American Avatar: The United States In The Global Imagination

240 Pages·2011·2.199 MB·English

by  Barry A. Sanders

American
Avatar
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American
Avatar
The UNITED STATES in the
GLOBAL IMAGINATION
Barry A. Sanders
Potomac Books
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2011 by Barry A. Sanders
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written
permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied
in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sanders, Barry A.
American avatar : the United States in the global imagination / Barry A.
Sanders. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59797-681-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-59797-774-6 (electronic edition)
1. United States—Foreign public opinion. 2. United States—Foreign
relations—2001-2009. 3. United States—Foreign relations—2009- 4.
Anti-Americanism. I. Title.
E895.S26 2011
327.730090’5—dc23
2011019989

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper that meets the
American National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Nancy
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
Part I Collecting Images
1 Introduction 3
2 Imprints from Inside America 14
3 American Footprints Abroad 38
4 Images from the Image Machines 57
5 The United States Looms: Measuring Reality 66
6 Conveying and Distorting Images 81
Part II Selecting Images
7 Predispositions 91
8 Romanticism versus Democratic Liberalism 101
9 Traditional Societies 144
10 Disappointment: Envy and the American Dream 165
11 Enhancing the Image of America Strategically 183
Notes 199
Selected Bibliography 215
Index 219
About the Author 227
No one likes us—I don’t know why
We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
But all around, even our old friends put us down
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens.
—Randy Newman, “Political Science,” 1972
Preface
On September 12, 2001, while Ground Zero in Manhattan still glowed and
smoked, Americans awoke to find themselves bathed in expressions of
sympathy and affection across the globe. Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of
the French daily Le Monde, headlined, “We Are All Americans.” He asked
rhetorically, “How can we not feel profound solidarity with those people,
that country, the United States, to whom we are so close and to whom we
owe our freedom?”1 Flowers were strewn before American embassies from
Germany to Japan. Crowds poured into the streets of foreign capitals to
express their grief over the murders and destruction in New York, Penn-
sylvania, and Virginia.
A little more than two and a half years later, the same Jean-Marie
Colombani wrote a story for Le Monde entitled, “We Are All Un-American?”2
In the time between global polls of public opinion in 1999 and 2000 and
similar polls in spring 2004, the percentages of people expressing a favor-
able view of the United States went from 83 percent to 58 percent in Brit-
ain; from 78 percent to 38 percent in Germany; from 62 percent to 37
percent in France; and from 77 percent to 27 percent in Morocco.3 Similar
drops in public favor were reflected in many other countries around the
world. By mid-2004 the percentage of Jordanians expressing approval of
their ally and major cash benefactor, the United States, dropped to 5 per-
cent. What happened? What does it mean?
The United States was not universally loved even before September
11, 2001. Arabs celebrated the attacks in large public demonstrations in
Cairo and Nablus, while people elsewhere expressed quiet satisfaction at
ix