BigBadBrian
10-15-2004, 01:52 PM
Americans Eat Cheese, Too
Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
Oct. 11 issue - The Bush campaign believes it has found one soft spot in John Kerry's debate performance. In the days after the contest, the president has relentlessly hit one theme: that Kerry is a wimpy multilateralist. "I've been to a lot of summits," Bush said derisively at a rally in Pennsylvania last Friday. "I've never seen a meeting that would depose a tyrant, or bring a terrorist to justice ... The president's job is not to take an international poll. The president's job is to defend America ... The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France." Kerry hasn't proposed anything like that. But Bush is right to imply that Kerry's vision of American foreign policy is attentive to world opinion, and interested in working with allies and international institutions. What Bush might be dead wrong about is that such views are unpopular in today's America.
The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last week released a large opinion survey, asking Americans about their attitudes on world affairs. Sixty-six percent of Americans favor working within the United Nations, even when it adopts policies that the U.S. does not like. Fifty-nine percent want to do away with all vetoes in the Security Council, including America's. Seventy-four percent want a standing U.N. peacekeeping force, commanded by the U.N., not the U.S. Forty-nine percent approve of a tax on oil and arms that would fund U.N. activities. Friend of the world though he is, John Kerry would not dare propose any one of these positions.
During the debates, Bush chose to mention his opposition to the International Criminal Court because he thought that would please the crowd. He mocked the idea of "foreign judges" trying American soldiers. But 76 percent of Americans in the Chicago survey support the court. Seventy-one percent support the Kyoto accords. Eighty-seven percent support the treaty banning nuclear testing. And 80 percent support the treaty banning land mines. Washington is not a signatory to any of these agreements.
The survey proposes specific scenarios. Asked whether U.N. approval should be required before Washington takes military action against North Korea, 68 percent of Americans said yes. Seventy-four percent felt that America's allies should also have a veto on such an action. Another study also released by the Chicago Council asked questions of Americans and South Koreans. Asked whether they would support their country's accepting unfavorable rulings from the World Trade Organization, 48 percent of South Koreans said yes, compared with 69 percent of Americans.
Of course, these are hypothetical. When confronted with the details of what they would involve, Americans might well become less supportive. When they realize that signing Kyoto and driving SUVs are incompatible, my guess is that it's Kyoto that would get pushed aside. When an actual crisis came along, perhaps the United Nations would seem an irritating obstacle to action. But these numbers tell us that Americans' basic attitudes toward the world are remarkably cooperative.
What the Bush campaign understands is that in today's America, silent majorities are far less important than energetic minorities. There are few people in America who vote on foreign-policy issues—and those who do tend to believe that international institutions represent something dark and sinister. If this sounds like an exaggeration, recall that in his best-selling and hugely influential book, "The New World Order," Pat Robertson portrayed the European Community and the United Nations as fronts for Satanic forces that seek "to take away all our property, our values, our faith, and our freedom." For such groups, the Reverend Robertson explains, "There must be world government, a world police force, world courts, world banking... To some there must be an elimination of Christianity; to some extreme New Agers there must be the deaths of two or three billion people in the Third World ... "!
The coded language used by some extremely conservative Republicans over the past two decades has turned the foreign- policy debate into one where no one dare propose cooperation, even though such approaches are solidly popular among the public at large. The left and center run scared of an angry minority while the right feeds its appetite. But things are changing. America is becoming more globalized. Almost every American has contact with the international economy. (Robertson may not have noticed, but we already have international banks—and the world is still standing.) Many more travel, especially young Americans. And they understand that America cannot seek to create a world of order, liberty and law without playing by the same rules itself. The numbers show that there is a considerable basis to create a very different American attitude toward the world. What we now need are leaders who can take this raw material and turn it into a new politics.
Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek
Oct. 11 issue - The Bush campaign believes it has found one soft spot in John Kerry's debate performance. In the days after the contest, the president has relentlessly hit one theme: that Kerry is a wimpy multilateralist. "I've been to a lot of summits," Bush said derisively at a rally in Pennsylvania last Friday. "I've never seen a meeting that would depose a tyrant, or bring a terrorist to justice ... The president's job is not to take an international poll. The president's job is to defend America ... The use of troops to defend America must never be subject to a veto by countries like France." Kerry hasn't proposed anything like that. But Bush is right to imply that Kerry's vision of American foreign policy is attentive to world opinion, and interested in working with allies and international institutions. What Bush might be dead wrong about is that such views are unpopular in today's America.
The Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last week released a large opinion survey, asking Americans about their attitudes on world affairs. Sixty-six percent of Americans favor working within the United Nations, even when it adopts policies that the U.S. does not like. Fifty-nine percent want to do away with all vetoes in the Security Council, including America's. Seventy-four percent want a standing U.N. peacekeeping force, commanded by the U.N., not the U.S. Forty-nine percent approve of a tax on oil and arms that would fund U.N. activities. Friend of the world though he is, John Kerry would not dare propose any one of these positions.
During the debates, Bush chose to mention his opposition to the International Criminal Court because he thought that would please the crowd. He mocked the idea of "foreign judges" trying American soldiers. But 76 percent of Americans in the Chicago survey support the court. Seventy-one percent support the Kyoto accords. Eighty-seven percent support the treaty banning nuclear testing. And 80 percent support the treaty banning land mines. Washington is not a signatory to any of these agreements.
The survey proposes specific scenarios. Asked whether U.N. approval should be required before Washington takes military action against North Korea, 68 percent of Americans said yes. Seventy-four percent felt that America's allies should also have a veto on such an action. Another study also released by the Chicago Council asked questions of Americans and South Koreans. Asked whether they would support their country's accepting unfavorable rulings from the World Trade Organization, 48 percent of South Koreans said yes, compared with 69 percent of Americans.
Of course, these are hypothetical. When confronted with the details of what they would involve, Americans might well become less supportive. When they realize that signing Kyoto and driving SUVs are incompatible, my guess is that it's Kyoto that would get pushed aside. When an actual crisis came along, perhaps the United Nations would seem an irritating obstacle to action. But these numbers tell us that Americans' basic attitudes toward the world are remarkably cooperative.
What the Bush campaign understands is that in today's America, silent majorities are far less important than energetic minorities. There are few people in America who vote on foreign-policy issues—and those who do tend to believe that international institutions represent something dark and sinister. If this sounds like an exaggeration, recall that in his best-selling and hugely influential book, "The New World Order," Pat Robertson portrayed the European Community and the United Nations as fronts for Satanic forces that seek "to take away all our property, our values, our faith, and our freedom." For such groups, the Reverend Robertson explains, "There must be world government, a world police force, world courts, world banking... To some there must be an elimination of Christianity; to some extreme New Agers there must be the deaths of two or three billion people in the Third World ... "!
The coded language used by some extremely conservative Republicans over the past two decades has turned the foreign- policy debate into one where no one dare propose cooperation, even though such approaches are solidly popular among the public at large. The left and center run scared of an angry minority while the right feeds its appetite. But things are changing. America is becoming more globalized. Almost every American has contact with the international economy. (Robertson may not have noticed, but we already have international banks—and the world is still standing.) Many more travel, especially young Americans. And they understand that America cannot seek to create a world of order, liberty and law without playing by the same rules itself. The numbers show that there is a considerable basis to create a very different American attitude toward the world. What we now need are leaders who can take this raw material and turn it into a new politics.