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Fifth International

There were those who sympathized with communist ideology. There were those who wanted to impose their own values on their neighbors. And there were those who simply wanted a “Third Way” between America’s savage economic freedoms and Communism’s tyranny. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for the creation of "the new socialism for the 21st century," saying that "capitalism is not a sustainable model of development." While the concept remains loosely defined, in practice, Chavez' "socialism for the 21st century" in Venezuela has involved the concentration of executive, legislative, judicial, economic, and media powers in the presidency. A defining feature of Chavez' vision is a broad-based hostility to the United States as an ideological foe and hegemonic threat.

President Chavez convened the First International Meeting of Leftist Parties in November 2009, called for a "Fifth Socialist International," and permitted the use of a prime Caracas venue for the inaugural meeting of the Continental Bolivarian Movement apparently as means to formalize his "Bolivarian" ideology. Hosted by the United Venezuelan Socialist Party (PSUV), over 150 delegates from 45 countries attended the First Meeting of International Leftist Parties in Caracas on November 19-20 (reftel). Delegates signed the "Caracas Agreement" to re-invigorate socialism in the 21st century, condemned the "imperialism of the United States," and agreed to President Chavez's proposal of holding the 5th Socialist International in the near future.

As Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro emphasized in the opening session on November 19, President Chavez called on the leftist parties to unite against the United States, and said "the empire is preparing for a war in Latin America using Colombia and the installation of six military bases as a platform." Chavez said that "Colombia does not have its own government now; its government has been given to Washington." Delegates from other countries criticized the DCA and expressed their solidarity with Venezuela against the "U.S. and Colombian aggression."

In the closing session, Chavez expressed his support for Carlos Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka " Carlos the Jackal," who is serving life imprisonment in France. Chavez called him a "revolutionary fighter" and said he did not care about what Europeans might think about such a statement. Chavez also said that former Ugandan President Idi Amin may have been "a nationalist, a patriot," much as Zimbabwean President Mugabe now is. In Chavez's newspaper column on November 22, Las Lineas de Chavez, he said "this meeting was a new ratification that Bolivarian Venezuela is not alone, it has more supporters than ever before."

Anti-Americanism is a pillar of Russia's foreign policy because the U.S. was an easy target. If the Russian leadership targeted the rich in Russia or used ethnic tensions as an issue, it would unleash domestic problems. By targeting the US, there was less risk and it kept the Russian people mobilized. Russian Public Opinion Study Center (VTsIOM) polling data show that Russians who believe that the U.S. presented the greatest terrorist threat grew from eight percent in 2007 to twenty-six percent in 2009. Russian foreign policy was built upon the image of projecting Russian strength and the need to seek out unequal outcomes. Russia had not succeeded in drawing regional countries closer because its model was not attractive.

The United States is often the target of criticism because many governments and regimes wish to distract their own people from home-grown failures: their unwillingness to deliver basic goods and services, to allow free speech and fair elections, to provide for a decent education or develop a free market that creates meaningful jobs. The American political scientist, Professor Michael Mandelbaum, noted that "Blaming the United States for disappointments and dislocations in other countries…deflects the responsibility for these ills from the people who might well seem more appropriate targets for blame: the governments of the countries affected. Those governments use the United States as a political lightning rod, drawing away from themselves the popular discontent that their shortcomings have helped to produce and that could, if directed against them, remove them from power."

Anti-Americanism is criticism on steroids. As the American academic Paul Hollander has written: Anti-Americanism is "a free-floating hostility or aversion." It is "a deep-seated emotional predisposition that perceives the United States as an unmitigated and uniquely evil entity and the source of all, or most, other evils in the world."

A Pew Trust research poll in 2005 concluded that "anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now that at any time in modern history…the rest of the world both fears and resents the unrivalled power that the United States has amassed since the Cold War ended. In the eyes of others, the U.S. is a worrisome colossus: it is too quick to act unilaterally, it doesn’t do a good job of addressing the world’s problems, and it widens the global gulf between rich and poor. On matters of international security, the rest of the world has become deeply suspicious of U.S. motives and openly skeptical of its word. People abroad are more likely to believe that the U.S.-led war on terror has been about controlling Mideast oil and dominating the world than they are to take at face value America’s stated objectives of self-defense and global democratization."

The collapse of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union changed profoundly the nature of the international system and the nature of the transatlantic relationship. The bipolar world that had grown out of the debris of World War II became a unipolar world. No longer is power balanced and countered among roughly equal states. The U.S. stands alone, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. This means that the United States now attracts all the blame for a variety of global problems, for anyone with a grievance. Consider the paradox: The United States is blamed for being too strong. At the same time, it is faulted if it does not use its strength to solve all the world’s problems.

The British historian, Paul Kennedy, has commented that "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing…Pax Britannica was run on the cheap, Britain’s armies were much smaller than European armies, and even the Royal Navy was equal to only the next two navies – right now all the other navies in the world combined could not dent American maritime supremacy."

Many find globalization enormously disruptive and threatening to traditional cultures and long-established ways of life. Whether it is the unsentimental demands of free market capitalism, instant global communications, American control of plant, animal and human characteristics through genetic engineering – all these elements of globalization are redefining our lives. It can be, and often is for many people, disturbing and disorienting.

Of all the countries of the world, the United States is most closely associated with these elements and, more generally, with the forces of modernity. The United States is the poster child for globalization. The U.S. has developed economic policies that make it especially well-positioned to take advantage of the forces of globalization. The international economic system was designed by the U.S. after World War II, the U.S. dollar is the world’s currency of choice and the U.S. market is the world’s largest, richest and most open. For all of these reasons, anti-globalization efforts single out the United States; anti-globalization protests are often indistinguishable from anti-American rants.

Anti-Americanism is a broad-based phenomenon that cuts across Arab and Muslim societies. It is driven not only by blind hatred promoted by the religious zealotry of extremists, but also by frustration and anger with U.S. foreign policy that affects the mainstream population in the Muslim world. The West's message of self-determination, democratization, and human rights is often viewed as a hypocritical "double standard" that is not implemented in its policies toward weaker nations, particularly those whose resources it wishes to exploit for its own economic progress. The long litany of grievances against U.S. policy that has impacted Muslim countries has fed the anger of many mainstream Arabs and Muslims in addition to the extremists who respond with violence. Globalization has increased the interactions and interdependence of nations and cultures, which can both magnify differences in culture and belief as well as reveal our common humanity and dependence on one another.