A rchive Date
[ 26-12-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
America's challenge
By SALIM MANSUR - For the Toronto Sun
December 26, 2002
LONDON, Ont. - The challenge for America is to remain true to its republican ideal.
The recent international survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., found that the United States is increasingly disliked globally.
The director of the Pew Centre, Andrew Kohut, observed: "The biggest headline is the slipping image of the United States, not simply that we're not liked in the Muslim world."
The Pew survey may be disturbing to Americans for what it says about America's image around the world. But it also reveals indirectly what feeds the present global anti-Americanism.
A dislike, or faulting, of America for the many ills of the world is a backhanded admission that without American involvement these ailments, whatever they are - diseases, poverty, business slumps, wars, terrorism, etc. - cannot be addressed or resolved.
Americans are damned if they engage themselves with the world, and damned if they choose to withdraw from involvements with it. This is America's burden of being the only superpower, of striding across the globe as a colossus the like of which has not been seen before.
America's faults are common. They are the products of pride, self-righteousness, overbearing confidence, insensitivity and impatience.
Other powers in history have displayed the same faults - sometimes in excess - without possessing sufficiently those qualities that have made America the great republic it is.
ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY
Those who dislike America, as, for instance, so many Arabs and Muslims do according to the Pew survey, are either unwilling to take responsibility for failing in their own efforts to build a modern and prosperous society consistent with their own values, or are unwilling to acknowledge the source of America's success to continually surprise others by its achievements.
Ronald Reagan, America's greatest president in the second half of the 20th century, and its most successful leader since Franklin Roosevelt in the first half, described endearingly what made America a beacon to the rest of the world.
In his farewell address to the nation on Jan. 11, 1989, Reagan said, "In my mind (America) was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get there."
To a certain extent, however, America's difficulties, as in the Middle East, arise from its failure to abide by the guiding principles its founding fathers laid forth for the republic. These principles were best articulated in the farewell address George Washington, America's first president and its most respected leader, wrote to his countrymen in 1796.
Washington indicated that conflict between morals and self-interest would be absent so long as America refused to play favourites abroad. He wrote, "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct."
Washington advised that America's true policy be "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world;" that "liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity and interest;" that there "can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard."
In the Middle East America steered away during the past several decades from Washington's advice, with the predictable result that its "good faith and justice" came to be doubted by Arabs and Muslims.
The challenge for America, now more than ever before, is not merely appearing to do justice to counter anti-Americanism around the world, but returning to its original purpose and remaining steadfast in that which made it a beacon on the hill to the world.
Hence, the increasingly difficult task for Americans in our time is to demonstrate fortitude in steering the republic as their founding fathers counselled, instead of worrying over their global image while the republic is confounded between morality and self-interest.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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