THE RIGHT BOOKS

According to Stephen Haseler, professor of government at the City of London Polytechnic: “[Anti-Americanism] is more keenly felt in the mid-1980s than at any other time since the United States emerged from the Second World War as a superpower. And it is no passing phenomenon: Anti-Americanism is here to stay, as long as the United States retains its powerful role on the world stage. How the country deals with this challenge will be a fundamental test of its superpower status.” In fact, Haseler—a founding member of the new Social Democratic Party and a former deputy mayor of Greater London—has written a brief book on the subject, published in the United States by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (1030 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005; $5), with a 386-word foreword by Midge Decter, in which he concludes that anti-Americanism is essentially a reaction, not to America nor even to bourgeois capitalism, but to the idea of democratic society itself.

Dismissing as naïve the consternation of the editors of Newsweek upon discovering that Iranians appeared not to love or eyen like Americans, Haseler begins by identifying what anti-Americanism is not, and by explaining why it is that most of these bogus manifestations of the real thing should not disturb us. Anti-Americanism, he insists, is not necessarily the basis of policy disputes between the U.S. and its allies; it is not to be confused with honest re-assessments by “foreign publics and elites” of which side in the war for the world is the winning one; it cannot be presumed to be the impetus behind a country’s attempt at railroading Washington into permitting it some national advantage, usually of a pecuniary nature, or into granting it a presumption of independence and self-determination. That is not to say, of course, that in the case of all or even most of these misunderstandings the United States is guilty and its disputants blameless—merely that at the bottom of many such contretemps lies not irrational bias but enlightened, even respectable, self-interest.

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According to Stephen Haseler, professor of government at the City of London Polytechnic: “[Anti-Americanism] is more keenly felt in the mid-1980s than at any other time since the United States emerged from the Second World War as a superpower. And it is no passing phenomenon: Anti-Americanism is here to stay, as long as the United States retains its powerful role on the world stage. How the country deals with this challenge will be a fundamental test of its superpower status.” In fact, Haseler—a founding member of the new Social Democratic Party and a former deputy mayor of Greater London—has written a brief book on the subject, published in the United States by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (1030 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005; $5), with a 386-word foreword by Midge Decter, in which he concludes that anti-Americanism is essentially a reaction, not to America nor even to bourgeois capitalism, but to the idea of democratic society itself.

Dismissing as naïve the consternation of the editors of Newsweek upon discovering that Iranians appeared not to love or eyen like Americans, Haseler begins by identifying what anti-Americanism is not, and by explaining why it is that most of these bogus manifestations of the real thing should not disturb us. Anti-Americanism, he insists, is not necessarily the basis of policy disputes between the U.S. and its allies; it is not to be confused with honest re-assessments by “foreign publics and elites” of which side in the war for the world is the winning one; it cannot be presumed to be the impetus behind a country’s attempt at railroading Washington into permitting it some national advantage, usually of a pecuniary nature, or into granting it a presumption of independence and self-determination. That is not to say, of course, that in the case of all or even most of these misunderstandings the United States is guilty and its disputants blameless—merely that at the bottom of many such contretemps lies not irrational bias but enlightened, even respectable, self-interest.