of these populations (40 percent in Italy) are consistently sympathetic to the United States. Even at the height of the Cold War’s greatest crises, most Western Europeans favored maintaining a strong alliance with the United States. During the mass disarmament protests in the early ’80s, only 20 percent of West Germans favored the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Federal Republic.

As American political scientists Robert Keohane and Peter Katzenstein demonstrate in their 2007 book, Anti-Americanisms in World Politics, negative European attitudes, even at their peaks, have zero impact on official policies toward the United States — or on transatlantic tourism, trade or consumer behavior.

Likewise, the overwhelming reluctance of both the German political elite and public to attack Iraq was not founded on bias against America. Germany, after all, participated in the 1999 NATO campaign against Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia, as well as far-reaching post-9/11 anti-terrorism measures and the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, all of which enjoyed popular backing.

That support declined gradually, however, as European and Bush administration conceptions of counterterrorism methods diverged. Most Germans seemed to feel that the military approach was only one option in the campaign against terrorism. There were others, the Social Democratic-Green government argued, such as diplomacy, dialogue with the Islamic world, aid programs, and brokering a peace deal between Israel and Palestine.

Ultimately, using anti-Americanism to explain Europe’s antiwar feelings tosses both anti-American tropes and perfectly reasonable evaluation of the Bush administration’s foreign policy blunders into the same pot, robbing the latter of political content. This effectively discredits all critique of America’s global policies, be it climate policy, dealings with the United Nations or human rights issues — and this explains why Bush loyalists invoke it.

While researching the West German student uprising in the late ’60s, I was consistently impressed by how essential American influences were for the 1967-1969 campus revolts. Even in protesting the Vietnam War, the student activists were conscious that they were using American protest methods: sit-ins, teach-ins and other forms of civil disobedience picked up from the U.S. civil rights movement. West German students told me their politics would have been inconceivable without Bob Dylan’s lyrics, the works of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and the examples of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. These young people (some of whom even yelled “USA-SA-SS,” comparing the United States to Nazis) were more American than their parents ever could have been.

Perhaps the best symbol of this paradox was the Free University in West Berlin (FUB). Set up by the American military authorities in West Berlin as an antidote to the “not free” university in East Berlin, the FUB was the bastion of the West German student movement. The spirit of the project was to instil a new, participatory democratic ethic in postwar Germans. Its American founders certainly had no idea that the German students would take the mandate so literally.

Europe’s alternative

The transatlantic estrangement, Italian historian Federico Romero argues, is the product of a substantive cultural and social parting of ways that began with the end of the Cold War. During the East-West conflict, a consensual view existed of what “the West” and “Western” meant — in terms of shared values, institutions and procedures. Contrary to Markovits, Romero says that the number of hardcore America haters dropped as the decades progressed and were increasingly marginalized.

“By the 1980s,” Romero writes in What They Think of Us: International Perceptions of the United States Since 9/11, “traditional anti-Americanism could be plausibly dismissed as a relic of the past, and public culture often celebrated the advent of a homogenized transatlantic society.”

The end of the Cold War not only altered Europe’s strategic dependence on Washington, but also decoupled Europe from the United States as an economic model, a cultural Mecca and political beacon. Europe grew more self-confident, and a veritable “rollback” of America’s cultural presence ensued. Ongoing social changes in Europe and the United States — in religious attitudes, demography, wealth distribution and migration patterns — only accentuated those differences. What’s more, the generation that has come of age in a globalized world needs the United States far less than their parents did.

This shift, argues Romero, is due largely to Europe’s own self-perception: Europe as an adherent to a “European social model” based on collective solidarity, secularism, welfare state practices, post-nationalism and environmental responsibility. Europeans, even those who favor U.S. strategic leadership in the world, have become increasingly convinced that their model is more just and more effective. The Bush administration’s anti-terrorism strategies and belligerent international behavior simply entrenched this belief.

These contrasting preferences in social model, cultural bearing and international strategy go beyond what America does and penetrate the essence of what America is. But they are differences based on rational comparative analysis, not knee-jerk antipathy. And, luckily, there is no reason for Americans to take personal offense or cancel their vacation to the Alps: While Europeans’ opinion of America has suffered, their overall perception of Americans remains quite positive.

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• Reader Comments

  In the early years of this Republic, Europe took a dim view of everything about the Western Hemisphere:

  “ ... due chiefly to atmospheric conditions, in particular excessive humidity, all living things in the Americas were not only inferior to those found in Europe but also in a condition of decline.” - James Ceaser, “A Genealogy of Anti-Americanism,” >Public Interest (Summer 2003). http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/951675/posts

  The European attitude, similar to that expressed above, has a very long history, as documented by Ceaser and others.

  So, taking a dim view of the Western Hemisphere in general and the United States in particular has a long and unsubstantiated pedigree, not to mention an opportunistic element: Europe was glad enough to suffer our presence in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, even if we are inferior and in decline.

  It would be correct to attribute the long-standing European attitude toward the United States to jealousy, regardless of any cultural or political context in which that jealousy is expressed.  Europe is now faced with demographic collapse, Islamization, and impoverishment, so obviously the jealousy can only increase, and appears to be morphing toward Jihadism. 

