America through Foreign Eyes   [First appeared as a Guest Column in the Casper Star-Tribune in December, 1988]   During the presidential debates my attention was drawn by the frequent claim that the United States is "once again" the most respected country in the world.    The voters are to infer that the past eight years have marked the triumphal return of the United States to the position of pre-eminence and prestige it held immediately after the Second World War.    Is this true? Has the stature of the United States increased in the eyes of the rest of the world during the presidency of Ronald Reagan? Does the world look to America for political, economic, and moral leadership?    At the time of Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential election, and throughout most of his tenure as chief executive, I have lived abroad, in Asia, Europe, and Africa. During that time I had ample opportunity to see the United States as foreigners see it and to learn their views of world polity in general, and of America's international role in particular. I would like to present a few of the most commonly-held perspectives from abroad: Foreigners believe that Americans cling to an extraordinarily single-minded measure of the nation's strength -- the ability of the United States to prevail over the Soviet Union in a full-scale military confrontation. Applying broader definitions of "strength," foreigners point to U.S. impotence against terrorism and guerrilla warfare, the trillion-dollar budget deficit, the chaotic stock market, the weakening dollar, and the bitter, growing divide between rich and poor. America's moral center seems to have eroded steadily since the late 1940s. Throughout the world the Soviet Union has long ceased to offer an attractive model, which makes all the more perplexing to foreigners America's willingness to bankrupt itself fighting a global hearts-and-minds struggle that the United States has already won. In the late 1980s many Americans seem to believe that the United States is "finally getting over the Vietnam War." This reveals an attitude toward history incomprehensible to most foreigners. The English haven't "gotten over" their defeat by the Normans at the Battle of Hastings; Africans haven't "gotten over" the memory of slavery and colonialism; the Asian nations live in a web of mistrust as old as those nations themselves. America's historical short-sightedness is a constant source of wonderment and consternation to foreigners. In the family of nations, America is regarded as a headstrong adolescent, a kind of renegade teenager, with no developed sense of the broader rhythms of history. Many people the world over agree that the foreign policies pursued by the United States during the Reagan administration have been hypocritical, vacuous, and deceitful. The administration condemns one dictatorial regime only to embrace another. America's "friends" have included some of the world's most hated figures, such as Marcos, Noriega, and Pinochet. CIA meddling, secret dealing, and "covert operations" have made America widely despised and universally mistrusted. (Moreover, the perception abroad is that "the Americans always bungle these things.") The United States appears to pursue diplomatic initiatives only in fits and starts, driven by the capricious winds of American public opinion, rather than the steady currents of international statecraft. Our government seems more intent on "sending signals" to the American voters than on constructing a clear, coherent, and honest vision of the United States as a nation among nations. In the past eight years I have seen a sharp increase in the attitude that everything the United States' government says is probably a lie. Perhaps more Americans would be concerned if they realized that the next generation of world leaders will almost certainly be skeptical, uncooperative, and often downright hostile toward the United States. The United States has long and justly been regarded as a land of opportunity, but it is also increasingly the symbolic land of greed and vulgarity. In Europe, to call something "American" is to call it flashy, overpriced, and devoid of any cultural or intellectual depth. Students everywhere cultivate a horror of "Coca Cola Imperialism." The American-British television exchange is typical: they send us "Masterpiece Theatre," we send them "Dallas." As a nation we seem determined to export the worst possible image of ourselves. From abroad the Reagan years have looked like an orgy of selfish, infantile materialism.    Please don't think that I am "anti-American" because I outline these sentiments, all so common outside our borders. Whenever confronted with such attitudes I have done my level best to defend the integrity and goodheartedness of most Americans, and the richness of the American culture that foreigners don't see. Still, it is becoming more and more awkward to be an American abroad, more and more difficult to defend the actions of the U.S. government toward the rest of the world. The United States appears to have lost all sense of its own purpose as a nation, and foreigners find it sorry indeed that America's claims to world leadership grow more shrill and insistent, even as the political, economic, and moral validity of these claims seems to deteriorate daily.    George Bush's campaign for the presidency stressed America's international image as a crucial aspect of U.S. foreign policy. I think that the president-elect is right about this. The whole world is watching.     © Michael Fleming Berkeley, California December, 1988   top of page   other essays   e-mail to Mike   Fox Paws home page