Los Angeles Times
October 4, 2004
BERLIN — The white guard shack still stands, but the American GIs have
long since departed and there's a nostalgic cheapness to the postcards, gas
masks, helmets and rusted Maxwell House coffee tins. Checkpoint Charlie, the
fabled slice of concrete and barbed wire that epitomized the Cold War, seems an
innocent artifact in a world awash in new dangers.
"There was a time
when World War III could have started right here," said Juergen Thiel, standing
amid bits of the Berlin Wall that sell for less than $20. "That's all
changed."
International terrorism has given rise to new ground zeros.
Much of Europe and the world feel insecure, but a growing number of nations no
longer look to the U.S. for leadership and sanctuary. The Bush
administration's unilateralist policies in Iraq and its perceived aloofness have
left it less trusted at a time of widening global vulnerability, according to
polls and interviews in more than 30 countries.
Osama bin Laden remains
on the loose. Videos of host age beheadings in Iraq flicker across the
Internet. The nuclear aspirations of North Korea and Iran are troubling. Many
countries feel powerless to stop the onslaught and recognize that the U.S. is
the only nation militarily strong enough to serve as a bulwark against
increasing dangers. But they also feel powerless to persuade Washington to
adopt a more nuanced, multilateral strategy.
One of the sharpest
differences between the U.S. and its longtime allies is over the issue of when
to use force. A June poll conducted in part by the German Marshall Fund of the
United States found that 54% of the Americans surveyed, compared with 28% of the
Europeans, believed that military strength would ensure peace. Among Europeans,
73% said the war in Iraq had increased the threat of terrorism.
The
disparity represents two dynamics: The world has yet to understand how Sept.
11, 2001, jolted America's sense of security, and the U.S. has underestimated
how much international credibility it sacrificed in the I raq war.
Analysts suggest that America's foreign policy wouldn't significantly change if
Sen. John F. Kerry defeats President Bush in November. The division between
the men, as seen by much of the world, comes down to style and
personality.
Although his policies have yet to be fully articulated,
Kerry is considered by much of the international community as the antidote to a
bullying Bush administration. Bush's recent speech at the United Nations,
analysts say, reaffirmed that the president was an ideologue with little
inclination for building consensus or defusing terrorism by quieter means such
as political and economic reforms.
"It is such a great humiliation,"
said Viktor A. Kremenyuk of the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, "for other
countries to be in a situation where they have to swallow something they do not
like. And the one who makes them swallow this doesn't even try to put a decent
face on this sorry business."
The citizens of 30 out of 35 countries
from different r egions, including Germany, Mexico, Italy and Argentina, support
Kerry by more than a 2-1 margin over Bush, according to a poll by the Canadian
research group GlobeScan and the University of Maryland. The survey also found
that on average, 58% of respondents in those countries said the Bush
administration made them feel worse about the U.S. versus 19% who said the
president's policies made them feel better.
Writing recently in La
Opinion, a conservative Buenos Aires daily, novelist Tomas Eloy Martinez
lamented the prospect of a second Bush term. "The world — which is
hostile to Bush with an almost unanimous passion — would be subjected to
another period of rapaciousness, darkness and threats of war."
Roman
newspapers last month quoted Britain's ambassador to Italy, Ivor Roberts,
describing Bush as "the best recruiting sergeant" for the Al Qaeda terrorist
network.
America's superpower status and the world's security fears have
sparked conspiracy theories and made Washington a prism for disenchantment over
everything from war to holes in the ozone layer. The grist for much of this is
the lack of a significant ideological counterbalance to U.S. power. With
Soviet-style communism vanquished, global anxiety is driven not by Moscow but by
masked men instigating jihad and cagey regimes such as those in Tehran and
Pyongyang.
In an essay, "The Five Stages of Anti-Americanism," author
Judy Colp Rubin says that suspicion of Washington is so widespread that "many
Chinese believe the U.S. deliberately started the SARS epidemic. Islamic
leaders in three Nigerian states blocked critical polio inoculations for
children, denouncing them as a U.S. plot to spread AIDS or infertility among
Muslims."
The U.S. has seen periods of intense anti-Americanism
throughout its history. Latin American regimes, for example, have often
considered Washington an imperialist troublemaker. In his book "The Sewers of
the Empire," a recent bestseller in Buenos Aires, Spanish writer Santiago
Camacho calls the U.S. a sham democracy run by secret societies, multinational
corporations and a "ministry of lies" operating out of the White House.
Despite such ill will, however, many capitals acknowledge that no
nation besides the U.S. has the resources to combat Al Qaeda, root out
weapons of mass destruction and rein in reckless governments. U.S. troops
protected Europe and South Korea against communist regimes for decades. And
although the international community condemned the invasion of Iraq, the war
highlighted the United States' ability to destroy "rogue" regimes.
