We Are All Ambassadors Now

Numberless cultivated Americans traveling in Europe never by any chance speak English or carry English books on railroad trains, as a protection against the other type of American who allows no one to travel in the same compartment and escape conversation. The only way to avoid unwelcome importunities is literally to take refuge in assuming another nationality.
–Emily Post, Etiquette (1922)

I have never gone to the extreme of carrying non-English language books when traveling abroad. I would never consider it, because reading is not optional for me: I have to read as I have to sleep, eat and breathe. Nor have I ever feigned a different nationality to avoid other Americans. I have feigned a different nationality, but that was when I was trying to dodge the offers of dodgy taxi drivers in Tiananmen Square (”Io sono italiano! Non parlo inglese!”) on the off-chance that I could pass–in their eyes–as Italian.
Times have changed since Ms. Post wrote her manual, but some things remain constant. Foremost among the constant phenomena is the bemoaning of American manners abroad, both by foreigners and by Americans of a certain cultural level: “For years we Americans have swarmed over the face of the world, taking it for granted that the earth’s surface belongs to us because we can pay for it, and it is rather worse than ever since the war, when the advantages of exchange add bitterness to irritation,” Ms. Post wrote in a section entitled “Europe’s Unflattering Opinion of Us.” (Would that the advantages of the exchange rate did add bitterness to my daily affairs! I’d gladly settle for 10% more bitterness if I could have the exchange rate back at 1.2 euro to the dollar.)

Yet Ms. Post is right. It would be accurate, too, to complain about the manners of Germans abroad, and to note the depradations of English soccer hooligans, just as it would be permissible to point out the herd mentality that characterizes East Asian tourists. The last is forgivable, because travel is something that has only within the last generation become affordable by East Asians of modest means. But Ms. Post is not addressing Germans or the English or Koreans. She is addressing us, still, from the grave.
I do not want to frame this in terms of etiquette, though I think etiquette is important. Instead I want to discuss the specific ways in which Americans can fight anti-Americanism. First, I want to be clear what I mean by that. There are valid reasons for people to oppose American policies: Europeans have a received, if not a reasoned, conception of the world as a place where everyone can settle their disagreements at the conference table, and the Japanese have a highly flattering myth of themselves as being an exceptional and pacific state. Americans carry their own cultural baggage with them, too. None of these preconceptions are sacrosanct, and all of them should be examined closely. Yet they are not going to change quickly or widely, and so we have to accept them as givens.
Anti-Americanism goes deeper than that. It is not merely a difference between the normative prescriptions of the EU (”Everyone should be social democratic!”) or the burgeoning great power activism of the Chinese. Instead, anti-Americanism is a theory of international relations, social justice and moral sentiments that postulates that every ill, grievance and injustice can be traced back to the United States. It’s a ridiculous, but comforting, notion. And it is the paradigm a large number of people use to guide their understanding of world affairs.
Tim Oren, a writer at Winds Of Change, wrote an essay called “We are all ambassadors now: The age of citizens’ diplomacy”. Oren noted that “For many in the outside world, the Americans on the Internet now matter a lot more than the anointed ambassador or CNN.” His conclusion is on target:

We are all ambassadors now, Americans and others alike. Just as we’re bypassing mainstream media, we’ve started to bypass mainstream diplomacy. What we do and say with one another may matter a great deal – just a small matter of war or peace (not to put on any pressure).

If you’re interested in this topic, I also recommend John Burgess’s “All for one: Citizen diplomacy & the Foreign Service”, also at Winds of Change.
Oren’s analysis enjoins us to act responsibly on the Internet as in real life. Bombast has no place. I think it was Eliot Cohen in Foreign Affairs some time ago who said that Americans should downplay talk of their power and wealth; the rest of the world, Cohen said, is well aware that America is predominant. Encouraging resentment and envy, though, is not the way to build a peaceful world order.
And that is what we must do, as citizens. What–I should trust the government to speak for me? I’m an American, and I can speak for myself, thanks very much. Besides, I like traveling, and I don’t want to live in a world where the boorishness of my compatriots means that I can’t read on airplanes anymore.