The Bittersweet Affair

By Tesfu Telahoun

What is it about the United States that causes such intense anti-American feelings in too many parts of the world? Many theories have been expounded, one of which I shall raise and then debunk in detail before I file my perceived reality behind global anti-Americanism, especially in the Middle East.
Prime among the ill conceived rationales to explain this so-called hatred of the U.S. is the theory that it stems because America is on an imperialist agenda. This school of thought firmly maintains that the U.S. is determined to remain the sole superpower and that in order to assure its supremacy, will by carrot or stick, subjugate all other nations. To such observers, each and every action taken abroad by the US is more clear evidence of the ulterior aspirations of an arrogant, imperialistic America. However, there is little if any evidence to support these allegations. I often ask, “What historical precedence is there for suspicions of imperial expansion by the United States?” This question is a vexed one for those who like to believe America harbors imperial dreams because facts eloquently contradict the charge with sublime historical confirmation.
Having achieved a hard won independence from archetypical empire builder Great Britain in 1776, the young republic had already developed a profound loathing for anything that smacked of royalty and empire. The American people, virtually all descendants of variously persecuted people, have never had an appetite for colonial grandeur as they had suffered aplenty while a downtrodden colony for nearly 200 years.
The fact of the matter is that the United States is inoculated against imperial ambitions by dint of its unique path to becoming a defined nation state and because, it is arguably, the first true peoples’ republic in human history. The United States does not have a colonial history as master of any territory, even the ones it had once conquered.
Let us cite a few of the major wars, campaigns and outright invasions conducted by the United States in the period from 1898 to the present. We shall see that had expansion been an objective of the U.S. government, it would have acquired many colonies.
The island of Cuba was a Spanish colony for over 400 years from its discovery by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and up to the Spanish American War of 1898, sparked by the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine in Havana harbor. Spain lost the brief war and gave up all claims to Cuba, the people of which under liberation hero Jose Martin had already began a revolt in 1895 against Spanish rule after Spain reneged on the independence it had promised in 1878. In what was to become standard procedure for future U.S. foreign policy, American troops, mission accomplished, withdrew from Cuba in 1902. Later in 1903 and 1934, the U.S. began to lease a site at Guantanamo Bay under agreements with a sovereign Cuba. The island’s independence from Spain, although ultimately attributable to its valiant people, was crucially assisted by the victory of the United States of America over colonial Spain.
Jump a few decades on, one Great War and welcome to World War Two devastated Western Europe and what would come to be known as the Cold War already beginning as Stalin’s Red Army began to solidify its battle gains with the ‘Iron Curtain’ in Winston Churchill’s famous and lasting description.
If ever the United States had harbored territorial ambitions, then never had history presented a nation such an opportunity as 1945 Western Europe. Its armies, controlling territory many times the size of the continental U.S.A., were flushed with the thrill of defeating Nazism and raring to go home, not stay on as colonizers. In Washington, great minds had already finalized the fine print of a European recovery package called the Marshall Plan which quickly got Europe off its knees and on to its present prosperous stability. American imperialism? Hardly, but a profound historical lesson of what a great benevolent power is capable of - waging war and winning the peace.
This feat was also accomplished in U.S. occupied Japan, where the United States handed over the nation to its people and financed the ‘Japanese Miracle.’ The reconstruction of South Korea after 1953 is also a notable example that serves to throw ridicule at allegations of U.S. imperialism. We can cite similar records in Panama, Grenada, Kuwait and other theatres of military activity where, had the U.S. desired, colonies were there for the taking.
So if it is not imperial arrogance that is causing such a negative image of the United States, what could it ever be?
In my opinion, anti –American sentiment is in fact a weird manifestation of the great love, high regard and elevated expectations the world has for America and its institutions. Bizarre as this statement may seem, displays of anti-Americanism are a result of the love-hate relationship most societies have with the United States.

To be continued next week