"Think about it for a split second," said Kirill Dolinsky, a postgraduate
biology student in Moscow. "The U.S. is paying its own money and exposing its
own citizens to lethal danger just to make sure the rest of the world can sleep
in peace and quiet, knowing that Saddam's or North Korea's missiles won't land
in your courtyard one night."
Part of the Japanese-U.S. relationship
is based on such anxiety. To kyo fears a nuclear strike by North Korea's
unpredictable leader, Kim Jong II. The regime in Pyongyang threatened recently
to turn Japan into a "nuclear sea of fire" if Washington were to move against
Kim. The Japanese consider U.S. military and diplomatic clout crucial to
stemming the threat.
Others question the intent of U.S. military power
and suggest that Bush's rhetoric of a world under siege is an exaggeration when
weighed against history. North Korea is a significant danger, Europeans say,
but Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, although lethal, have not approached the
destructive scale of an Adolf Hitler or fomented anything like World War II, in
which 50 million people perished.
"Europe has become safer," said Peter
Rudolf, an analyst with the German Institute for International and Security
Affairs and a child of the Cold War. "There are terrorist threats, but when I
grew up we lived under the shadow of destruction in Germany. The American role
as a protector or as a pacifier is a role of t he past."
The European
Union wants to strengthen the continent's role in world affairs — some say
to complement, others suggest to contain, U.S. ambitions. Seventy-one percent
of Europeans polled by the German Marshall Fund believe that the EU should
become a superpower. However, such aspirations appear unlikely to become
reality: 47% withdrew their support for the idea if it would mean higher
military spending.
The notion that the U.S. is the "world's
policeman" by default angers many and illuminates animosities from regions long
suspicious of U.S. policy. Seventy-two percent of Mexicans surveyed by Centro
de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas rejected the idea that Washington should
be the sole law-and-order power.
"I believe the U.S. poses a greater
risk to Egypt and the Islamic world than terrorism," said Tarek Refaat, a
software engineer from Cairo. "If we have to have a global policeman, it should
be the United Nations, not the U.S. What good does America do for me as a g
lobal policeman? I might need this global policeman to protect me if Egypt is
attacked by Israel. And you think America will rush to protect Egypt from the
Israelis, their strongest allies?"
Galina Babayan, a Moscow
mathematics professor, offered this assessment: "It would be more appropriate
to compare the U.S. not with a global policeman, but with an ill-natured
teenager sent back to the first grade. He is bigger and stronger than anybody
else. He bullies everyone around him. But he is slow on the uptake."
From cafes to parliaments, the U.S. mystifies and Bush angers. Many see
America as a country that professes a deep belief in religion but unsheathes its
sword too quickly, a land that claims moral authority but violates international
charters, a nation saddled with the images of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison and the
inability to calm a seething Iraq. But it is also admired as a land of
possibility, economic opportunity and unparalleled personal freedom.
The other day, stopping on h is way home from the Beijing subway, Huang Jie
mused about the disparate images of the U.S.
"When I'm with my friends,"
the 32-year-old investment manager said, "we will sometimes talk about [the
U.S.] and we'd really like to be like America, to see China develop as
America. But politically we are not satisfied with America, especially the Iraq
war. It's not good for America, in order to achieve its own interests, to harm
other people. Even when China becomes a superpower, we would not like to see it
behave as America behaves."
Wang Jisi, a high-ranking Chinese Communist
Party official, said the American people don't comprehend the world. "They
don't travel, and they don't talk to foreigners…. And they don't read any
foreign-language materials, so it is not very difficult for people to deceive
them, to give them some propaganda [to] inflame ideological and
nationalist feelings."
Thousands of miles away, at Checkpoint Charlie,
tourists snapped photos of the guard sh ack and wandered through the Cold War
museum. Cafes dotted the once-barren Friedrichstrasse. Turkish vendors sold
old East German helmets and gas masks beneath a huge poster of an American
soldier.
"The U.S. can't be the world policeman anymore," said Erika
Thiel, standing with her son, Juergen, remembering when U.S. boots echoed
through the streets. "Muslims don't want to be watched over, and sovereign
nations want to be independent from the U.S. shadow."
Christian Schulz
crossed the street and headed away from the guard shack.
"Before Sept.
11, America was not seen as an aggressor," he said. "But since Sept. 11 and
the break in the U.S. economy, people look at America as no longer a man who
can fix all problems. Look at Iraq — soldiers are dying every day. I
think these days it's more dangerous to be affiliated with the U.S."
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