The 2002-04 Pew surveys also asked, "In making international policy decisions, to what extent to do you think the United States takes into account the interests of countries like [your country]." Most Americans believed that the interests of others were reasonably well-considered in Washington, a judgment that was not widely shared abroad (see Figure 2). The 2002 Pew survey revealed that publics in countries with the closest ties to the United States did not believe Washington was especially attentive to their interests. Even in staunch ally Great Britain and U.S. neighbors Canada and Mexico, majorities judged that the United States takes their interests into account "not much" or "not at all."

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The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 did little to enhance the American reputation in this respect. Great Britain, Poland, and Australia sent armed forces to Iraq, but respondents in these countries were not impressed that U.S. leaders were concerned with their interests. South Koreans' responses are of special interest, because North Korea was identified as a member of the "axis of evil" in President Bush's 2002 State of the Union address and because of heightened tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over the latter's nuclear weapons program. Although the United States has long stationed troops in South Korea and is pledged to protect that country against another incursion from the North, few South Koreans believed their concerns played a role in American decision-making.

The American reaction to the 2001 terrorist attacks was a mixture of outrage and puzzlement: "Why do they hate us so much?" Fifteen of the nineteen airliner hijackers-well-educated men from a traditional American ally, Saudi Arabia-did not fit the stereotypical image of a terrorist as a desperately poor man with nothing to lose from an adversary country.

Two days after the attacks, evangelist Jerry Falwell found the answer in America's sinfulness: "The pagans, and the abortionists and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU and People for the American Way-all of them who tried to secularize America-I point the finger in their face and say, 'you helped this happen.'" President Bush presented a quite different view at his October 11, 2003, press conference: "I am-like most Americans, I just can't believe it because I know how good we are." Other explanations for declining approval abroad of the United States can be grouped into four categories:

Irrationality. The first cluster of explanations for anti-Americanism emphasizes irrationality. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in an op-ed essay in the November 17, 2003, issue of Time that anti-American views are deeply rooted in envy:

The fact is the world hates us for our wealth, our success, our power. They hate us into incoherence... The search for logic in anti-Americanism is fruitless. It is in the air the world breathes. Its roots are envy and self-loathing by peoples who, yearning for modernity but having failed at it, find their one satisfaction in despising modernity's great exemplar.

According to this perspective, U.S. actions are fundamentally irrelevant because publics abroad hate and envy America for what it is-rich, powerful, modern, and successful-rather than for what it does. Efforts to compromise, cooperate, and coordinate policies with others are, to use Krauthammer's term, "pathetic." Anti-American views are so deeply embedded that it would be useless to make any policy adjustments with a view toward ameliorating them. To do so would merely reinforce images of the United States not only as an enemy, but also as a "paper tiger." Washington should stand firm in its pursuit of self-defined national interests; whether publics abroad oppose those policies should be totally irrelevant.

The theory that anti-American views abroad are cast in concrete because they are rooted in who we are, not what we do, is the counsel of despair. It overlooks the compelling evidence that, despite disagreements on many foreign policy issues, most publics abroad continue to admire many features of American society. It also dismisses the possibility that sovereign countries may occasionally have reasonable grounds for assessing their national interests in ways that diverge from those in Washington.

Ignorance: The malign version. In the July/August 2003 issue of Foreign Policy, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich presented a malign version of the thesis that anti-Americanism arises from ignorance, asserting that the problem is rooted in State Department disloyalty: "The State Department was engaging in a deliberate and systematic effort to undermine Bush's foreign policy."

Consequently, Gingrich suggested recruiting a "business advisory group from internationally sophisticated corporations" to sell U.S. policies as both desirable and feasible. Lack of sufficient understanding abroad may sometimes be a problem, but as a general diagnosis it might also be a form of denial that anti-American views may be rooted in divergent assessments of international realities and how best to pursue vital interests.