America’s identity crisis

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Hello Swampians, I’m swapping slots with Ed this week, who is busy at the Aspen Security Forum.

When I raise the topic of America’s identity crisis, I’m not talking about identity in the woke sense (though I’m planning to write my column next week about how companies are coping with consumer activism around identity politics). Rather, I’m talking about how Americans see themselves and their country, versus how foreigners do.

My gut instinct would have been that Americans are far more optimistic about themselves and their home than others are. But in fact, it’s just the opposite.

While just over half of Americans believe that the world holds negative opinions of them, about six out of 10 of those polled in advanced economies have a favourable view of the US, according to the Pew Research Center. Poland, Israel and South Korea are particularly gung-ho, with favourability ratings in the high 80s or 90s, but 60 per cent or more of those surveyed in most big European nations, as well as Canada, had positive views of the US.

A lot of this is down to the current administration; global attitudes towards the US have improved significantly since Joe Biden became president. A large majority of those in rich countries believe the US is a reliable partner which supports democratic values like personal freedom. That said, there are worries about the future of American power, and its ability to defend the world.

There is also a strong sense that the US has serious problems at home, such as dealing with falling living standards, a terrible healthcare system, and racial discrimination.

Indeed, it may be those very issues that have led Americans to have a more negative view of themselves in the world than many allies do. Gallup data shows that only 37 per cent of Americans are satisfied with their country’s position in the world, versus a high of 71 per cent in 2002. This decline has led to an inwardness on international issues such as trade and global security, according to Pew.

This is especially so among Republicans. Amazingly, less than half of them now see trade as an opportunity, compared to 72 per cent of Democrats, according to Gallup. Likewise, three times more Republicans than Democrats believe that the US is doing too much for Ukraine. Both sides increasingly believe that China is an enemy, and co-operation will be impossible.

This is a grim picture, obviously. It’s particularly interesting to me that America’s problems at home seem to have amplified its desire for isolation from the rest of the world. This may pose an opportunity for the Biden administration if it can just tell a different story about the state of things at home and abroad.

Certainly, there’s plenty of good news to tout. Inflation is down, and wage growth is still pretty robust, which means the cost of living crisis is abating (at least for some). Biden chalked up big wins at the recent Nato summit, with Sweden allowed to join the alliance and new security guarantees for Ukraine. According to the newsletter, “What Could Go Right?” emissions in the US are falling, Danes are building new wind farms here, chemical weapons stockpiles are being destroyed and aid for families is improving. Indeed, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough has an entire essay in The Atlantic celebrating American achievements. The FT’s Simon Kuper this week also pointed out that we have many things about which to be cheerful, despite our proclivity to think we’re heading for the apocalypse.

So my question to you Ed is, why doesn’t all the good news seem to land with the force of the bad?

Recommended reading

• I have just started reading Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s amazing book American Prometheus about Robert Oppenheimer. So, so well crafted. The pages fly by.

• A really interesting piece in The New York Review of Books about the work of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, who made films such as Spirited Away (one of my all-time favourites), Ponyo and My Neighbour Totoro, which are just as delightful for adults as for children. It’s really tough to make good art about the experience of being a child, but I think he nails it.

• In the FT, I enjoyed my colleague Pilita Clark’s piece on why women must learn to use the word no more often, and don’t miss Oren Cass on the struggle of American conservatives to find a new and more thoughtful way forward. I’d also suggest reading him as a guide to the best thinking of a nascent new right.

Edward Luce responds

Rana, I think that’s an interesting and complex question. Often when we think of big US political shifts, we look to the country’s history to give us some clues. The past may be particularly useful in trying to figure out why Republicans have turned so anti-internationalist in the past few years, as opposed to Democrats, who, as you say, have broadly held firm in their positive ratings for global engagement.

In the late 1940s, a large chunk of the Republican party turned broadly isolationist, led chiefly by the Ohio senator Robert Taft. His leading in-party opponent, Arthur Vandenberg — the Mitt Romney, or perhaps John McCain, of his time — spoke up for the internationalist wing. Harry S Truman was returned to office in 1948, though it was a close-run election (and the Chicago Tribune famously miscalled it for Thomas Dewey).

By 1952, much of the Republican isolationist fever had broken and the party nominated Dwight Eisenhower, who was the personification of the Atlanticist American. The isolationists, meanwhile, had morphed into the McCarthyite red scare crowd, which wrought such damage to the state department, Hollywood and much of academia.

Why did the isolationists lose and what can that tell us about today? Partly it was because it became progressively more difficult to deny the threat that the Soviet Union posed. The USSR tested nuclear weapons, it tried to strangle West Berlin, backed the North Koreans to the hilt in the Korean War, and snuffed out whatever nascent non-communist movements had emerged in postwar eastern Europe. And partly it was because big domestic legislation, notably the GI Bill (giving wider access to higher education), drove a rising middle class increasingly towards the Democrats.

Democrats held the House almost continuously until 1994. If history were to repeat itself, Donald Trump would lose next year to Biden (though Fox and Newsmax would wrongly call it for Trump), and the reality of what I call the revenge of geopolitics would become US political consensus. Alas, I have no great confidence in things always going right or history repeating itself. As you know, we are also in dispute about whether trade is to blame for America’s relative disenchantment with the world. I think that’s a misdiagnosis, but I acknowledge it has become a rare point of bipartisan consensus in Washington, DC (but not Aspen!).