–Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own–
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fifty years ago, a pair of American writers published a novel that trained a critical spotlight on U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. The book, by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, became a bestseller and its title, “The Ugly American,” turned into an enduring label.
It’s been a dual-purpose label, first primarily pasted on inept American officials abroad and later on the kind of traveler who would irritate the natives with boorish manners and garish clothes, feeding anti-American sentiments around the globe.
Will they disappear, or fade, after the United States elected as its next president a black man who has described himself as a citizen of the world? The euphoric international reaction to Barack Obama’s victory suggest that America’s star will shine more brightly, at least temporarily, than it has in decades.
As Obama put it in his victory speech: “A new dawn of American leadership is at hand.”
Within minutes of the results, American television viewers were treated to what have become rare images from abroad: large crowds happily waving - rather than burning - American flags.
Cheers for a charismatic young man who said his election showed that “America is a place where all things are possible” came from countries where a similar feat is a difficult to imagine. A French president of Algerian extraction? A Turk as German chancellor? A prime minister of Pakistani descent running Britain? A Moluccan in charge of the Netherlands?
“Everywhere I’ve been this year - from Jerusalem to Japan to Colombia to Italy and back again - I’ve heard people essentially say that America is an overweight white plutocrat who is not only out of touch with the world but also shows no signs of wanting to grow closer to it,” the British writer Pico Iyer said in an essay in Time magazine.
The image, he said, was unfair but potent.
What better antidote to the idea of an out-of-touch overweight white plutocrat than a rake-thin black president who says he wants to “build new bridges across the world” and is seen by many as the incarnation of “cool.”
PRESIDENTIAL IMAGE-MAKING POWER
There are already voices who say the global goodwill Obama now enjoys cannot last and that there are limits to what a president can do to change the United States’ image. True enough, but there is no better example than President George W. Bush of a U.S. leader’s tremendous power to affect perceptions.
The speed with which he managed to turn almost universal sympathy for the United States after September 11, 2001, into almost universal detestation was remarkable. By 2004, goodwill had evaporated so completely that a British mass circulation newspaper, the Daily Mirror, marked Bush’s re-election with a front page that showed a picture of the president over the headline “How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?”
No such rebukes for the American electorate in 2008. What was remarkable in 2008 was how quickly Americans abroad sensed a change of mood. On the night of November 4, American expatriates posted jubilant messages to social networking sites like Facebook saying it was cool to be American again.
Some expressed relief at no longer having to pretend to be Canadian, a long-time ruse to avoid being stereotyped. It is particularly popular among Americans of backpack-travel age and among those traveling in areas where anti-American sentiment runs particularly high.
Numerous opinion polls have tracked the steady decline of America’s image. One, in April 2008 by the BBC and the University of Maryland, found that people in 23 countries saw the United States’ influence in the world more negatively than that of North Korea. Hello, Washington, you have a problem!
Almost all the surveys point to foreign policy — the war in Iraq, the scandal of the Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo — as the principal reasons for disenchantment. While that front has been static, private organizations have launched various initiatives to tackle the image problem on a more personal level.
The non-profit organization Business for Diplomatic Action (BDA), for example, has distributed more than 200,000 copies of its “World Citizen’s Guide” to corporate travelers, with 16 tips that are a mirror image of the behavioral patterns that earned Americans a boorish reputation in the first place.
BDA’s founder, advertising executive Keith Reinhard, is convinced that “our collective personality is one of the causes of anti-Americanism. We are seen as loud, arrogant and completely self-absorbed.”
Fifty years later, that echoes a character in “The Ugly American”: “A mysterious change seems to come over Americans when they go to a foreign land…They are loud and ostentatious. Perhaps they are frightened and defensive; or maybe they are not properly trained and make mistakes out of ignorance.”
Another job on the president-elect’s long list of things to change.
(You can contact the author at Debusmann@Reuters.com)
(Illustration by Brice Hall)
Do you want to contribute to The Great Debate? Please send your ideas to debate@thomsonreuters.com.
There's only so much a president, or American expatriates, or private public diplomacy groups can do to change anti-American feelings. It seems to me there's a good bit of resentment and envy that simply stems from the fact the the U.S. is powerful and its citizens rich, by comparison to others. It's the price to pay to be part of an empire. The Brits in their heyday were unpopular, too, as were the Romans. Not to speak of citizens of the late Soviet empire, compared with whom Americans were seen as free-spending angels, even clad in Hawaii shirts.
