Christopher Kremmer argues in his famous paper “American Empire: Politics and Culture in the 21stCentury” that History will judge that America failed to define the nature of its new empire when it hadthe opportunity to do so after the end of the Cold War in 1991. It allowed bin Laden to define it forthem. Meanwhile, the American emperor concentrated on settling a personal score with the leader ofIraq. (Kremmer, 2001)The new American empire, born in the ruins of the twin towers, Afghanistan, and Iraq has yet to beformally announced. This may be due to the child’s uncertain paternity. George Bush and Osama binLaden can both credibly lay claims to be the father . . . as an empire, the US behaves much like otherempires in the past. It’s often said that it is a reluctant empire . . . . Nevertheless, imperial thinkingpermeates its foreign policy, especially towards the Middle East.(Ibid)This paper investigates the perceptions of the United States in Pakistan. It distinguishes two typesof attitudes, namely attitudes towards American culture and society and attitudes towards Americanpolicies. What is the image of the United States of America abroad? What opinion do foreign publicshave of America, its citizens and its institutions, its ideals and its culture, its policies and its symbols?What attitudes do they have towards all things American? The main hypothesis that this paper seeksto test is whether attitudes towards America emerge as a consistent mind frame that manifests itself ina systematic patterns. Is anti-Americanism an ideational syndrome fostering a rejection of Americaon all its dimensions? Or is anti-Americanism a multi-faceted phenomenon, remarkable more forits ambivalent nature rather than its virulence? Seen in this perspective, the study of the image ofAmerica aimed at identifying whether different aspects of America are evaluated in a consistentmanner, be that uniformly positive or uniformly negative, or whether patterns of inconsistenciespopulate the ideational reaction to America. Two dimensions are put under scrutiny in this study: apolity dimension, and a policy dimension. The first dimension refers to America as a societal, cultural,and political arrangement premised on freedom, opportunity, and individual achievement, while thesecond dimension is centered on the political actions the United States pursues in the internationalarena
展开▼
