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May
19, 2003
A Game of Capture the Flag
Whither American
Nationalism?
by AHMAD FARUQUI
There is nothing that infuriates us Americans
more than a suggestion that our intensely held feelings of patriotism
amount to nationalism. Nationalism, we contend, is a quality
found in older nations. And it does not take much for actions
by other Americans to be considered unpatriotic. Thus, during
the build up to the Iraq war, anti-war protestors were called
unpatriotic. As the war began, the anti-war community splintered
into two groups. The larger group, saying it supported the troops,
muted its opposition to the war. The smaller group said it could
not support the troops, because they were fighting an immoral
war. Not surprisingly, it drew much flak for its "unpatriotic"
actions, which some said amounted to treason.
In a similar vein, people outside the
U.S. who oppose American policies are labeled as anti-American.
This criticism is not confined to the radical groups that operate
out of Muslim countries. Even long-time allies in Europe were
derisively called "old Europe" not just by the U.S.
Secretary of Defense but also by large segments of the American
population. France is expecting to lose $500 million of U.S.
tourism this summer and one in five Americans stopped buying
French products after France opposed the Iraq war. [1]
Just because we fail to recognize their
own nationalism does not mean it does not exist. American nationalism
is based on values rather than ethnicity or race. According to
Paul McCartney of Rutgers University, it embodies two values
that are often at cross-purposes with each other.[2] The first
value is universalism, which says that Americans share the same
moral ideals as the rest of humanity, including freedom, liberty
and democracy. The second value is exceptionalism, which says
that Americans have a right to pursue policies to preserve their
national sovereignty, but other countries do not have a similar
right. The dichotomy between these values is as evident to those
outside of the U.S. as it is invisible to those living within
the U.S.
In the archetypical American view, the
U.S. has espoused high moral values since its birth. All its
wars have been righteous wars. During the Reagan presidency,
the U.S. battled the evil empire of the Soviet Union. During
the presidency of the first President Bush, the U.S. proclaimed
a new world order based on American primacy. During the Clinton
presidency, the U.S. battled the rogue states. During the tenure
of the second President Bush, the U.S. is battling three nations
that comprise an axis of evil, in addition to battling other
nations suspected of harboring terrorists and all terrorists
of global reach.
Seen from this vantage point, the war
in Vietnam was a necessary war against an evil regime. To protect
the free world, it was essential to support military dictatorships
in the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan,
and Iran and in much of central and Latin America. The fact that
these regimes had atrocious human rights records was irrelevant.
Even Saddam Hussein deserved to be supported when he was fighting
the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. It is not surprising that in
the build up to the recent war in Iraq, former Colonel Oliver
North snapped at a reporter who questioned him about the U.S.
support for Saddam Hussein. North said that anything that happened
in Iraq prior to 1990 was irrelevant.
In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush
seemed to speak for the world community when he said, "We
face enemies that hate not our policies but our existence, the
tolerance of openness and creative culture that defines us."
However, as noted by McCartney, when he closed by saying, "We
did not ask for this mission, yet there is honor in history's
call," the president slipped unconsciously into nationalistic
rhetoric.
The second value of exceptionalism allows
Americans to reject the Kyoto protocol, the biotechnology weapons
convention, the International Court of Justice and the anti-missile
defense treaty. It allows them to say the war in Iraq was justified
even if no weapons of mass destruction are found. Indeed, this
value provides a justification for the unilateralism that has
now become a hallmark of U.S. foreign policy. Its logic can be
summed up in two sentences: "No one else can judge our actions,
because the U.S. constitution gives us the right to self defense.
However, we will judge everyone else's actions and intentions,
because they may pose a threat to our national security."
In the eyes of many nations, the U.S.
resorts to multilateralism when it knows it will get international
support and falls back on unilateralism when it knows the world
community will not support its actions. A classic example is
how the U.S. used Resolution 1441 of the U.N. Security Council
to justify attacking Iraq, but has refused to involve the U.N.
in setting up a new Iraqi government.
The U.S. is troubled when its enemies
possess weapons of mass destruction, but is not troubled when
its allies or itself possess similar weapons. Thus, the presence
of such weapons by itself is not intrinsically evil. The rest
of the world sees this as hypocrisy but most Americans don't.
This asymmetry goes much beyond owning
weapons of mass destruction. Several Americans think that the
U.S. is the world's oldest democracy, while some feel it is the
world's only democracy. When told that democracy is widespread
in Europe, they respond by saying that there Europeans practice
socialism and call it democracy. Similarly, most Americans are
not troubled when their defense secretary says that the Iraqis
can elect any government as long as it is not an Islamic theocracy.
Many Americans have accepted the doctrine
of pre-emptive war. When asked why most countries did not support
a second resolution at the U. N. Security Council, Donald Rumsfeld
replied they had not experienced first-hand the horrors of 9/11.
However, Colin Powell has stated that should any other country
launch a pre-emptive attack on another country, it will be regarded
as having committed an act of aggression. Most the world sees
this as a double standard, but Americans say each situation is
different and deserves to be treated differently.
If someone were to hold a "foreign
policy" mirror to Americans, they would see a nation with
a self-centered concept of national security and fault it for
being chauvinistic. Writing in the current issue of Foreign Policy,
Minxin Pei says that American nationalism has galvanized "broad-based
anti-Americanism" abroad, making the world less secure for
Americans.[3] In a similar vein, McCartney argues that the U.S.
can improve its national security by pursuing multilateralism.
Acknowledging that the U.S. will not
always be the world's pre-eminent power, former Governor Howard
Dean of Vermont, a presidential aspirant, has asserted that the
U.S. needs to work within the fabric of international law to
promote its national security, since it "won't always have
the world's strongest military." But none of the other presidential
aspirants has reciprocated Dean's view, and some have attacked
him for questioning U.S. military superiority.
Writing in the current issue of Time
magazine, Joe Klein--a long-time critic of the Bush adminstration--
has declared Dean's statement a blunder and argued that the Democrats
need to "recapture the flag." Klein should not have
proffered such gratuitous advice, since the Democratic candidates
have been busy outdoing each other in a show of patriotism ever
since the debate over Iraq began last September.
Such nationalistic behavior does not
bode well for the 2004 presidential campaign of the Democrats.
The president has established beyond the shadow of a doubt that
no one can be more patriotic than a commander in chief who has
two victories under his belt, and who may well bring in one more
in the year that remains. Why else would he choose to emerge
in full "cockpit regalia" from a Viking aircraft that
had just landed on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? The
fact that no one from the Iraqi High Command was present to sign
the instrument of surrender was just a minor disappointment.
Notes
[1] Time, May 12, 2003, p. 25.
[2] "The Bush Doctrine and American
Nationalism," Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, August 28-September 1, 2002.
[3] "The Paradoxes of American Nationalism,"
Foreign Policy, May 2003.
Ahmad Faruqui,
an economist, is a fellow with the American Institute of International
Studies and the author of Rethinking
the National Security of Pakistan. He can be reached
at faruqui@pacbell.net
Yesterday's
Features
CounterPunch
Wire
"Terror" Slut Steve Emerson
Eats Crow
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
A Letter to Kofi Annan on Powell's Missing
Evidence
Ross
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Dennis Miller's New Gig: the Last
Refuge of Goofy?
John
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Matt
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Michael
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Robert
Fisk
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Elaine
Cassel
Clarence Thomas, Still Whining After All These Years
Jonathan
Freedland
Ann Coulter's Appalling Magic
Steve Perry
Play It Again, O-Sam-a
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