May 4, 2004
On World Stage, Critics of US Grow Louder
Boston Globe

Even in former citidels of pro-America sentiment in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, people are starting to chafe and complain. They are increasingly irritated by what many South Koreans facetiously refer to as the Pax Americana -- a world politically dominated by Washington, a world increasingly steeped in US moral values, and a world awash in American culture.

by Colin Nickerson

SEOUL -- On a wind-swept quadrangle of Seoul National University, the weekly demonstration against the United States was building up steam. Activists thrust clenched fists skyward while chanting the usual chants -- ''US out of Iraq!" ''US out of Korea!" ''US out of Asia!" -- and waggling posters bearing brightly colored caricatures. Check out Uncle Sam puffing a big fat stogie atop a heap of nuclear missiles! Catch President George W. Bush in Dracula garb, vampire fangs dripping blood!

Inside a common room on the South Korean campus, Lee Ji-Woo, a 21-year-old student of agricultural economics, winced as the bullhorn tirade outside rattled the window panes.

''It isn't noisy protesters that should bother Americans," she said. ''What should bother Americans are the quiet feelings of anger and disgust filling the hearts of people who normally would be your best friends. America is becoming such a bully and a boor -- deaf to every voice except its own. Demanding its own way, 'Now, now, now!', and suggesting that anyone who disagrees or argues is an enemy. That frightens me. I think it frightens many people."

Her view was echoed by many of the scores of people on four continents interviewed by Globe reporters in recent weeks. Even in former citidels of pro-America sentiment in Asia, Europe, and Latin America, people are starting to chafe and complain. They are increasingly irritated by what many South Koreans facetiously refer to as the Pax Americana -- a world politically dominated by Washington, a world increasingly steeped in US moral values, and a world awash in American culture.

There has always been anti-Americanism. From the time of the country's first forays onto the international scene, at the outset of the 19th century, there have been choruses of ''Yankee go home!" But the sentiment has never seemed quite so pervasive, even among people who feel immense gratitude to the United States.

''My first memory is of American soldiers bringing food and blankets," said Kim Seung-Yil, 55, a South Korean garment manufacturer, who was a baby when invading North Koreans destroyed his home village of Seotan-Mun before being repelled by US forces. ''I've always thought of Americans as saviors. Their blood is soaked so deeply in our soil. But now it feels as if the US is becoming the crusader only for its own values and interests. It wants America's rights and wrongs to be the world's rights and wrongs. This makes people uncomfortable."

Many of the same people uncomfortable with the powerful economic and military reach of the United States nonetheless still hold American culture and egalitarian values in high regard. American movies, fast foods, and brand names dominate the global marketplace not because of any sinister snuffing out of competition but because people almost everywhere -- from Soweto to Shanghai -- are genuinely enraptured by Hollywood's latest and really do enjoy eating Kentucky Fried Chicken or wearing fashions from the Gap. Activists opposed to free trade may trash US fast-food outlets and retail chains as symbols of cultural imperialism, but no one seriously disputes that these zealots are vastly outnumbered by aficionados of the American style of life.

''There's an anti-Americanism spreading across the world, [but] it is a love-hate relationship," said Prannoy Roy, a talk-show host with a New Delhi television station. ''People say, 'Yankee go home, but take me with you!' "

The widening cynicism toward the United States comes at a time when many Americans see the country as more directly threatened than at any time since Pearl Harbor. Americans tend to be perplexed by the notion that it is somehow the United States -- more than terrorists or murderous regimes -- that poses the real threat to world stability. But that notion is becoming commonplace.

The disconnection is deep, and it has worrying foreign-policy and defense implications for Washington at a time when cooperation with other countries against terror and other threats may be a life-or-death matter.

In almost every part of the world, analysts say and opinion polls indicate, distrust of the United States is deepening. The suspicion and anger appears fueled not so much by a single issue -- although the invasion of Iraq looms large -- as by the belief that America has become simply too powerful, too arrogant, and too quick on the military trigger.

''Americans think the world is flat with them at the center," said Mikhail Shaldayev, 35, food manager at a Moscow hotel.