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Hey Jacques,
The difference between the Brits and the Romans, versus say the “American empire” is that while the Brits and Romans were out to conquer the world to fund themselves and their own twisted ambitions (especially the Brits) without consequence or regard for anyone or anything else, the united states was built on a foundation of freedom, and spreading this concept around the world (in principle). While their approaches at different times have been less than effective (W. and Kissinger, for example), comparing the Americans to any other empire in history is both unfair and inaccurate for these reasons. It is the mere fact that the US is built on freedom as an inalienable right is reason enough for admiration. Finally, you need to distinguish between anti-American sentiment that is prejudiced against Americans as a (superficial) stereotype for American people (more common - the “ugly American” idea features here) and America as an idea or a force of freedom, rejected only by totalitarian states (or close enough equivalents) like pre-2003 Iraq, Iran, north Korea and to a large extent, Venezuela. this was not the case for the imperialistic, openly racist and we-should-rule-the-world Brits and Romans, whose very existence as empires (at least in the case of the former) was dangerous and a severe threat for millions around the world, be it their neighbors or other military enemies, both of whom were often targets for war and/or invasion. Why do you think we threw the Brits out of our country in the first place?
Hey Marc
Right on!!!!!!!!!!!
Marc’s enthusiasm for leaving oppressive dictatorships alone is noted, and deplored.
For the past century, America has uniformly taken up arms on behalf of the more-free, against the less-free. Every. Single. Damn. Time. Over. One. Hundred. Years. Marc does not know this — he reads no genuine history.
Despite being and “Ugly American” myself, I must insist that the rest of the world is not looking so pretty either from this whole ordeal of negative foreign opinion during the Bush Presidency.
Question: I did not dislike France or Germany based on the ineptitude of French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (nor did I burn flags), so why would I be assigned such a hateful label for our circumstances here in America?
Question: Why should I even care about the public opinion polls of other nations, if other nations are so quick to rush to vile judgment about who I am as an American, based off of temporary policies set into place by a temporary leader?
Question: Did others even attempt to understand who we are, our history, our security concerns, and our geopolitical reality or am nonsensically hated for being a Bush American today but loved as an Obama American tomorrow?
Question: Am I going to be hated, based off of the performance of my next President?
Despite popular opinion, it is not easy being American. You have opportunity, but with it comes hard work and responsibility. Trying to do what is right for the world has been the exception to the rule in the course of world history for “Super-Powers” and is what our families in America have fought and suffered for over the course of our short history. We’re not perfect, but nobody is, and we are growing better as a nation.
Before you ever cast blame on us for all of the world’s ills, understand who we are and who we are not (we are not the great Satan of the world). It is the principles that should define us as Americans (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness). In the end, it is what will prevail in the United States, not temporary policies of the day. This interest is universal for the world and I am not ashamed of it, I am proud of it, and humbled to be born an American. Schizophrenic public opinion polls are worthless compared to it.
Hey Robert!
You mean the Haiti where the US (with the help of Canada) recently overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with yet another ineffective puppet? Not once, but TWICE in the last few years? The Haiti where the USA supported “Baby Doc” Duvalier the killer because he was good for American business? That Haiti? Good example, I’ll have to add that particular fiasco to the American body count.
As for the rest, what on earth makes you think I’d ever want to be, or ever was, an American citizen? That said, I’ve met and discussed these issues with many expatriate Americans who feel their country has completely lost its way. Some returned home to try to undo the damage (I imagine they voted for Obama). Others just gave up and left. In many ways, both groups symbolise the ideals that the USA used to stand for. The unity of many different cultures coming to a new place to start a new life. Fantastic in theory! Unfortunately, those days are long past, and the US is now mainly a country of increasingly uneducated and ignorant people so trussed up by propaganda nationalism that they can’t see the damage they are doing to the rest of the world, and continue to try to ignore the indefensible.
Oh, and yes, the Americans aren’t the only guilty ones out there, and other countries have their own problems. Anyone seeing many Germans or Russians on holiday can have no doubt that the “ugly American tourist” has lots of company. But the common factor is that these countries, at least for the last 50 years, do not try to export their ideals elsewhere by force of arms.
It’s mainly Americans today who are the ones crying the loudest about how wonderful they are and how the world is just envious. They’re the ones crowing to the world in every comment section how great America is. They are the ones crying out loudly and often on how they love and protect democracy everywhere! Yet they are the ones invading country after country and overthrowing said democratically elected governments simply because those governments do what their people want them to do, not what American corporations want them to do.
That’s the hypocrisy. And in many civilized countries hypocrites are justly viewed with disgust. It’s unfortunate that in the USA this isn’t true.
