New York Times 8/20/99
FOREIGN AFFAIRS / By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
An American in Paris
LONDON -- Surely one of the oddest features of international affairs today is the fact that half the world thinks America wants to dominate everything and half the U.S. Congress doesn't even own a passport.
The gap between how foreigners see America and how America sees itself in the world could not be larger, particularly after Kosovo. China and Russia openly complain about America throwing its weight around. But there is plenty of resentment of U.S. "domination" among America's European allies as well. You can read it in the European press, or hear it in little digs like the one making the rounds over here that "the Chinese lost more people in the Kosovo war than the Americans did."
The gulf war showed the Euros how far ahead the U.S. military was in technological terms, and the Kosovo war showed how much wider that gap had become. This has left the Euros feeling victorious in Kosovo, yet diminished. As one British defense official remarked to me, "We have to avoid a situation where you [Americans] turn out the high-tech stuff and we provide the jolly good infantry."
It's no wonder the French have coined a new term to describe America today -- "the hyperpower." The term "superpower" was too small. It's also no wonder that right after NATO's Kosovo victory the European Union declared its intention to form its own military force capable of acting independently of the U.S.
This would be laughable if it were not so pathetic. The Euros will not catch America so easily. Consider just one reason: Devotees of Ronald Reagan like to credit him with the military buildup that enabled the U.S. to run so far ahead of all its allies and enemies. They are right about Mr. Reagan, but they are wrong about what he deserves credit for. The most important thing Mr. Reagan did was break the 1981 air traffic controllers' strike, which helped break the hold of organized labor over the U.S. economy.
That was critically important for spurring the information revolution in America. How so? Ask yourself this: Why is it that the Europeans have lots of money and the same access to technology as Americans do, yet most of them have been slow to absorb computers and info-technologies? Answer: U.S. companies are quick to absorb new, more productive technologies because they can easily absorb the cost of the new investment by laying off the workers who used to perform that task. And as the overall economy becomes more productive, those workers get rehired elsewhere.
The Europeans have moved slower because their rigid labor laws make it very hard, or very costly, to lay off workers. And if you have to pay for a new computer and the wages of an old worker, you are much less likely to buy the new computer.
The world's eight largest high-tech companies are all U.S.-based.
The deregulation of the U.S. economy has fostered the quick adoption of new information technologies, and these new technologies have given the U.S. military its great technological leap forward -- from laser-guided weapons to stealth technology to electronic warfare. These systems are now essential for fighting wars that modern democracies will tolerate, which is to say high-tech, remote-control, low-casualty wars. Without the economic and technological underpinnings that make such weapons possible, the Euros will have a hard time catching Uncle Sam.
But just as the Euros need to understand their weakness, and how to manage it, America needs to understand its strength and how to manage it. The idea that the U.S. Congress, looking at a $1 trillion surplus, wants to cut its paltry foreign aid budget, refuses to pay its U.N. arrears, talks about free trade but then won't even expand Nafta to Chile, and treats foreign policy as a sport in which you pass sanctions against your favorite enemy, like a game of darts, should embarrass every American.
Congress is split between those who believe the U.S. should act everywhere alone and those who believe it should act nowhere. The idea of a generous America, leading where it must, sharing where it can and financing the development banks to give a hand up to those most in need, has a shrinking constituency.
It's crazy that at this moment the President has to spend his time abroad persuading foreigners that America is not a cheap imperialist, and his time at home persuading Congress that America still has a global role.