European anti-Americanism should be taken with a pinch of salt
Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Anti-Americanism is always with us. Yet it is a strange paradox that this ugly phenomenon is worse among allies than among enemies. Those who shelter under the American nuclear umbrella are more likely to perceive the United States as a threat than those against whom they enjoy its protection.
A poll for the Munich security conference, the annual gathering of global leaders and experts that begins later this week, has found that the Germans, French, Japanese and Canadians all see the US as a bigger threat than Russia. Even the Russians feel less threatened by the US than do its allies. Among the latter, only the British see the Russian threat as more serious than the American one. Even here, however, 37 per cent of Britons apparently fear the United States, compared to 45 per cent who fear Russia and just 29 per cent who fear China.
How far is this perception that the US poses a threat to its allies caused by Donald Trump? The President must bear much of the responsibility for the present wave of anti-Americanism. His bark is undoubtedly worse than his bite — he has started no new wars, after all, and peace may be breaking out even in violent regions such as the Middle East. But Trump has only himself to blame if other nations take his occasionally alarming rhetoric at face value.
His boast in his latest State of the Union address that he alone had prevented a nuclear war with North Korea, costing millions of lives, is unlikely to have reassured Americans — and certainly not their Japanese allies, who are too close to Kim Jong-un for comfort. The very high figure of 66 per cent of Japanese who fear America probably reflects anxiety over North Korea. Japanese fear of China is even higher, at 69 per cent; this entirely rational threat perception, given Beijing’s bid to dominate the South China Sea in Japan’s back yard, may also be feeding anxiety about Trump’s perceived unpredictability.
In Europe and Canada, however, the idea that Trump might inadvertently provoke a war makes less sense. It is likely that the French and Germans, of whom almost half (49 per cent) see the US as a threat, have different and less rational grounds for their perceptions. For example, many blame Trump for climate change, which he has dismissed as a “Chinese hoax”. In reality, Americans have reduced their carbon emissions by more than Europeans in recent years —but both are dwarfed by the vast increase in Chinese emissions. Yet few Europeans blame President Xi’s regime for climate change — a subject that the Chinese president seldom mentions.
The truth is that in their attitudes to America and its president, both the French and the Germans are merely following their leaders. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have not only had very public spats with Donald Trump, but have repeatedly warned against the rise of nationalism as the gravest threat to world peace. Even when Trump and his “America First” rhetoric is not explicitly cited as evidence of this threat, it is usually easy for Europeans to infer that their leaders see Trump as the embodiment of the nationalism that they have been taught was the cause of both world wars. Some 77 per cent of Germans trust President Macron. So it is hardly surprising that public opinion should reflect the constant reiteration of a fear that pervades the palaces and chancelleries of Europe.
And yet there is something completely crazy about this fear. Whatever character faults this or any other President may have, he is constrained by constitutional checks and balances that have proved their worth throughout modern history. This was most notable during the Cold War, when the world came incomparably closer to nuclear war than it is today, but also in the wars that America has fought since: in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, in Iraq and in Syria. In every case, the intensity of the conflict was limited — far more so than in Vietnam, for example — and the majority of casualties were not inflicted by US forces. Indeed, the only weapons of mass destruction used in these wars were the chemical weapons deployed by the Assad regime, for which it was swiftly punished by the Trump administration. The defeat of Isis, in which the US took the lead, appears to have brought about a reduction of the terrorist threat in Europe.
Perhaps the Germans, only 30 per cent of whom see Russia as a threat, prefer to forget Putin’s annexation of Crimea and destabilisation of Ukraine — a violent provocation in their own neighbourhood. Like the French and the Canadians, the Germans know that the Americans will always come to their aid if they are directly threatened. So their hostile attitudes to the US and its President should be taken with a pinch of salt.
But does Donald Trump care what others think of him? Just 10 per cent of Germans trust his judgement “regarding world affairs”, while 30 per cent trust Xi Jinping and 35 per cent trust Vladimir Putin. That the leader of the free world should be less trusted than such ruthless and despotic figures indicates the scale of his unpopularity abroad —and his indifference to it. President Trump evidently prefers to be feared rather than loved.
