* * *
With Us or Against Us
* * *
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Series Editor, Christophe Jaffrelot
This series consists of works emanating from the foremost French research center in
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With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism
edited by Tony Judt and Denis Lacorne
* * *
With Us or Against Us
Studies in Global
Anti-Americanism
Edited by
Tony Judt
and
Denis Lacorne
* * *
WITH US OR AGAINST US
© Tony Judt and Denis Lacorne, 2005.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-6951-4
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
With us or against us : studies in global anti-Americanism / edited by
Denis Lacorne, Tony Judt.
p. cm. — (CERI series in international relations and
political economy)
Papers derived from a conference jointly organized by the Remarque
Institute and the Paris Center for the Study of International Relations
(CERI) held in Paris in the fall of 2002.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Anti-Americanism—Congresses. 2. United States—Relations—
Foreign countries—Congresses. 3. September 11 Terrorist Attacks,
2001—Congresses. I. Lacorne, Denis. II. Judt, Tony. III. Series.
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* * *
C ontents
Acknowledgments
vii
Notes on Contributors
ix
Introduction: The Banality of Anti-Americanism
1
Denis Lacorne and Tony Judt
1. A New Master Narrative? Reflections on
Contemporary Anti-Americanism
11
Tony Judt
2. Anti-Americanism and Americanophobia:
A French Perspective
35
Denis Lacorne
3. Anti-Americanism in French and
European Public Opinion
59
Gérard Grunberg
4. Is There a New Anti-Americanism? Reflections
on Germany in Times of Global Simultaneity
75
Detlev Claussen
5. America’s Best Friends in Europe: East-Central European
Perceptions and Policies toward the United States
93
Jacques Rupnik
6. The Special Russian Way: The Origin and Evolution of
Russian Perceptions about the United States
115
Nikolai Zlobin
7. Saudi Perceptions of the United States since 9/11
141
F. Gregory Gause, III
8. The Palestinian Perception of America after 9/11
157
Camille Mansour
* * *
vi
C ontents
9. Anti-Americanism in Pakistan
173
Mohammad Waseem
10. Three Sources of Anti-Americanism in Iran
189
Morad Saghafi
11. Uncle Sam to the Rescue? The Political Impact of
American Involvement in ASEAN Security and
Political Issues in the Wake of 9/11
207
Farish A. Noor
* * *
A cknowledgments
Our primary purpose in publishing this volume—derived from a
conference jointly organized by the Remarque Institute and the Paris
Center for the Study of International Relations (CERI), held in Paris
in the Fall of 2002—is to describe the complexity of anti-American
sentiment in six distinct parts of the world: Western and Eastern
Europe, Russia, the Middle-East, and Central and Southeast Asia.
Publication of the conference proceedings was delayed in order to
allow all the contributors to update their essays after the American
invasion of Iraq. The case studies in this volume were selected to
present a comprehensive understanding of Western and non-Western
perceptions of the United States since the second World War.*
We would like to thank Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Ali Buzurukov,
Christophe Jaffrelot, Ivan Krastev, Zaki Laïdi, Philippe Roger, and
Olivier Roy for acting as participants
and discussants at the conference.
Their insightful comments were particularly helpful to the authors in
preparing the present volume.
help of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
* Some contributors have chosen to cover a longer historical period, starting either
with the very foundation of the United States or with the first U.S. settlements in Asia.
See chapters 10 and 11. For practical reasons, we were not able to include Latin
American countries, India, China, and Japan among our case studies.
* * *
This page intentionally left blank
* * *
N otes on Contributors
Detlev Claussen, professor for sociology and theory of culture and
science at Hannover University (Germany), is the author of Theodor W.
Adorno. Ein letztes Genie (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2003)
and Grenzen der Aufklärung. Zur gesellschaftsgeschichtlichen Genese des
Antisemitismus (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2005).
F. Gregory Gause, III, associate professor of political science at the
University of Vermont (United States) and director of the Middle
East Studies Program. He is the author of Oil Monarchies (New York:
Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994) and has published numerous
articles on the politics of the Arabian Peninsula and the broader
Middle East.
Gérard Grunberg, deputy director and vice-provost for research,
Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), is the author of
Vers un socialisme européen? (Paris: Hachette, 1997) and the coeditor
of La démocratie à l’épreuve, Une nouvelle approche de l’opinion des
Français (Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2002).
Tony Judt, Erich Maria Remarque professor of European studies
and director of the Remarque Institute at New York University
(United States), is the author of Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals,
1944–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), The
Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French
Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), and
Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin, United States,
2005).
Denis Lacorne, research director at the CERI/Fondation Nationale
des Sciences Politiques (Paris, France), and director of studies at
the Graduate School of the Institut d’études politiques de Paris, is
the author of L’Invention de la république. Le modèle américain (Paris:
Hachette, 1991) and La Crise de l’identité américaine. Du melting pot
au multiculturalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 2005, 2nd edition). He is the
coeditor, with Tony Judt, of Language, Nation and State. Identity
* * *
x
N otes on Contributors
Politics in a Multilingual Age (New York: Palgrave, 2004) and is
completing a book on religion and politics in the United States (Paris:
Gallimard, 2006).
