Les démons de l’Europe

A Crisis Like No Other? Anti-Americanism at the Time of the Iraq War

“…But, as Joseph Nye (2004: 13-15) pointedly reminds us, government policies can squander soft power resources if they persistently contradict their underpinnings. If we observe that negative attitudes towards the United States are no longer mediated by the soft power re sources of the United States, then that finding would count as evidence that the image of the United States has moved closer to the depiction of outright rejection that animates the writings of Revel (2003), Rubin and Rubin (2004), Berman (2004) and Joffe (2004). The current crisis would then be here to stay.…”

“…But before taking this finding as evidence that would undermine the views put forward by Revel (2003), Rubin and Rubin (2004), Berman (2004) and Joffe (2004), we would still need to evaluate the extent to which any of the four mechanisms shaped the formation of negative attitudes towards the United States.…”

“…On the one hand, we could expect to find that popular opinion has turned into the ide ological syndrome that Revel (2003), Rubin and Rubin (2004), Berman (2004) and Joffe (2004) have depicted in vivid colors, whereby US culture is seen as oppressive and inau thentic, while US power is decried as exploitative and imperial. 6 In that case, the claims of those who see the current wave of anti-Americanism as the harbinger of a long-lasting change in the nature of the transatlantic security community would have stronger empirical ground ing.…”

“…This hypothesis, therefore, taps into the common claim that attributes the current wave of anti-Americanism to the policies pursued by the Bush admin istration in Iraq and in the larger war on terror (Kohut and Stokes, 2006). But it goes beyond the realm of policy criticism per se to encompass critiques based upon denigration, obsession and the imputation of malevolent intensions (Joffe, 2004).…”