Letters

National Interest, The, Fall, 2000

Eventually, the end-of the-Cold-War revisionists will be found out by historians once removed, just as the leftist revisionists on the origins of the Cold War lost ground as more primary source documents surfaced. There is enough credit to go around for the fall of communism-- from President Truman's containment policy to the Reagan crusade against the "evil empire." We were all cold warriors; and both political parties spent trillions to demonstrate it. This was not a pretense, as Krauthammer suggests was the case. No one had any trouble in understanding the superiority of the Western democracies over the Soviet system.

Let us bury the parochial perspectives and ideological hatchets that lead to charging some American political leaders with a kind of treason.

WILLIAM E. JACKSON, JR.

Executive Director of the General Advisory Committee on Arms Control, 1978-80

The World's Resentment:

Peter Rodman's assessment of the almost universal anti-Americanism ("The World's Resentment: Anti-Americanism as a Global Phenomenon", Summer 2000) is right on the mark, especially with regard to most intellectuals. The Russians and Chinese, the Third World and even our European allies resent the political, military, economic and cultural predominance of the United States. As Rodman indicates, some of that resentment derives from jealousy and other kinds of small mindedness, weaknesses that we just have to put up with. However, I believe that we should face a fact that even he does not mention: we, by our own international economic policies, have provoked much of the current anti Americanism.

I am referring particularly to the principal instruments we have been employing in an effort to make friends and influence people in other countries: carrots (primarily foreign aid) and sticks (primarily economic sanctions). There is much that needs revision in the ways we've been using each of those instruments.

In many parts of the world, including Eastern Europe, Russia, Africa, Asia and Latin America, we have been making loans and grants contingent upon the recipients' enactment of legislation or issuance of regulations designed to promote institutions that we think would be good for them, such as democracy, free markets and the rule of law. Those institutions and several others are indeed critically important for economic growth and other goals, but our efforts to foster them have been highly misguided. They have been resented because they are clear manifestations of our throwing our weight around--if you want our money, establish the laws and regulations we think would be good for you!

What's more, the changes we've forced on them haven't worked. Getting officials to sign the necessary pieces of paper has not created any of the institutions we hoped to see. The general populace must understand and want such institutions if they are to function as planned. But neither the hearts nor the minds of people are conquered easily. And we haven't even started to promote that basic need anywhere--as I believe we should.