[Mb-civic] U.S. Policies Stir More Fear Than Confidence LATimes

[Michael Butler]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-noyanks3oct03.story

NEWS ANALYSIS

U.S. Policies Stir More Fear Than Confidence
 By Jeffrey Fleishman
 Times Staff Writer

 October 3, 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 hostage 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 Iraq
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 regions, 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. Tokyo
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 the 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 global 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 his 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 foreignersŠ. 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 shack 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."

 *


Times staff writers Barbara Demick in Seoul, Bruce Wallace in Tokyo, Ralph
Frammolino in Beijing, Héctor Tobar in Buenos Aires, Reed Johnson in Mexico
City, Claire Rocher and Sebastian Rotella in Paris, Tracy Wilkinson in Rome,
Alexei V. Kuznetsov in Moscow, Hossam Hamalawy in Cairo and Carol J.
Williams in Miami contributed to this report.




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