“How do you deal with the 800-pound gorilla that is the United States?” asked Harvard University Professor Stephen M. Walt of the audience gathered in PAC 001 on Thursday. Walt spoke about the disparity between American and foreign perspectives on U.S. primacy.
“Being near the United States is like sleeping with an elephant,” Walt said, quoting one of Canada’s former prime ministers. “No matter how well-intentioned or behaved it is, you are still affected by each twitch and grunt.”
Walt began his speech with a series of opinion polls, attitude studies and quotations regarding the influence of American power on the world.
“I just can’t believe [the vitriolic hatred of the United States] because I know how good we are,” Walt said, quoting examples of how George W. Bush and Tony Blair feel about the benefits of American Power. “The United States is a force for good.”
“The U.S. has gone mad. Both [George Bush and Osama bin Laden] are always speaking about God. Both are sure God is on their side” he said, referring to quotations from novelists and journalists from the U.K. and Germany.
“[It’s about] the gap between how we see our role and how others view it,” he said.
He presented world opinion surveys carried out by the BBC and Pew Global Attitudes, which found that Bush fared significantly worse than bin Laden in how negatively each was viewed by the world. The same surveys determined that China was viewed more favorably than the United States. When asked if there was only one superpower in the world, who they would like it to be, the majority of participants in a University of Maryland study selected France as their global leader of choice, followed by China.
Walt said that there were three ways to explain the negative view of the United States: American power makes others feel nervous, they never know what the U.S. will do next, and they are afraid that the U.S. will somehow hurt them, even unintentionally, because its actions in one part of the world can have unforeseen consequences in others.
He pointed to the laundry list of policy disagreements as a point of friction between the U.S. and the rest of the world.
He also talked about the various ways in which countries have chosen to respond to America’s primacy in world affairs, such as by “bandwagoning,” or siding with the U.S. out of fear, and “regional balancing,” or using American power to oppose local security threats. He also detailed “bonding,” or aligning with the U.S. to gain concessions and prestige, and finally, “penetration,” or manipulating the American political system to influence U.S. foreign policy.
According to Walt, most of the world’s responses can be categorized into soft balancing, diplomatic actions that make it costlier for the U.S. to take actions that others do not want it to take. He cited the six-party talks on North Korea and the current Iran nuclear talks as examples, describing them as ways to put a leash on the U.S. while addressing a global issue.
The most effective, in his opinion, was balking, the practice of not really resisting, but just refusing to do what was asked of one.
Walt then answered questions from students touching on a range of topics such as the control of oil prices by OPEC, the ‘War on Terror’ and the viability of continuing the current campaign in Iraq.
“The points he raised were really interesting but, unfortunately, I don’t think that any of the policies he talked about will come to fruition in the United States,” said Jonathan Harbison ’06.
Walt is Academic Dean and Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His speech, entitled “Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy,” is also the title of his latest book. Walt’s speech was part of the “Governance in a Globalized World” lecture series sponsored by Wesleyan’s Project on Global Change.
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