Curb Your Americentrism
The USA isn’t the only country that matters.
Reading some of your comments over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed a sort of ideological infection setting in: Americentrism.
It’s easy to think that because you live in the most powerful country on the planet, that yours is the only country on the planet—or the only country that matters.
Donald Trump certainly subscribes to this imperial worldview. People who share it reflexively discount the interests of smaller countries and the people who live in them simply because those countries are, well, small.
Take this comment on my colleague Evan Gottesman’s piece, “The True Cost of Greenland.” Evan wrote about how the Danes sacrificed on behalf of their US allies after 9/11. To which one reader—who I can only assume is American—retorts:
…to cite Denmark’s contribution to the GWOT/Ira[q]/Afghanistan is a joke, it was symbolic as was every other country’s contribution…
Danes and other NATO allies filled essential roles in Afghanistan, including frontline combat. Every Danish soldier did a job an American servicemember would not have to. Denmark—with a population under six million in 2001—suffered more casualties per capita than any country other than the US and Great Britain. I’m sure the families of Denmark’s fallen felt their losses were as “symbolic” as Copenhagen’s contribution to the war effort. Fuck you for your service, I guess.
This attitude, that “bigger is better, and we are big, so we are better,” is increasingly pervasive on the right.
Yet the left has its own version of Americentrism too. I’ve seen this crop up in response to ongoing events in Iran.
In Iran, the Islamic Republic regime is gunning down protesters in the streets. Many are calling for American help, some carrying signs appealing directly to Donald Trump. My friend Masih Alinejad—an Iranian dissident whom Tehran tried to assassinate on the streets of New York—published a piece in The Next Move outlining how the US can support her people.
This was the smug response from someone calling themselves “Rational Lib” (quite the confident screen name!):
I will strongly, strongly advise, no matter how bad things get, do not ask Trump for help.
Another reader offers an equally useless contribution:
USA should not intervene. We’re in this IRAN situation bc of our failures in supporting the despot regime of the Shah.. now his son is involved from the outside! Stay out of their internal politics! Let the Iranian ppl determine their future!!
Essentially, America is bad—maybe, the most bad—and the rest of the world has to pay for its sins. Iranians are expected to die to satisfy your guilty conscience because of something the United States government did ages ago. Self-reflection is good. Self-flagellation is destructive and even deadly. How long should the US sit on the sidelines while the Iranian authorities wantonly murder protesters before you feel sufficiently righteous?
We are all justifiably outraged by the killing of Renee Nicole Good by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, but there is little appreciation that the Islamic Republic has killed thousands of Renee Nicole Goods. The nightmare many Americans are trying hard to stave off is in its forty-seventh year in Iran.
Facing murderous regime thugs under the shroud of a nationwide telecommunications blackout, Iranians do not have the luxury of ideological litmus tests.
I get that the idea of Trump saving the day rankles a few of you, and I am personally very skeptical that he will rise to the occasion. But the Iranian people also appealed directly to Barack Obama and he went on to strike a deal with the regime instead. Even Obama now says he regrets letting the protesters down. We would not be in a situation where Trump was being called upon to help if his predecessors had gotten things right. And America is the most powerful country in the world, perhaps the only one capable of balancing the scales in Iran. Doesn’t it make sense that hopeful Iranians would turn to the White House?
The president has said that the US will intervene if the Islamic Republic kills protesters. There is no more “if.” If you are really concerned about Trump, demand your representatives hold him accountable for his commitments to the Iranian people—and swallow your guilt. Don’t wag your finger at a desperate nation fighting for its freedom. Remember that your independence was won with the help of France’s absolute monarchy
It’s time to curb your Americentrism. Where the MAGA right centers US brute force strength, the left wants to center America’s problems and weaknesses. Where the right is overeager to flex its muscles, the left is afraid of power.
To our readers on the right: show some respect for America’s friends before you find out what it’s like to live in a country that has no friends. And to our readers on the left: don’t impose your purity politics on the rest of the world. I can tell you that Soviet dissidents did not shun the United States because of Vietnam or segregation. There was no prize for having the cleanest conscience in the gulag.
More from The Next Move:
I’m an Iranian Dissident. My People Demand Freedom. America Can Help.
The US has options to pressure the Islamic Republic.
In Defense of María Corina Machado—and Freedom Fighters Everywhere
Uriel Epshtein responds to María Corina Machado’s critics. Jay Nordlinger contextualizes the award for the Venezuelan dissident and its place in Nobel history.
In the absence of better information over the last 20 years, Americans learned the lessons explicitly taught by our adversaries when it came to US foreign intervention. As Gary says, we learned all the wrong lessons.
The explosion of the Internet cemented this worldview, once again in an information environment that lacked critics and opposition. An entire generation of Americans were raised to reflexively oppose any and all intervention no matter the cause, even the removal of a psychotic tyrant at the request of his own people.
My worldview has matured the more I realize that the early age of the internet I grew up experiencing was an echo chamber. An entire side of the debate was missing. Strategists and realists were booed out of every chat room and comment section.
Americans have been that way as long as I can remember, and I’ve passed my half-century. Unless they have lived several years away from the US, even the best of them are US-centric, and too many are worse, disparaging other nations in a way that is not only ignorant (they don’t rely either on data, history or experience) but also petty and emotionally stunted. It’s a pity, because at their best, Americans are a credit to our common humanity. The best Americans *will* put the needs of the desperate Iranians before their own political bias, even as they hold their own politicians accountable.
This tendency, however, is typical of empires: I’ve encountered it in Chinese, Russians and older British and French people. All we can do is remind them, as you are doing here, that the sun doesn’t revolve around them.