So right now I’m just trying to educate an obviously heavily propagandised population into the facts as seen from the outside. I do the same elsewhere when justified. It’s just that Americans provide so much justification.
If you start to understand why America is so reviled, then all is good. Not saying you have to take personal responsibility, just understand how Americans are viewed from the outside, and why. Try to at least acknowledge the weight of evidence against the USA as this sort of “guiding light” for other countries. It’s not.
If you don’t agree at all, and you and others continue to hide behind misplaced nationalism and continue to deny the evidence of the last 100 years of American abuse and bullying on the world stage, then at least it’s vaguely amusing to watch the self-righteous hypocrites continue to try defending the indefensible.
With the greatest respect to you Americans, almost all the wars and deployments that have been made by your country were not with the altruistic reasons you seem to think. Pure and simple, the USA had some sort of benefit for themselves. For that they cannot be blamed, action now and safety in the future.
It is sad that many Americans obsess over this issue of whether the U.S. is “loved” by other nations. Except for times when it is useful to execute our own strategy, why does it matter?
The rest of the world gave rise to Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Mao, Stalin, Vichy, Mugabe, Mussolini, Chamberlain and countless other fools and horrors. By contrast, we Americans–immigrants from Scotland, China, Senegal, Poland, Mexico and every other country under the sun — are heirs to a legacy that, with all its flaws and difficulties, is responsible for most of humanity’s progress for the last two centuries.
The United States will continue to be the world’s guiding light under our new President, because in the end we are an outward-looking race. And we are every race.
Hey Marc, since you “will never respect America in your lifetime”, why not renounce your worthless US citizenship and emigrate to a place you really admire, like Haiti? They have a health care system that’s the envy of the world, the highest standard of living in the hemisphere, a military force that can deter a nuclear war with the Russia, more Nobel prize winners than any other nation on earth AND minorities aren’t routinely butchered with machetes in inter-tribal blood feuds.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me to dislike a country that has, for the last 100 years at least, been nothing more than a senseless bully in the world. From the forced annexation of Hawaii without treaty, to the Philippine massacres, through to the multitude of assassinations and coups in Central and South America that the US financed, planned and in some cases carried out. All the way to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq on trumped up evidence, the murder of countless civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it’s unconditional support of Israel in the face of widespread human rights abuses. All the while shouting to the rooftops that you’re all for “democracy” and “human rights”, but from your actions only in favour so long as it benefits you. That’s called hypocrisy. The United States has a LONG way to go before people outside the will respect it once more.
Fear it? Yes, with good cause. Envy it? Everyone envies the successful pirate who has plundered the world for its riches. But respect it? Not in my lifetime. Obama is a start, not an end point.
As for Art’s defence of the US “defending” others, if that’s what most Americans believe is true, then you’ll never understand why you’re so despised throughout the world. Because almost every word of that is a deliberate falsehood and twisting of the facts.
The US ignored its treaty obligations and waited 2 long years to enter WW2 while countless Europeans died. It would have stayed out completely and let Hitler take over if the Japanese hadn’t attacked Pearl Harbour over US refusal to negotiate.
The US then escalated and created much of the mess in Vietnam (where they got their butts kicked) and Korea (where they didn’t exactly win either or North Korea wouldn’t exist), then lied about it, a recurring theme it seems. The US is the cause not the solution to most of the unrest in Central and South America, not to mention Iran. For for the last 70 years the US has cold bloodedly dispatched any democratically elected governments that wouldn’t let your corporations rape and pillage to your wallets content. It was the US that installed tyrants like Pinochet and the Shah of Iran after all, not to mention Brazil’s Bracho who, with American assistance, invented the now famous “death squads”. The US is documented as being behind just about every petty dictator and killer in every country in Central and South American except Uruguay. All these rulers had one thing in common: they didn’t interfere with American businesses no matter how bloody their suppression of workers or competitors.
The US has never faced military action on your own soil in the last several generations. Your general population knows nothing about the horrors of war. Yes, you have immigrants who have seen conflict, but they seem to be mostly from the sides that lost when the tyrants were removed. War is just what you see sanitized on TV. This seems to make your population much more willing to bring war to others, and to believe the propaganda that you spew out about how you’re “liberating” these people. Yes, liberating them from life itself, at least for the over one million civilians the American invasion has killed in Iraq.
So please, spare me the arrogance and self importance. Don’t point at others and, like the schoolyard bully, cry out “but they’re worse!”. Because you’re nothing but bullies on the world stage, and currently deserve all the criticism and hatred directed at you for your utter callousness and ham handedness of your gunboat diplomacy.
