The Post-American World - Fareed Zakaria [107]
“Even for a senior foreign official dealing with the US administration,” writes the solidly pro-American Christopher Patten, recounting his experience as Europe’s commissioner for external affairs, “you are aware of your role as a tributory: however courteous your hosts, you come as a subordinate bearing goodwill and hoping to depart with a blessing on your endeavours. . . . In the interests of the humble leadership to which President Bush rightly aspires, it would be useful for some of his aides to try to get in to their own offices for a meeting with themselves some time!” Patten continues, “Attending any conference abroad, American Cabinet officers arrive with the sort of entourage that would have done Darius proud. Hotels are commandeered; cities are brought to a halt; innocent bystanders are barged into corners by thick-necked men with bits of plastic hanging out of their ears. It is not a spectacle that wins hearts and minds.”4
When President Bush traveled abroad, his trips seemed designed to require as little contact as possible with the countries he visited. He was usually accompanied by two thousand or so Americans, as well as several airplanes, helicopters, and cars. He saw little except palaces and conference rooms. His trips involved almost no effort to demonstrate respect and appreciation for the country and culture he was visiting. They also rarely involved any meetings with people outside the government—businessmen, civil society leaders, activists. Even though the president’s visit must be highly programmed by definition, a broader effort to touch the people in these foreign lands would have had great symbolic value. Consider an episode involving Bill Clinton and India. In May 1998, India detonated five underground nuclear devices. The Clinton administration roundly condemned New Delhi, levied sanctions, and indefinitely postponed a planned presidential visit. The sanctions proved painful, by some estimates costing India one percent of GDP growth over the next year. Eventually Clinton relented and went to India in March 2000. He spent five days in the country, visited famous sights, put on traditional clothes, and took part in dances and ceremonies. He communicated the message that he enjoyed and admired India as a country and civilization. The result was a transformation. Clinton is a rock star in India. And George W. Bush, despite being the most pro-Indian president in American history, commanded none of this attention, affection, or respect. Policy matters but so does the symbolism surrounding it.
Apart from the resentment that the imperial style produces, it ensures that American officials don’t benefit from the experience and expertise of foreigners. The UN inspectors in Iraq were puzzled by how uninterested U.S. officials were in talking to them before the war. The Americans, comfortably ensconced in Washington, lectured the inspectors—who had spent weeks combing through Iraq—on the evidence of weapons of mass destruction. “I thought they would be interested in our firsthand reports on what those supposedly dual-use factories looked like,” one inspector told me. “But no, they explained to me what those factories were being used for.”
To foreigners, American officials seem clueless about the world they are supposed to be running. “There are two sets of conversations, one with Americans in the room and one without,” says Kishore Mahbubani, who was formerly Singapore’s foreign secretary and ambassador to the United Nations. Because Americans live in a “cocoon,” they don’t see the “sea change in attitudes towards America throughout the world.”
This Time It’s Different
It is too easy to dismiss the hostility that grew out of the Iraq campaign as just envious anti-Americanism (even if some of it is). American conservatives have claimed that there has been large, popular opposition in Europe every time the