Anti-Americanism and NSA Spying

"Anti-Americanism" is a label designed to conceal the issues at stake.

(Photo: CLAUDIA HIMMELREICH — McClatchy)

Last week, Germans, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, were enraged by the revelation that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had eavesdropped on Merkel's cell phone conversations. Russell Berman claims that this discovery has been used to foment anti-American sentiment among Germans: "A hostile press has portrayed America as a demonic surveillance state that combines unlimited spying with targeted killings."

But one wonders how much portraying Germany's "hostile press" really has to do. As Max Paul Friedman has argued in his book Rethinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations, "anti-Americanism" is a myth designed to make disagreement with U.S. government actions and policies seem like a psychological disorder instead of rational dissent from certain specific actions. 

And Berman also confuses the issue by blaming Obama's purported "foreign policy of weakness" for "anti-Americanism." Weakness and strength are beside the point. Notice that anti-Japanese sentiment has grown after Japan has become weaker, while anti-Chinese sentiment has grown while China grows stronger. Rather, it is how a nation is weak or strong and how it treats those outside its borders that determines world opinion toward it. So an economically and politically weak Cuba retains a great deal of influence, while North Korea's massive military strength has brought it virtually no prestige or friendship.