I also disagree with the comment marked as “best” by Reuters.
As someone who isn’t American, I tell you this:
We loved you during the Clinton years up and up until September 11, 2001. We are NOW learning to love you again.
I will leave it to you to figure out why we fell out of love with you in the middle.
-e
Let’s see the Germans elect a black president or any EU nation
for that matter. They simply cannot. The reason people set out for
the new world was to improve it. Leaving behind the stained
gothic masonic architecture that holds their dreams and aspirations in a soul cage. And France being the #1 best customer recently just goes to prove they secretly admire us but are afraid their neighbors might see them lovin us.
Grow up some more, let go of your grudges, we\’ll be waiting for you in the space stations of the future. Love , an American Citizen.
Based on some of the replies posted here, it would appear that many who supported the corrupt extreme right wing dictatorship of George Bush continue to bury their heads in the sand. Happily, a majority of the US woke up and now understands the situation. The wing nuts will continue to be a drag on progressive reform.
The important thing is that the President Elect understands that the world has changed, and the US has got to get its own house in order if it is to compete in the global market and earn the respect of other countries. Part of the problem is that the US has a sizeable group of people over 55 who don’t want to embrace the new world and prefer to see it as it was (or they imagined it) 50 years ago. The good news is that with each passing day, there are more young people who understand the folly of the “we’re number one!” mentality. They will be the force that moves the United States into a more respectable place alongside other nations. Hopefully, they will also work toward social justice in the United States, which, over the past 8 years, has seen a massive transfer of power and wealth from the middle class to a small very rich group of people who feel entitled and above the law at the top.
As a middle eastern who went to school in the US , I believe America is tolerent and was doing good for the world with a system that encourage research and entreprunership.Never theless, looking from the outside, America has changed its behavior with rest of the world by becoming more aggressive.the war on terror has been directed on the wrong country -Iraq-.This has done a lot of dammage to US reputation not to mention its unequivocal suupport to Israel
I could not disagree more with the comment labeled as “best” by Reuters. People around the word don’t dislike Americans because we are wealthy, they dislike us because we are a dangerous, unpredictable, super power given to breaking international laws that kill hundreds upon thousands of innocent people. We have a corrupt government that does not work for the betterment of its own citizens, let alone any one else in the world. We are feared for these reasons, and if I were a citizen of another (non-nuclear) country, I’d be scared of us too. Especially if my country was rich in oil or anything else the United States might decide it needs to own.
The United States could be an amazing force for good in the world, but it will not be until its citizens get their heads out of the sand and their voices heard in the street.
I have to agree with a lot of you posters that this post is just another perpetuation of the idea that “ugliness” is confined within the American people. There really are ugly people everywhere.
I can’t say I’m innocent of this, but it seems that when a tourist is being dumb or rude, the first reaction is to figure out what country he or she is from and just label it as the fault of their nationality. Stop the stereotyping! Not all English girls are alcoholics.
An aside to the Canadians here, I have quite a few Canadian friends. While traveling with them or hearing about their travels, it is interesting to hear the reactions from the citizens of a foreign country. In France and China, the reaction was the same, “How is Canada different from the U.S.?” Normally, a rather detailed conversation ensued.
Dude. Ugly American? LMAO! You obvioulsy haven’t been to any places where Russians travel. Go visit Lake Como if you want to see the new Ugly American, or DisneyWorld even.
This article is disgusting. Try living in Germany or France. Disfunctional governments. Rudeness and discrimination are the norm. When one of their German Bundesjokers (thats their non-fighting military) gets getotet (killed) in Afghanistan, all of the young generation demonstrates to bring them home and let the Americans and Brits fight for them. This is a country of alcoholics, social degenerates, druggies, and uneducated a…oles. The economic system is composed of selling CooKoo Clocks to other countries, paying social geld each month to the above named social classes, who use the money to buy more drugs and alcohol, and expanding the world’s largest “Polizei” organizations. Unemployment? They have very little. The Arbeitsamt sends the unemployed to do a 1 Euro job or to a school for street cleaning, or makes them a Polizei, and then there is no unemployment. They pay them social geld or stat geld. This appears to be a system of illusions (David Copperfield?)that are now becoming evident to even the Germans. Rudeness? The a…oles PUSH in lines, PUSH into trains, Push into buses, make the old people stand while the kinder take the seats,…….. I can go on and on, but obviously each country has some good and some bad points. The Euros just happen to have the most rudeness, discrimination, and arrogance that I have ever encountered in my life’s experience. Hmmm….. This is what the Euro writer blames on U S Citizens? All is in the viewpoint of each writer. Before you argue or critisize my opinions, come and live in the sh.. country for more than a week’s vacation. Opinions may vary! Of coures, when you are a Euro, then you believe that an Obama will solve all the world’s problems. Come to think of it, 50 million American voters believe in the same fairytale.:-)))
Dude: I give it to you for saying what I could not find words for! The Euros are pretty standish-off when there is an international crisis. When we take the leadership role we come under their trigger happy and sharpshooter critics! The bottom line is that we fight on their behalf and then get the boot and they get the loot! The least I would expect from them is at least a word of thanks…………..
