Assorted admirers of America are worried and disappointed by unilateralist US policies on the Kyoto environmental protocols, the international criminal court, landmines and the Guantanamo Bay lager. They find this to be hugely inconsistent with the image of a tolerant and purposeful America with which they once sympathised.

Angry environmentalists often ask themselves: What right do the Americans have to place such a heavy footprint on God’s earth?

The size of that footprint leaps out of every statistical table. The population of the USA make up about five per cent of the world’s population – but the USA guzzles 27 per cent of the world’s annual oil production, produces and consumes nearly 30 per cent of the world’s combined GDP, and spends a massive 40 per cent of the world’s defence expenditures.

It has been estimated that the Pentagon’s budget is approximately equal to the defence expenditure of the nine or 10 highest defence-spending nations.

The Ugly American

All this economic affluence and preponderant military have not contributed, by any means, to a situation where America can be at peace with the world. On the contrary, America lives in a constant state of alert against terrorism. By going off so often at a tangent, to dissent from majority opinion in the UN forum on so many issues, Uncle Sam evokes the impression of the Ugly American, and of what Senator William Fulbright once described as “the arrogance of power”.

The former EU external affairs commissioner, Chris Pattern, who is no blind critic of America, once summarized his worries when he lamented about America’s shift to “unilateral overdrive”. This became increasingly evident during the Bush administration.

American democracy is not as admired as it used to be. A groundswell of international criticism and complaints against American heavy-handedness has been steadily on the rise. As of now, America finds itself helpless in the Iraq tunnel, at the end of which there is no light. Seen from outside, America is lost in the Bush!

There are of course, many Americans who are not moved and who do not care, about the growing chorus of criticism voiced overseas. To them, America is unchallengeable, and the rest combined – Europe, China, Russia and the Arab world – have to come to terms with this reality.

Disillusioned friends

But not all Americans are lost in the Bush. Many environmentalists, Peace Corps workers, businessmen with overseas experience, and academics, worry about the unease and even hostility steadily welling up beyond their shores.

They are concerned as America isolates itself from serious challenges to global society. They worry when American foreign policy takes the form of deploying massive military force, only to withdraw in secure air bases and camps.

They fear that the ruling American administration is alienating a world to which it is tightly bound by way of business and its financial and cultural relations.

I have heard it said that outside opinion on the USA falls in three categories: those who admire America, those who hate it, and those who are worried about America.

The first two groups are easily identifiable. Those who admire the USA include politicians like Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Mikhail Gorbachev; businessmen committed to the free market; teenage fans of Hollywood stars and pop music and blue jeans addicts; and refugees from oppressive regimes.

Anti-Americanism has become the badge of Muslim fundamentalists, non-democratic regimes, critics of capitalism everywhere, and all sorts of champagne socialists at large in intellectual salons. The latter category flourishes in France. People in both categories tend to cling to their convictions

Worried admirers

The criticism of America that comes from the third category revolves round their perception that America is not living up to its ideals: namely democracy, respect for human rights, fairness, and the principles encapsulated in Roosevelt’s “four freedoms”.

Three times in the past century America inspired hope and appreciation of human values through the leadership of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who responded to the aspirations and needs of human kind, setting aside narrow sentiments of national interest.

Worried admirers of old America want to see a return to a tolerant and purposeful America, committed to the United Nations, disposed to teamwork among the world’s democracies, and appreciative of its duty to take seriously the future of our planet.

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