American Credibility
Glenn Greenwald has an excellent article up where he shows the steep decline in how people around the world perceive the United States over the last six years. In some countries the shifts are quite dramatic, and he uses that data to disprove a couple of arguments regarding the legacy of George W Bush.
If one argues -- as I frequently do, including as a central argument in A Tragic Legacy -- that America's hard-earned moral credibility in the world has collapsed as a result of the Bush presidency, one can hear similar objections from each side -- namely, that while America is despised in much of the world, that has little or nothing to do with events over the last six years.
Instead, this line of reasoning goes, America was disliked well prior to the advent of Bush radicalism, either because (in the view of neoconservatives as illustrated by Hugh Hewitt here), those who dislike America are intrinsically hateful of America and our values no matter what we do. Or (in the view of a small group on the Left), America is hated not because of what we have done in the last six years, but because America has been a bullying force of Evil in the world for the last several decades (at least) and our behavior under Bush is nothing new for America; it is but a natural extension of the country's foundational or long-embraced values
. . .
Either way, what is indisputably true is that world opinion regarding America has profoundly shifted -- for the worse -- since 2000. The question, then, is why has that happened? My answer is the simplest and most obvious one (which does not mean it is right): namely, public opinion of America has fundamentally changed over the last six years because our behavior in the world, our national character and our defining values have fundamentally changed.
There is another possibility that Glenn does not look into, that it is the rest of the world that has fundamentally changed and America has failed to change with it.
Part of the reason those on the left make the argument that the US was "a bullying force of Evil" for decades, is because any fair read of American foreign policy history will show that there are many well-documented cases where US actions were far less than idealistic. What the left misses, and what Glenn picks up on, is that those cases didn't affect America's moral standing or credibility. The question then, of course, is why?
Earlier this week, I got into a discussion at Hairy Fish Nuts regarding the use of the A-bomb on Japan, mainly revolving around whether or not it was a moral decision. The reason I'm thinking about that is because in the context of the Second World War, the bombs and the decision behind dropping them was understandable and to most, particularly at the time, justifiable.
In the same way, many of the less savoury actions of the United States in the last several decades were allowed or overlooked by its allies and those more neutral because of the context of the Cold War. Confronting a militarized Soviet Union with thousands of nuclear weapons brought with it a lot of leeway.
The same actions now, under the Bush administration, are having such a negative effect on US credibility because the enemy used to justify them is nowhere near the same threat level, whatever the fear-mongers like to say. Actions that could be passed off as defensive or justifiable under the Soviet threat now merely look self-interested and aggressive.
That's not to say that the US hasn't shifted since Bush took office, but the fundamental shift took place outside its borders, and as a result, a fundamental shift in the way US actions are perceived was inevitable.