Camille Mansour, professor of international relations and Middle
Eastern Studies at Paris I and Versailles Universities, is the author of
Beyond Alliance: Israel in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1994) and the editor of Israel: A General Survey
(Beirut: Institute for Palestine Studies, 2004). He is the editor-in-chief
of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law, published jointly by
the Institute of Law at Birzeit University and Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers (The Hague).
Farish A. Noor, a Malaysian political scientist and human rights
activist, is a researcher at the Zentrum Moderner Orient (Berlin,
Germany) and the author of Islam Embedded: The Historical
Development of the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party PAS’ (Kuala Lumpur:
MSRI, 2004) and The Other Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: Silverfish,
2003). He has written extensively on religiopolitical movements and
parties in Southeast Asia.
Jacques Rupnik, research director at the CERI/Fondation Nationale
des Sciences Politiques (France), is the coauthor of L’Europe des Vingt
Cinq (Paris: Autrement, 2004), the editor of Les Européens face à
l’élargissement. Perceptions, acteurs, enjeux (Paris: Presses de Sciences
Po, 2004), and the coeditor with Denis Lacorne and Marie-France
Toinet of The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism. A Century of French
Perception (London: Macmillan, 1990).
Morad Saghafi, is the editor-in-chief, Goft-o-gu (Tehran, Iran).
Mohammad Waseem, professor of political science and chair of the
international relations department at the Quaid-i-Azam University
(Islamabad, Pakistan), is the author of Politics and the State in Pakistan
(1989) and of The 1993 Elections in Pakistan (1994). He held the
Pakistan Chair at St Antony’s College (Oxford), from 1995 to 1999
and is on the editorial board of three major academic journals:
Ethnicities (Bristol), Contemporary South Asia (Bradford), and
International Studies (New Delhi).
Nikolai V. Zlobin, former professor at Moscow State University is
senior fellow and director of Russian and Asian Programs at the
Center for Defense Information (Washington, D.C., United States)
and the author of International Communications (Chicago: M.E.
* * *
N otes on Contributors
xi
Sharpe, 2004). A leading expert on international security, terrorism,
and relations between the United States and Russia, he is the exe-
cutive editor of Demokratizatsiya, the Journal of Post-Soviet
Democratization and the president of Washington ProFile, an interna-
tional news agency, which he founded in 2001. He also writes a regu-
lar column for the Russain daily, Izvestia.
* * *
I n t r o d u c t i o n
T he Banality of
A nti-Americanism
Denis Lacorne and Tony Judt
A nti-Americanism is above all about perceptions. Nothing is more
difficult to preserve than the good image of a country, particularly when
the country—like the United States—claims to set the tone for the rest
of the world and insists on the highest possible standards of freedom
and democracy. Unexpected events can deeply affect perceptions. The
traumatic events of 9/11 certainly generated sympathy throughout
the world. But the invasion of Iraq, the split between the United States
and “Old Europe,” the poor management of an unprecedented exper-
iment in nation building, and the revelations about the tortures in the
Abu Ghraib jail have seriously damaged the image of the United States
and led numerous Americans to reassess their understanding of the
proper response to the attack of 9/11.
The first, most obvious form of anti-Americanism is anti-Bushism—
a widespread phenomenon, both in the United States and in the rest
of the world. Consider, for instance, the opinion of a prominent British
Tory, Michael Portillo, who had strongly supported the war in Iraq
and initially saw no problem with “the younger Bush’s robust foreign
policy.” Shocked at the Abu Ghraib prison atrocities, astonished that
“such a formidable executive has ma
de so many disastrous mistakes,”
he could only conclude that “For America to brush away its recent
disgraces, the electorate will have to bin this administration. I never
expected to say this to my American friends: vote Democrat.”1 Or
again, consider the opinion of a leading American businessman, Eric
Best, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, who declared at about
the same time: “I can testify to the extraordinary destruction of
‘American Brand Value’ accomplished by this administration, from
Europe to Hong Kong to Shangai to Tokyo, and beyond [. . .] If any
* * *
2
D enis Lacorne and Tony Judt
CEO of a global multinational had accomplished this for his enterprise
as quickly and radically as George Bush Jr. has done for the U.S., he
would be replaced by the board in no time.”2
A poor image can be repaired and the Bush administration has
spent considerable time and energy, in 2004, trying to improve per-
ceptions through renewing a more consensual form of multilateral
diplomacy, as demonstrated in a series of diplomatic events: the D-Day
commemorations in Normandy, the G-8 gathering in Georgia, the
reunion with EU leaders in Dublin, and the Istanbul NATO summit.
June 2004 was “arguably . . . the most intense month of summitry in
the history of the Atlantic alliance.”3 Bush has been frantically trying
to achieve what John Kerry had announced he would do a genuine
trans-Atlantic reconciliation. But, in the end, it is not a board of direc-
tors that decides who is responsible for the destruction of the
“American Brand Value,” but the American people themselves.
Of course, there are other forms of anti-Americanism than anti-
Bushism. Anti-Americanism is as old as America itself. It can be defen-
sive or reactive, rational or irrational, popular or elitist, political or
cultural; it can center on economic or religious issues or on no partic-
ular issue at all.4 In its mildest form, anti-Americanism is merely criticism
of some American policies or social characteristics. At the other extreme,
it expresses a real clash of civilizations, the complete rejection of anything