(ITA - 2006 - 1a fase)DREAM ON, AMERICATHE U.S. MO

(ITA - 2006 - 1a fase)

DREAM ON, AMERICA

 

THE U.S. MODEL: For years, much of the world did aspire to the American way of life. But today countries are finding more appealing systems in their own backyards.

BY ANDREW MORAVCSIK

            NOT LONG AGO, THE AMERICAN DREAM WAS a global fantasy. Not only Americans saw themselves as a beacon unto nations. So did much of the world.

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            You had only to listen to George W. Bush's Inaugural Address last week (invoking "freedom" and "liberty" 49 times) to appreciate just how deeply Americans still believe in this founding myth. For many in the world, the president's rhetoric confirmed their worst fears of an imperial America relentlessly pursuing its narrow national interests. But the greater danger may be a delusional America - one that believes, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the American Dream lives on, that America remains a model for the world, one whose mission is to spread the word.

            The gulf between how Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.

            FOREIGNERS TAKE AN ENTIRELY different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's reelection as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively.

            Tellingly, the anti-Bushism of the president's first ¹term ²is giving way to a more general anti-Americanism. A plurality of voters (the average is 70 percent) in each of the 21 countries surveyed by the BBC oppose sending any troops to Iraq, including those in most of the ³countries that have done so. Only one third, disproportionately in the poorest and most dictatorial countries, would like to see American values spread in their country. Says Doug Miller of GlobeScan, which conducted the BBC report: "President Bush has further isolated America from the world. Unless the administration changes its approach, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs."

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            The truth is that Americans are living in a dream world. ⁶Not only do others not share America's self-regard, they no longer aspire to emulate the country's social and economic achievements. The loss of faith in the American Dream goes beyond this swaggering administration and its war in Iraq. A President ⁵Kerry ............... similar disaffection, for it grows from the success of something America holds dear: the spread of democracy, free markets and international institutions - globalization, in a word.

            Countries today have dozens of political, economic and social models to choose from. Anti- Americanism is especially virulent in Europe and Latin America, where countries have established their own distinctive ways - none made in America. Futurologist Jeremy Rifkin, in his recent book "The European Dream", hails an emerging European Union based on generous social welfare, cultural diversity and respect for international law - a model that's caught on quickly across the former nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In Asia, the rise of autocratic capitalism in China or Singapore is as much a "model" for development as America's scandal-ridden corporate culture.

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            Many are tempted ⁴to write off the new anti- Americanism as a temporary perturbation, or mere resentment. Blinded by its own myth, America has grown incapable of recognizing its flaws. For there is much about the American Dream to fault. If the rest of the world has lost faith in the American model - political, economic, diplomatic - it's partly for the very good reason that it doesn't work as well anymore.

MORAVCSIK teaches politics and directs the European Union Program at Princeton University. NEWSWEEK, January 31, 2005, Páginas 17-19

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