They're Rooting For America, Too by Fareed Zakaria

November 18, 2002, U.S. Edition

They're Rooting For America, Too
East Asians worry that U.S. foreign policy will fail. Europeans worry that it will succeed.
By Fareed Zakaria

I was in Singapore when President Bush's twin successes, the midterm-election results and the United Nations resolution, filled the television news, and I asked a veteran diplomat the conventional question: was he worried that President George W. Bush now had an even freer hand to do anything he wanted to? "Oh, no," the diplomat replied. "Our chief hope is to quickly conclude a free-trade pact with the United States, so this probably helps. But we're the wrong place to ask your question. We're hopelessly pro-American."

Perhaps it's the wrong region. I asked a senior Malaysian politician what advice he had for Washington. His response: "Support us, forge a closer alliance with Malaysia." Traveling through Southeast Asia last week, I was struck by how differently it reacts to American power than Europe does. Even in Indonesia, a country with a tradition of xenophobic nationalism, the attitude, while a lot more prickly, is not quite that of, say, France or Russia.

East Asians worry about American heavy-handedness in the war on terror, unilateralism, poor communication with the Islamic world. In other words, they worry that American foreign policy will fail. Europeans, on the other hand, worry that American foreign policy will succeed.

Take our policy toward Iraq. If it succeeded--and Saddam Hussein were disarmed or replaced with a better regime--imagine Europe's circumstances. It would confront an America that would be even more powerful. Where would that leave France? Europe's great powers feel an understandable competition with the United States. They once wielded huge influence across the globe, are rich and have their own ideas about ordering the world. But all they get are supporting roles in a movie produced by, directed by and starring the United States of America. (To be fair, this generalization best applies to the elites of a few key countries. Feelings in Central Europe, for example, are closer to the East Asians' than to their Western brethren's.)

East Asians' (and Central Europeans') history is not one of dominating but of being dominated, by non-American imperial powers. That doesn't mean they are enthusiastic about American foreign policy. They have many criticisms but, in the end, accept it as being better than the alternatives. "We've lived in this region with the British, the Dutch, the Japanese, and are now watching the rise of China," the Malaysian politician explained. "We want America to stay vibrant and to assist us in developing our country, but we worry that it is going down the wrong path." The people I spoke to all worried that a war in Iraq would go badly, creating a chaotic postwar landscape and furthering tensions between America and the Islamic world. In other words, they fear that America will fail, but hope that it does succeed.

During my tour, Iraq was topic No. 1 on everybody's mind. I could barely find a single person who was in favor of a war. (There were some in Singapore.) When I would make the case for the urgent need to disarm Saddam Hussein and the great opportunity to help Iraqis build a modern Arab state, people would listenquizzically. They would dispute the facts, my account of America's motives, the prospects for a better Iraq. Then finally they would get to what really bothered them and say in exasperation, "But why do you get to decide who gets replaced 6,000 miles away?"

This is the heart of the world's problem with America, even for those who admire and need it. People don't like the fact that a single, distant country has so much power over their lives. I asked Azyumardi Azra, head of a major university in Indonesia, whether anti-Americanism was on the rise. "Yes," he said, "but it's not because of any real rise in Islamic fundamentalism. After the Bali bomb blast, our president dithered, did nothing and then was pressured to act by Washington. Had she taken bold steps herself, people would have applauded. But to do what the American superpower wants, that's humiliating."

For much of the world, what was most heartening was not that Bush won the battle within the United Nations but that Colin Powell won the war within the administration. "When I saw that Syria voted for the U.N. resolution on Iraq, I was thrilled," said Hary Tjan Silalahi, an Indonesian scholar. "It's not that I care about Syria at all, but I breathed a sigh of relief that people couldn't look at this resolution and say it was America versus Arabs or the West versus Islam. It makes things so much better for us, the moderates in the Muslim world." Because America's policies were presented through an international body, in cooperation with other nations, it made it possible for people to gulp and accept our awesome power.

In a sense, America faces the same challenge that Bush does, now that he has unified control of the American government: how best to handle hegemony; and while the Democratic Party may, one of these days, provide an external balance to the president's power, America's power is likely to remain unchecked for some time. To retain its legitimacy, the source of genuine authority, America will need to find an internal balance.