  But the variable animosity toward the United States is not limited to Europe; it is worldwide, and is an exact function of real threat.  During the Cold War, Europe was threatened by its bastard spawn, Communism, and willingly took protection from the United States, despite what some students said or did.  At the same time, Japan was relatively unthreatened and developed a quite independent streak, and welcome to it.  But the collapse of the Soviet Union corresponded quite closely with the rise of China, and Europe began to express more independence just as Japan became more interested in strengthening its defense ties with the United States, in a global geopolitical minuet. 

  So does the EU hate me?  Probably not.  Tweaking the United States is a safe pastime, unlike tweaking Kaiser Bill, or Hitler, or Stalin, or the Soviet bureaucracy.  Tweak and be damned, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me. 

  If Europe ever gets engaged enough to confront the Jihadists in their midst we will ride to the rescue again, without a doubt.

  Posted by scorp on Jun 7, 2008 at 9:00 AM

  One basic instinctive reason for hatred is jealousy.  Most of “the world” hates the US because of jealousy.  If you cannot keep up with the Jones, you hate them.  If you finally can do better than the Jones, you despise them.

  Most of the world may hate the US but does not fear the US.  The world may be sympathetic to extremists but fear them.  Life is no paradise and the world may be confused between HATE and FEAR.

  Posted by Florida Counts on Jun 7, 2008 at 9:32 AM

  Since you sympathize with 1960’s radicals and the current Green Party, there is little doubt that you would seek to portray their anti-Americanism in the best possible light.

  However, the truth is brutal and unflattering. Europe only supports America when it suits her self-interests, and seeks to frustrate US foreign policy in all other aspects. Europeans support basing US troops in Europe during the Cold War? How touching.

  The social capital between Europe and the US is depleting rapidly. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, European actions cannot be characterized as allied. The younger generations of Americans feel no connection to Europe at all. Our popular culture has turned it’s attention to Asia.

  Make no mistake, just as brothers grow apart, as European relatives turn from cousins to distant cousins, so has America grown apart from Europe. We do not have common views on individual freedom, religion, or culture. We have nothing in common but history, which grows more distant every day.

  As an American citizen, I will fiercely oppose all proposals by the US government to aid Europe.

  Posted by altoids on Jun 7, 2008 at 9:42 AM

  The name “allies” is just a holdover from WW11.  NATO is out of gas and everyone knows it.  It is only the UK and the US who have put money into military readiness.

  I know it is a popular passtime in the UK and Europe to mull over how the US could change to make us more popular on your side of the pond but honestly, few on this side care.  It is not a popularity contest and Europe has to many lefty to ever tike the US who never really fell for the fashionable radical politics coming from the salons of Europe.  Afterall, the names Euro-weenies and Euro trash were a Yank response to the leftist nonsense your side of the pond comes up with.

  So do we really care what France, Germany, Spain, Italy thinks about anything.  No.  They are a impotent group.  We do care about the UK but are very pessimistic about your future.  The multicults are destroying “Briitishness”.

  So you tell us.  Why should we care what the UK and Britain think?  WW11 has been over for some long while and so has the Wall.

  Posted by britwit on Jun 7, 2008 at 10:09 AM

  Europe wants to exert more international influence.  Well isn’t that special.  I takes alot more to exert pressure and influence others than harping and criticizing.  Talk is cheap but very often leads to no where.

  Europe won’t, or can’t spend the money on their militaries that would allow it to play a more important role in world politics.  Talk means nothing without the might to back it up.  It seems most Europeans would rather allow the U.S. to pay for deployment of their troops to protect the European Union.  Remeber the U.S. had no real interest in the Balkans but went anyway at the behest of the Europeans.  It’s easy to carp and criticize but when they need help they no who to call and it’s not Ghostbusters.

  Europe has talked with the Iranians for nearly a decade now about their development of nuclear power (can we say weapons) and not a single thing has been accomplished.  Discussions are good and should be encouraged but talk alone will not bring an end to all problems.  Iran will not desist from their nuclear ambitions and neither will North Korea because we talk.  There must be consequences for actions.  The Europeans aren’t even willing to impose economic restrictions much less boycotts.  Europe is weak.

  It is easy to lambaste the U.S. while it defends the world and provides Europe with security.  The U.S. does not ask for Europes gratefulness for winning the cold war, world war II and world war I.  We merely ask for a little respect.  Europe criticized us for deploying nuclear weapons to fight the cold war but is there any doubt that it helped?  Europe criticized Churchill and praised Chamberlain but who was right? 

  An an American I would welcome Europe playing a central role in the world but only when they are willing to back up their belicosity.  Their pontificating and bloviating is weak and hollow.  It seems that Europe’s policy is whatever is in opposition to the United States.

  The United States is often wrong but when it matters who will come to the aid of the Europeans?  I can guarantee it won’t be the Iranians, North Koreans, and Muslim extremists.  When Europe acquires a backbone then their help on the world stage will be welcome.  Until then shut up and get out of the way.

  Posted by garthid on Jun 7, 2008 at 10:12 AM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 10 posts.

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