''They have double standards toward the rest of the world. . . . Americans think Afghanistan should be the same as Nebraska."

Beyond the impressions from random interviews, a range of surveys has documented the breadth of anti-US passion. Many suggest that discontent with the United States is today running more deeply than during the Cold War. A new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, for example, has indicated that anger at US foreign policy has especially hardened in Europe and the Middle East. ''There is a wide disenchantment with America," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Washington-based think tank. ''People are resentful of the power of the US and its willingness to use that power unilaterally."

In Morocco and Jordan, both moderate Arab countries whose governments enjoy friendly ties with Washington, the same Pew poll indicated that stunningly high percentages of people -- 66 percent in Morocco, 70 percent in Jordan -- believe suicide bomb attacks against American targets are ''justifiable."

Meanwhile, there appears to be an almost visceral dislike of President Bush, who in political cartoons from Mexico City to Manila is routinely portrayed as a trigger-happy cowboy. A recent poll in Canada indicated that 67 percent of people with negative views of the United States ascribed their attitude to ''actions and policies of the Bush administration."

A prominent Islamic scholar in Cairo said that the usual esteem Egyptians hold for the country is souring because of the Bush presidency. ''We love the American people," said Abdel Moti Bayoumi. ''But the current American administration is trying to impose its will. This . . . will be counterproductive" to US interests in the world.

In South Korea, one of America's most important friends and allies, a December Gallup poll indicated that 53 percent of people dislike the United States. A decade earlier, only a small fraction -- 15 percent -- held such a negative view.

''People are frustrated with the US," said Kim Choong Nam, political scientist at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

''Sometimes their anger makes little sense, given the great risks Americans have taken in the modern era to make the world safer, more free, more prosperous," Kim said, referring to World War II and the Cold War confrontations that led to the collapse of Soviet communism. ''But people don't know history or deliberately reject it. They live in the now. And when they are frustrated, they blame the richest, most powerful nation."At a table at the VIPS cafe on Madrid's Paseo del Prado, Eva Ruiz, 27, a legal assistant, suggested that the United States aggressively promotes democracy mainly to mask baser motives. ''The war in Iraq is a fight for American economic and oil interests," she said shortly after March terrorist attacks on Spanish commuter trains claimed 191 lives. ''Why should we fight for that? Why should we suffer bombings like we did for that?"

Almost without exception, those interviewed expressed alarm about the big-stick policies of Washington and the perceived unwillingness of the United States to respect world bodies, like the United Nations, or work closely with other governments. While Americans see US unilateralism as heroically ''going it alone," inhabitants of other lands see it as renegade refusal to play by international codes. ''There is a general feeling that America is imposing its rule on the world, that it is a coercive power," said Mohammed Khairy, a 62-year-old retired accountant, after finishing afternoon prayers at Cairo's picturesque Assad Ibn Al Furat mosque.

In the African nation of Rwanda, however, Sylvester Rushomwintwal said that it is only natural that America would relentlessly hunt down its enemies. ''What Al Qaeda did [with the 9/11 attacks] was like an insult to the might of the US," said the 46-year-old owner of a recycling company in Kigali. ''In Rwanda, we have a saying: 'Don't go and touch the mouth of the lion.' "

But the king of the jungle is more feared than loved. Less than three years after militant Islamic hijackers smashed the World Trade Center in history's bloodiest terror assault, it is the United States that evokes shudders with its roars and retaliations.

In reaction, strident anti-US pronouncements have thundered from surprising quarters. Carolyn Parrish, a member of Canada's Parliament, stunned reporters last year with an outburst against her nation's most important trading partner.

''Damn Americans," she fumed, making international headlines because her sentiments contrasted so sharply with the bland diplomacy that usually emanates from Ottawa. ''I hate those bastards!"

Parrish later apologized, but her from-the-gut remark seemed to reflect the mood of many Canadians. In a cover story that mocked President's Bush's ''smug little smile," Maclean's magazine -- similar to Time or Newsweek -- asserted that ''the intense sympathy felt during the attacks of 9/11 . . . has dissipated. In its place is a deep dislike of the bellicose new global reality."

