U.S. finds world a lonelier place

WASHINGTON — The outpouring of anti-American rhetoric at the United Nations last week is demonstrating how anger at the United States is uniting the developing world in a way not seen since the 1980s, say U.S. officials and analysts.

Leaders such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, Sudan's Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are divided by background and political philosophies, but they spoke as one at the General Assembly podium when it comes to perceived American bullying and misdeeds.

While Chávez denounced the "imperialist empire," to the world body, Ahmadinejad railed against U.S. government pretensions to be the "rulers of the world," and Bashir complained about the powerful intruders trampling his country's sovereignty.

"There's a new sense of the oppressed versus the oppressor," said a senior U.S. official, who asked to remain unnamed. "What they have in common is their hatred of the U.S., and it's created this solidarity across Third World lines."

That solidarity hasn't been seen in the developing world since leftist liberation movements faded after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he added.

"Axis of the south"

The fallout from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and other Bush administration policies may be particularly visible in the new bonds between many Muslim nations and populist regimes of South America — an alliance that some call the "axis of the south."

Chávez has become a hero among the Arab populace, flattered with huge posters in Beirut and lavished regular coverage in the news media.

Even before last week's U.N. meeting, anti-Americanism was the overarching theme at a 118-nation summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, whose headliners included Ahmadinejad, Chávez, and Bolivian President Evo Morales. The leaders embodied a burgeoning spirit of defiance to "the worldwide dictatorship by the United States," declared Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

There is little doubt of the deepening unpopularity of the United States — even among longtime Western allies. Though the U.S. government has doubled its spending on public diplomacy, a poll this year by Pew Charitable Trusts showed wide dissatisfaction with a central pillar of U.S. foreign policy, the war against terrorism.

When people in largely Muslim nations were asked whether they approved of "U.S.-led efforts to fight terrorism," 82 percent in Egypt said no, as did 74 percent in Jordan, 77 percent in Turkey and 50 percent in Pakistan. The results in some European countries were similar. In Spain, 76 percent of those surveyed said they did not approve; the number was 57 percent in France.

U.S. officials say they don't believe the growing Third World solidarity constitutes a strategic threat to the United States. Though Chávez visits Iran and Syria, and talks about defense ties, oil sales and economic deals with these countries, North Korea and others, American officials take the view that the Venezuelan's declarations are mostly posturing to create an impression at home that he has stature as a world leader.

American officials do acknowledge such contacts reinforce anti-Americanism and add to the already sobering public diplomacy challenge they face. "It creates this impression that everybody is rising up against the Americans, and that's a problem," said the official.

Some outsiders feel these new bonds are more than an image problem.

Chávez, for example, has won substantial support from Latin American countries for his bid to win a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, even as the Bush administration has campaigned to have the seat go to Guatemala. If Venezuela wins, the United States, in addition to facing a barrage of rhetoric, will have a harder time collecting the council votes it needs.

Third World solidarity also has made it easier for Bashir to block a U.N. peacekeeping deployment to bring peace to the Darfur region of his country, said Lee Feinstein of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Bashir "has succeeded in interfering with the U.N. deployment by depicting this as an old-fashioned 'us versus the United States,' " said Feinstein, a senior U.S. State Department official during the Clinton administration. "The American ability to credibly rally the international community on behalf of the vulnerable in Darfur has been eroded by this unpopularity."

Feinstein said that in drawing together these parts of the world, U.S. unpopularity "has created real diplomatic problems for the country, many of them second-order, but also some big ones."

Still, analysts and U.S. officials pointed out that while the shared anti-Americanism of these countries is striking, so too are their differences.

While advocates of this "axis of the south" describe it as similar to the leftist liberation movements of 20 years ago and earlier, the Arab leaders and Africans do not generally share their leftist leanings. And Chávez has not at this point succeeded in winning the leadership role in Latin America that he craves.

Feinstein said that while the withering denunciations of Chávez and Ahmadinejad drew some applause this week, on the whole the membership of the United Nations is much more united behind American-style views of democracy and economics than it has ever been.

"Opposition has hardened into anti-Americanism and shifted government policy in many places around the world, but the U.N.'s membership is much more in sync with traditional U.S. foreign policy goals and ideals than at any time since the U.N'.s founding," he said. "The tragedy is, the Bush administration hasn't been able to take advantage of that fact."