I guess this article is their way of saying “Thank You” in “Eurolees” ha? With friends like these who needs Iran, N. Korea and the Taliban! I say we did the right thing when we got rid of the Brits in the war for independence!
The imagery is unmistakable, but the follow through will be essential. I think we Americans all expect a new thoughtfulness in our country’s approach to foreign policy, and Obama’s choice for secretary of state will provide a broad clue as to his intentions. It is also true that there is no correct or incorrect path; sometimes it is necessary to go it alone, despite even the entreaties of your allies, and sometimes consensus is the best way forward. The rub is knowing which path to take each time. Many in the United States believe that in recent history the wrong choice was usually made. The wisdom of the Obama administration will be revealed in when chooses unilateralism and when he seeks unanimity.
As an American who spent most of the 1980’s wondering exact where in the Fulda Gap I was supposed to die while buying West Germany, France and Britain another 72 hours of freedom, I am always amused to hear Europeans complain about the purported arrogance and selfishness of my country. Canadians? Well, I don’t mess with Canadians…after all, they are defended by the most formidable military force ever known…the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines!
There are a few points I agree with in the article, though.
First, the USA did do something that is unthinkable in most other “First World” countries (hmmm…or Second or Third World, for that matter), in electing a racial minority to the presidency. Guess we actually aren’t as racist as the rest of you, are we? When are the rest of you going to get with the program and catch up? I’ll be looking for the French president of Algerian decent, or the German chancelor with the Turkish last name. A Tibetan running China? Maybe Britain will have an Irish Catholic PM someday soon? Or maybe you’ll all just be content to continue to be raging hypocrites.
Second, I agree that the attitude of the “international” community will not *really* change overnight, no matter who the president is. If Obama is serious about leading this country, he is going to have to come to terms with the fact that making the right decision for the USA does NOT mean doing what Europe (and certainly not Russia) thinks is right. We’ll see. If he throws Poland and the Ukraine “under the bus” by caving to Medved on the interceptor missiles, well, then I guess you’ll have the president you (Europeans) want, and I’ll have the one I feared was going to be elected.
The USA isn’t perfect, but we’re pretty damned good. The rest of you never mind sharing in our successes, and don’t complain when we put our lives on the line to defend you and your interests. You are quick to blame us for mistakes and reluctant to shed your own blood, even when you (i.e., France, Russia, the U.N.) make the situation worse by refusing to enforce your own sanctions and by cutting secret deals to prop up regimes like Hussein in Iraq, or to sell nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea.
How dare any of you accuse us of being colonial or imperialistic? The amount of American lives we have sacrificed in the last 100 years, cleaning up your dynastic squabbles (WW I), high-handed imperialism and shear vindictiveness (WW II), UN mandates (Korea, Lebanon, Iraq) and colonial “charlie-foxtrots” (Vietnam, Latin America, Somalia, and West Africa and the Middle East, generally) is obscene. I only wish that those of you who now criticize and whine would have stepped up and fixed your own problems. I’d be happy to have us give up the role of “Global Cop,” but it’s clear that one is necessary, and none of you have the will or the ability to step into the breach.
Abu Ghraib? Gitmo? Shall we consider the Maze? H-Block? The PTA? Internment? Supergrasses? Diplock Courts? Want to talk about discrimination and economic justice, about classes of homeless, as one Canadia wrote about? Let’s look at the slums and shanty town around Paris, filled to the brim with unwanted, uneducated, and ill-treated West and North African immigrants. Try being a Turk in Germany, a Kurd in Turkey, a “Paki” in London, or a Catholic in Belfast.
The point is not that we are better than the rest of the world; we have our problems and have made our share of mistakes. But that we are certainly no worse. I think that your attitudes are more in need of an overhaul than is our national character.