What's So Great About America Read Free Page B

be termed Planet America.
    Fukuyama’s thesis, advanced in the early 1990s, seemed consistent with the remarkable events going on in the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union left America as the world’s sole superpower, with unrivaled military superiority. The discrediting of socialism meant that there was no conceivable alternative to capitalism, and all the countries of the world seemed destined to be integrated into a single global economy. Dictatorships crumbled in many parts the world, especially in Eastern Europe and Latin America, and were replaced by democratic regimes. America launched the silicon revolution and continues to dominate the world in technology. And American ideas and American culture have captured the imagination of young people around the world and made deep inroads into previously remote outposts in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.
    These are undeniable and hugely important facts, but the complacent confidence of the Planet America thesis has been shaken. The Cold War is over, and yet the world has become a more dangerous place. Americans, never particularly attentive to the rest of the world, have become acutely aware that there are powerful currents of resistance to globalization and Americanization. There are lots of people who do not want to become like us, and many people, especially in the Muslim world, apparently hate our guts and want to wipe us off the face of the earth. This realization, for Americans, comes as a surprise.
    In his 1997 book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order , Samuel Huntington warned that America and
the West should not arrogantly assume that the rest of the world would uncritically embrace the principles of Judeo-Christian civilization. Huntington disputed the thesis of “the end of history” and pointed out that the great victories won in recent years by liberalism and democracy were mainly in Latin America and Eastern Europe, regions of the world that were within the traditional orbit of the Judeo-Christian West. Huntington argued that in the post–Cold War world, the most dangerous conflicts would occur “across the fault lines between the world’s major civilizations.” 13 Huntington identified civilizations mainly in terms of religion: Hindu civilization, Confucian civilization, Islamic civilization. Given the deep differences among these religious tribes, Huntington predicted that they were bound to quarrel.
    So who is right, Fukuyama or Huntington? This is one of the questions that this book will try to answer. But first let us examine the three main currents of foreign opposition to the spread of American influence.
    First, the European school. Actually this may be more precisely described as the French school, although it has sympathizers in other European countries. The French seem to be outraged by the idea that any single nation, let alone the United States, should enjoy global domination. The French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, termed the United States a “hyperpower” and scorned its “arrogance.” The French are not against arrogance per se, but in the case of the United States they regard the arrogance as completely unjustified. For the French, the grotesque symbol of Americanization is McDonald’s, and many French citizens cheered in 1999 when a sheep farmer named José Bové trashed a McDonald’s in France. The French worry that the spread of English
threatens the future of the French language and, even more precious, French culture. Their anti-Americanization is based on a strong belief in French cultural superiority combined with a fear that their great culture is being dissolved in the global marketplace.
    Most Americans find it hard to take the French critique seriously, coming as it does from men who carry handbags. French anti-Americanism is also a political device to legitimate the use of tariffs, thus protecting French products that cannot