World on Fire - Brownstein, Michael [129]
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This was not what globalization promised.
Just a decade ago, in the early 1990s, hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest, from Johannesburg to Rio de Janeiro, believed that it was only a matter of time before market liberalization, democratic reforms, and globalization would hike their standard of living closer to that enjoyed by Americans. American policymakers and pro-market developing-country politicians were equally irresponsible in cultivating these dangerously inflated expectations. Today, as London’s Financial Times recently put it, “Americans are richer while people in most transition economies and emerging markets still struggle, their frustration heightened by cheap, almost universal access to images and information about how much better Americans live.” While anti-Americanism used to be driven by what America did, “now it is also motivated by what America is.”
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And what is America? In the eyes of the vast majority of the developing world, America is the antithesis of what they are. America is rich, healthy, glamorous, confident, and exploitative—at least if Hollywood, our multinationals, our supermodels, and our leaders are any indication. America is also “almighty,” able to “control the world,” whether through our military power or through the IMF-implemented austerity measures we have heartlessly forced on developing populations. They, on the other hand, are hungry, poor, exploited, and powerless, often even over the destiny of their own families. Obviously their condition is not all America’s fault. But like the wildly disproportionately wealthy Chinese in Indonesia, Indians in East Africa, or Jewish “oligarchs” in Russia, America is an obvious scapegoat, practically calling out to be hated.
And Americans are indeed hated in the developing world. Of course, “the poor” in developing countries are not homogeneous, and surely—hopefully—the prominent Hanoi professor who said he believed “fully 80 percent of the world’s population” “privately praise[d] the September 11 attacks” was exaggerating.
27 Nevertheless, the fact remains that after the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed—horrifically killing three thousand men, women, and children—many outside the United States rejoiced.
In Indonesia and Malaysia, gleeful, hate-filled youths went from one luxury hotel to another, looking for Americans. In Brazil, Osama bin Laden masks rolled off assembly lines, not fast enough to satisfy exploding consumer demand. “I don’t give a shit,” wrote a Chinese man in an inflammatory anti-American e-mail that circulated in Australia and Europe. “America deserves this, because of all the suffering it has caused humankind,” said a Vietnamese university student, interviewed on September 13, 2001. “The United States is king of the jungle,” said another. “When the king is attacked, the other animals are happy.” And: “I feel sorry for the terrorists who were very brave because they risked their lives.”
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Many hundreds of millions of others in the developing world take a more moderate view, condemning the killing of innocent people but at the same time firmly declaring that “America had it coming,” “This is what they get,” and “What do Americans expect?” Indeed, this seems clearly to be the dominant, majority-held view in the developing world: condemnation of the attack but sympathy for the attackers and the causes motivating them.
Moreover, across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the theme of American market dominance repeatedly emerges, with more frequency, bitterness, and clarity than the charges against American foreign policy with which they are sometimes interwoven. Thus, Daijhi, a popular Nepalese commentator, condemned the attack on America as follows:
Those men who carried out the plane bombings . . . chose specific targets. The World Trade Centre was the High Temple of capitalism. It housed thousands of highly paid financial workers who were seen as soldiers fighting an economic war that forces 80% of mankind to live in poverty. The bombers did not see them as innocent civilians.