Fenton: Our Unflattering Impression

We are "exploitative" and "hypocritical." We apply "double standards."

Could they really mean us?

Indeed, these are only a few of the unflattering terms opinion makers from around the world used when asked to describe the United States.

As Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard notes, the United States is perceived as attempting to enforce American law in other countries; to promote American arms sales abroad while attempting to prevent similar sales by other countries. And to add insult to injury, we got rid of one U.N. Secretary General and dictated the choice of another while refusing to pay our back dues.

The impression America makes on the world these days is that we do what we please when we please because we have the power.

There are other things that our European friends do not like about America. Like the death penalty. We are the last Western nation to impose capital punishment. That leaves us in the company of Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and China, among others. The British, the French and the Italians do not understand how we can be so backward and unenlightened.

Simple anti-Americanism? It's more complicated than that. It's really an uneasiness about the sheer dominance of the United States in so many fields.

The vitality of the American economy not only surprises Americans. It has the rest of the world gasping with admiration -- and envy.

The French attitude towards us is instructive. There is the obvious assumption of cultural superiority over Americans. But there are also the bright young French who flock to Silicon Valley because that is where the economy of the future is being invented.

The information age is the new American empire. One expert has estimated that the Internet will eventually have half the world using English -- or some dot-com form of it. France has a government agency to protect its language from Americanization. But French newspapers are riddled with Americanisms. American culture is inescapable, and therefore both copied and resented.

You could also add to the list of things others don't like about America these days -- the "triumphalism" that became prevalent after the collapse of communism.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was proud to proclaim to an international audience, "We stand tall and hence see further than other nations."

American officials find it natural to lecture other nations on American values and the superiority of the American way of life. If your next-door neighbor acted like that, you might be excused for feeling that he or she is an insufferable know-it-all.

Even Nelson Mandela felt compelled to speak up when we objected to his paying a courtesy call on Colonel Gadaffi, who had stood by him in his hour of need. Mandela said he could not accept "the arrogance to tell us where we should go, or which countries should be our friends."

But things have changed with our European allies. They suck by us through a half century of the Cold War. Now the end of the division of the world has given them more wiggle-room to maneuver for their own advantage. It is easier for our NATO allies to break ranks because the results will not be fatal. So the French push for the creation of a European Army, looking for ways to limit American power and give France a bigger role in the world.

And the Germans are no longer content to sit on the back row and quietly pay the bills. They are, after all, the predominant economic power in Europe. It is OK for the Mayor of Berlin to poke fun publicly at the American ambassador who imperiously demands that the city rearrange the street pattern around the new American embassy to meet State Department security standards. And the American Ambassador has to grin and bear it.

The poet Robert Burns wrote more than two centuries ago:

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