More on the UN

Danie Henninger's coulmn in today's WSJ is apropos of my earlier post today on the UN. Firstly, he has some interesting poll numbers of American's view of the UN. Not surprisingly, the UN's negatives are quite high with the American public.

Secondly, he raises a rather legitimate, if uncomfortable to some, point, which is that the world has to take US power and goals seriously, whether they like it or not. And, further, that European snobbery vis-a-vis the US is misplaced.

Well before Iraq, one of the elite criticisms of the U.S., heard mostly in Europe and in the American academy, has been that the U.S. is compulsively trying to "impose its values" on the rest of the world. In the mind of, say, José Bové, France's most famous farmer, this means McDonalds or Mickey Mouse. Or it is about genetically modified food production or refusing to sign global environmental treaties. But from Germany and Japan after World War II and on up to Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq, I am aware of only one "value" America has tried to impose and it's not Mickey Mouse. It is democracy, or at a minimum, liberty.

Indeed, this "idealism," if that's what it is, extends generally to American views of the U.S. role in the world. While "foreign aid" is a perennial bugaboo, a German Marshall Fund survey last year found that Americans by margins between 75% to 85% support spending money to help other nations with food, medicine, women's education and AIDS. But the days are gone when the "international community" could equate this long-standing idealism to American naivete about the affairs of the world.

And there is something to the idea that how the rest of the world attempts to deal with US will, in turn, affect how US power affects them:

Like it or not, the American superpower is going to be in the world. Isolationism isn't an option, But there are two post-9/11 Americas on offer to the world.

You can either get the benign version of the American superpower, the one that comes with American values, such as a belief in self-determination even for the wogs, a version that most likely will include continued support for institutions such as the U.N. Or, amid derision and abuse, you may get the truly realpolitik version, which will be mainly about cold-bloodedly protecting the superpower's commercial interests, and will include little or no interest in the U.N. and similar platforms. Americans are patient. But they aren't punching bags.

A bit over the top/simplistic, perhaps, but nonetheless true.