Читать книгу American Presidential Elections in a Comparative Perspective - Группа авторов - Страница 10

This is a book about the longstanding image that other countries hold of the United States, but also a book about a recent concrete episode of American history, the 2016 presidential election.¹⁰ Consequently, the analyses move along two different tracks, the longue durée and the short term.¹¹ The longue durée helps us to understand perceptions of the United States that have a long history and complex configuration. They are rooted in interactions that have taken place over decades and in many cases, overcenturies. Time does alter such images slowly or makes them blur. Once these views are established, they tend to persist. Often, they even shape other country’s national identity. For example, Japanese pro-Americanism and affinity with the Republican Party is rooted in the post-World War II rebuilding of Japan and apparently Trump’s has not changed this tendency.

Short-term perceptions, on the contrary, are views that may have a brief life span, and can be changed by domestic or international events or incidents. For example, the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989, significantly affected the world’s perceptions of the Chinese government, reinforcing the view of China as a country that systematically violates human rights. Many nations consider the United States to be a racist country. Yet the election of Barack Obama in 2008 as the first African-American president modified this perception and raised hopes that racism had finally come to an end in the United States. Donald Trump’s pronouncements on Mexicans, Muslims, and immigrants have effectively erased this short-term perception of a post-racial America and reinforced long held views of the United States as a racist country. If president Trump fulfills his campaign promise to build a wall along the US-Mexican border, it is difficult to believe that Mexico would ever recover the pro-Americanism it had before Trump’s presidential campaign. In sum, perceptions established over the longue durée comprise a solid structure, but recurrent disruptions and disturbing incidents can generate variations, at least in the short term.

The literature on foreign views of the United States is immense and ranges across diverse methodological approaches and perspectives. It includes the analysis of travelers, journalists, international relations scholars, cognitive psychologists, public opinion specialists, and international relations scholars using political psychology to study how governments send signals in efforts to shape how foreigners see them. Essays in this book sketch out foreigners’ historical views of the United States, and how those perceptions were modified (or not) by the 2016 presidential election. Contributors describe and analyze their countries’ readings of American institutions, problems currently facing the United States, and American democracy; the effects of American domestic politics on their own countries; and the possible consequences that changes in the US presidency could have on the international system.

Examining foreign perceptions of the United States holds special relevance today. In a globalized world, what the United States does or does not do has implications for other nations. The current US president has taken the stance “America First,” which affects US commitments to international trade agreements, climate change agreements, security pacts, international development and humanitarian cooperation, as well as general perceptions of the United States as a world leader. Trump’s statements and policies seem to signal a rejection of the post World War II liberal order that the United States helped to construct. What happens in the United States will have consequences for the rest of the world now as much as ever before.