America by Numbers

America Against the World

How We Are Different and

Why We Are Disliked

by Andrew Kohut and Bruce Stokes

Times, 288 pp., $25

There are two major schools of thought about anti-Americanism. One postulates that it is a response to the wrongheaded policies of the United States and the defects and injustices of American society. By contrast, in the second view, such sentiments stem from grievances of a wide range and variety nurtured by a hostile predisposition largely independent of what the United States does. Many of these grievances are associated with the problems and unintended consequences of modernity, of which the United States is the major symbol and vehicle.

The second perspective also draws on the recognition that human beings prefer to find the sources of their misfortunes and frustrations outside themselves. Anti-Americanism is one expression of this impulse which, in our times, finds a plausible target in the United States, especially since it has become the only superpower and the only country that has produced a popular culture with both global appeals and a capacity to undermine traditional cultural values and ways of life.

Anti-Americanism may also be seen as blending reasonable critical responses to the policies of the United States with less-than-fully rational attitudes that are not dependent on specific actions or policies. To make matters more complex, well-founded critiques of specific policies often merge into or culminate in the diffuse, undifferentiated hostility nurtured by predisposition.

Nonetheless it is possible to differentiate anti-Americanism from rational critiques of specific American policies, foreign or domestic, or from the moral failings of American society. Anti-Americanism entails wholesale rejection resting on the apparent conviction that the defects of American society and U.S. policies abroad are not corrigible, but inherent and endemic. In its most florid and extreme form, it rests on the conviction that the United States is the most evil and corrupt social-political entity ever known in history.

This volume, based on 91,000 interviews conducted between 2002 and 2005 in 51 countries, is doubtless the major repository of information about attitudes and opinions about the United States and about political and cultural values relevant to these attitudes. It does, however, come with a substantial conceptual flaw: There is no discussion of the many possible meanings or shadings of anti-Americanism. The authors don't tell us about their understanding of what it is, or offer a widely accepted definition. They do tell us about some of its sources and manifestations, but not what exactly it is. For example:

Anti-Americanism runs deeper . . . than in the past . . . Several factors led to this conclusion. First, America's image had declined around the globe . . . Second, attitudes towards the American people, in addition to the U.S. government, were adversely affected. Third, the United States was being criticized for its ideals as well as policies. Fourth, citizens around the world feared America's unrivaled power.

In these observations, the sources of anti-Americanism are conflated with its symptoms. Elsewhere, they write that the new anti-Americanism is "an amalgam of discontents" which includes negative reaction to American popular culture, resentment of American-style business practices (such as longer work days), and, more generally, the "acceleration in the pace of modernization [that] threatens to overwhelm traditional ways of life."

Later they single out unilateralism as the major factor: "This perception of American unilateralism in international affairs is at the root of much of the anti-Americanism that has surfaced in nearly all parts of the globe over the last half decade." They also propose that "some of the many criticisms of Americans arise from simple misunderstanding," among them the belief that Americans are more nationalistic than Western Europeans.

They further argue that "Americans do not want to rule the world. . . . Americans are tolerant of religious diversity and most have no interest in converting the world to their faith. Americans are strongly individualistic . . . but they are not against working with others."