From the ugly to the reasonable American

A new book has a new take on America's involvement in Asia

By Tom Plate
Pacific Perspectives Columnist

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Los Angeles --- Truly, what manner of men and women are we who happen to be American?

Since the fifties, brilliant writers have sought to cut to the core of the American political character and answer this philosophical question by postulating national stereotypes. But their answers were usually anything but flattering. And, interestingly, these deprecatory political portraits came in the context of America's involvement in Asia.

Most famous of all was the image of the "ugly American," which emanated from the hothouse typewriters of authors William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. This was the title of their 1958 novel about American blunderings and stupidities that took place in a mythical Southeast Asian nation (which of course was Vietnam).

The book not only became an instant international bestseller but the title and main idea quickly morphed into a kind of catch-all concept for the eternal downside of the American political character as it clumsily stomped its way across countries, regions and the world.

A parallel stereotype arose from another fifties novel, The Quiet American, by the British writer Graham Greene. Here the penetrating portraiture, set in 1954 Vietnam, unveiled a landscape less of American ignorance as the cause of suffering in Asia than of the reckless American belief in its own exceptional rectitude -- a quality with the potential to make shambles of whole countries.

Today, The Quiet American seems disquietingly relevant to the U.S. mess in Iraq, while the image of The Ugly American seems to eerily reflect much of the negative world opinion of us Americans.

But are these the only possible archetypes we real Americans can ever hope for?

It was against the backdrop of this question that a new book about America and Asia makes the scene. And it is terrific. While it is not a novel that could be made into a movie, like that pair of prickly fifties portraits were, it is a contemporary book that deserves to have the same sort of impact on our self-image

This is because the book offers hope. It raises the possibility that we could be, in Asia and elsewhere, neither boisterously stupid (which we didn't mean to be, right?) nor quietly devious (though all for the best of motives, of course!). Instead, it suggests, we Americans could carve out a better fate for ourselves by reexamining our character and developing a more refined global profile that -- yes, does worry about how we are perceived, but without turning ourselves into abject prisoners of wimpy public-opinion surveys.

The authors are a pair of former American diplomats. One is Morton Abramowitz, now a staff think-tanker at The Century Foundation in New York, and a former Thailand ambassador. The other is Stephen Bosworth, now dean of the elite Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts, and a former top-notch ambassador to South Korea.

Their book is titled Chasing the Sun, and in about 192 spiffy, sometimes witty and occasionally self-deprecatory pages, it lays out a basic approach to American policy in East Asia that may not be so quiet but neither is it remotely ugly. Their sensible and seasoned approach asks Americans to cut out the lecturing, huffing and bluffing and to assume a more modest, even respectful style of American leadership. We need to accept China for the growing power that it is and bear in mind how American support for the military reawakening of Japan will be negatively received in Asia. We need to understand that we blew the North Korean problem while we mucked about in Mesopotamia, and accept that the Taiwan tension, like many others in East Asia, will probably be made worse by heavy-footed U.S. involvement.

There are funny lines in Chasing the Sun, not a typical quality of American foreign policy books, to be sure. Consider their pithy consideration of the Bush administration's promotion of democracy worldwide: "The fact that the U.S. government says [democracy] is central and preeminent does not make it so," the authors rightly warn. But they do acknowledge that looking for overall, simplified, good-foreign-policy theme is something American governments cannot be expected to spurn -- and that may not be all bad: "Notwithstanding their inherent limitations, however, broad policy lines are essential to orient the government, to inform the public and the rest of the world, and to show that the U.S. government knows what it is doing -- even if it really doesn't."

And so in their gem of a book, Bosworth and Abramowitz offer us a new portraiture of the American political character. Let's call it: "The Reasonable American." It may not be that macho, but it is certainly not ugly, and it doesn't have to be all that quiet. It might even be much more effective.

The views expressed above are those of the author and are not necessarily those of AsiaMedia or the UCLA Asia Institute.

Date Posted: 6/25/2006