While the question “why do they hate us?” was first asked after the September 11 attacks, the controversy over the war in Iraq demonstrated the universal character of the new anti-Americanism. The predominant US reaction to this resentment has been to rhetorically turn the table on the accusers.

Paradoxically, the new anti-Americanism is being taken as a confirmation that we must be doing something right. Others are simply jealous of our success, and our moral virtue is a living reproach to their cynicism.

According to news anchor Dan Rather, people who hate America see us as winners, themselves as losers. Actor Ben Stein expressed the sentiment behind the defensive American reaction to criticism best. According to him, in the global high school America is the popular captain of the football team who dates the best looking girls. The international nerds and geeks naturally resent this state of affairs.

And yet powerful as it is, America is anything but popular. It has to bribe and beg for support of those who only yesterday tried to ingratiate themselves to it. Nor can America tolerate and ignore the international opposition. The French were simply chosen as a convenient scapegoat for what is essentially a global phenomenon and not reducible to one country or a small group of countries.

To understand the dynamics of the US alienation from the world it is helpful to look at the country itself. While Americans are deeply suspicious of nationalism abroad, they score very high on the scale of nationalism themselves. Less than half of Western Europeans take a special pride in their nationality. In the US the figure is more than 70 percent.

While Americans are deeply suspicious of fundamentalist Islam, a Christian fundamentalist is now in the White House, who, together with nearly half of this country, rejects the theory of evolution in favor of a religious dogma. Bush and Ashcroft, like Osama bin Laden, see the current conflicts as a battle of good and evil and reject political analysis for religious interpretations.

While the US itself brushed aside arms control treaties with Russia, it expects the strictest observance of nuclear non-proliferation treaties from Iran and North Korea. Claiming that an unproven presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was an imminent threat to its security, the US, having the largest WMD and conventional arsenal, started a war against that country. Having observed the Roman maxim of what is allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to the bull, Americans allow themselves to be and do precisely what they deplore in others. International criticism of American hypocrisy is so painful because it is correct.

While the US is the world economic leader, its wealth is shared in an unequal pattern that resembles the third world more than it does Western Europe. Similarly, the social safety net in the US is much below the standards of other industrialized nations. Millions of Americans suffer from hunger, malnutrition, homelessness, lack of medical care and illiteracy. The labor laws greatly favor capital over labor. This lack of socio-economic security is the chief source of the conformity and submission to power that underlines the American way of life and colors the domestic perception of foreign affairs as well.

In the international arena the US treats other nations the same way the powerful treat the powerless here at home. As an Asian observer noted, US foreign policy can be summed up in three maxims: 1) we are always right and they are always wrong, 2) might makes right, and 3) the end justifies the means. This cannot be blamed on Bush alone. The problems are institutional and systemic. A system of corporate domination of American politics makes it likely that someone like Bush will make it to the White House, one way or the other, and will take the imperial policy to its ruthless and logical conclusion.

However, the world has changed. The threat of terror was not enough to rally the world against Iraq. If the US government persists in imposing itself as the boss of the world, it will find its orders not being obeyed regardless how much it bribes, threatens or bombs. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to expect the Bush regime to continue attempting an unrestrained global domination, for it benefits domestically from the siege mentality inspired by such a course.

Bush may or may not be stopped in Iraq, but if he goes further sooner or later he will find his Stalingrad, his Belfast, his Vietnam or his Mogadishu, even as the prospect of defeat resonates with the American public in 2003 no more than it did in 1963. Iraq does not look like Vietnam, but it does look like Algeria and the Iraqi people are no more enthusiastic about the Americans than the Algerians were about the French.

What then will be the tombstone of the American power, to borrow Amatol Lieven’s expression? Iraq? Syria? Iran? Lebanon? North Korea? Afghanistan? Perhaps, the inability to control either occupied Iraq or Afghanistan will eventually quietly bury the imperialist project without much loss of life.

It is no more possible to predict the time, place and form of the new Vietnam than to accurately anticipate which turn of the roulette will finally wipe out a degenerate gambler. But, to quote George W. Bush, “the outcome is not in doubt.”

--Dmitry Marin is a contributor to Political Affairs.