And yet -- in interviews across Asia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas -- ordinary people also voiced respect for America's generosity of spirit, dedication to human rights, and technological prowess. America was praised as the world's prime creator of wealth --and as maker of a popular culture happily embraced by so many of the planet's multitudes.

''America is the envy of the world," said Pedro Garcia, 42, a Spanish bank economist, as he tucked into a lunch of a cheeseburger and french fries at a restaurant in Madrid. '' The economic freedom, the entrepreneurship are admired everywhere."

Pick a country, any country, and it's a safe bet that antipathy toward the United States is matched by nearly obsessive interest in American culture and events. There's hardly a newspaper on earth that doesn't dedicate a significant portion of its pages to news from the United States, be it cerebral analysis of political trends or frothy coverage of celebrity scandals.

''America is the energy center of the world," said Karen Pedersen, a Danish physician on her first visit to North America. ''Americans are exuberant, creative, visionary, and -- yes -- kind of overbearing. We love to hate America. We hate to love America. But everywhere you go, there is fascination with America."

In interviews, people repeatedly described the United States as a society that has uniquely knitted disparate colors, creeds, and lifestyles woven into a cohesive national fabric. Sure, there are plenty of snarls and loose ends -- and the world, as much as Americans themselves, loves to pick at them. Yet America's brash insistence on making room for every sort of human being still astonishes the world. ''I have seen gay Americans holding hands," said Guadalupe Carias, 31, an El Salvadoran public relations specialist who expressed incredulity and amazement that any culture could be so ''liberal and nonjudgmental."

Even Lee, the agricultural student in South Korea, marveled that the United States could include so many cultures, so many differing political notions -- so many wants, needs, and passionate disagreements -- and yet retain a common national identity.

''No other country has such racial and gender equality," she said. ''The melting pot ideal is a great inspiration -- the idea that a nation need not be limited to people of this color or that language, but a whole assemblage of different people. That's the profound gift America has given the world."

But if America was consistently praised in interviews as a bighearted land of opportunity and tolerance, it was also consistently lambasted as a wayward giant, due for a comeuppance. And nowhere was this sentiment expressed more strongly than in Iraq, where many US soldiers expected to be greeted as liberators.

''I cannot condone the attacks on the World Trade Center, because I understand non-Americans were killed," said M. Ahmed Mukhtar, 47, a pharmacist in Baghdad with relatives in Massachusetts and Michigan. ''Yet, I cannot feel sadness for what is befalling America. I believe there will be more attacks and, God willing, more Americans will die. This is God's justice for [American] pride and arrogance. You are crusaders -- ally of Jews, enemy of Muslims. Your women are shameless. You have no culture. Only trinkets, television, and expensive cars."

But a cousin visiting his shop, Najah Khalad, a 33-year-old educator, was more ambivalent.

''America is like a brand name that has been stamped on every life and country," she said. ''There is no one in the world unaffected by Americans. We know their actors, we sing their pop songs, we eat their fast food. We love blue jeans. We imitate American lifestyles. It is impossible, in these modern times, to say where America ends and the rest of the world begins."

It is sometimes said that all politics are local. And perhaps the most telling sign of America's potent influence -- whether cultural, political, economic, or military -- is the way in which the United States has become a local issue in nearly every neighborhood of the world. The French complain endlessly about the omnipresence of McDonald's outlets in their country -- 1,030 restaurants, with a new one opening every six days. Yet people love to scarf ''un deux cent quatre-vingts," a more than half-pound burger, under golden arches that have become as integral a part of the French landscape as vineyards and street cafes.

Russians fret that their beloved motherland is yielding to American ideas about work and money. ''Americans live to work, and not the other way around," said Vasily Zakharov, 55, a Soviet-era dissident and artist who makes a living as a driver. ''All they care about is consumerism. . . . America is a nation of sheeplike people."

Other Russians disagree. ''It is always bad if one country has more power than all the others, but if one country has to be more powerful, it should be America," said 14-year-old Vova Fomin, basking in a blast of grunge rock from a Moscow street market. ''The people in America control everything. . . . Bush does not control everything. Even though he went to war, [Americans] demonstrated against it. In America, people have choice."

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