As Others See Us: Reflections on Changing Views of the West

Maybe this has happened to you. You look at yourself in the mirror and see someone half put together, looking tired, a bit worse for wear. Ask a friend, though, or even a stranger, and the assessment is apt to be kinder, more affirming: you look great!

Others don’t see us as we see ourselves.

As individuals, people are often harder on themselves than others are. But at the level of countries, it’s different. Countries tend to be more attentive to their good deeds than their bad ones. Their citizens think more about their country’s accomplishments in the world and are often unaware of—or think less about—their failures and inconsistencies.

In the United States, we see ourselves as protectors of democracy and human rights. Even experts and policy wonks, whose day jobs require deeper, more comprehensive knowledge of America’s role in the world, are not immune to viewing the United States through the lens of its ideals. Experts might readily acknowledge America’s flaws, but still take for granted the idea that the United States offers some moral good that its adversaries do not.

But what does the rest of the world see? A recent trip to Morocco offered some clues about just how wide the gap is between how we view ourselves and how the rest of the world sees us.

* * *

Let’s start with a scene: a packed-to-the-brim university conference room where four visiting experts from Europe and America have been invited to share their views on China.

These experts (and me, their colleague) are spending the week at the striking new campus of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, or UM6P as it is known. Located just outside the seaside Moroccan capital of Rabat, it offers programs in economics, international relations, political science, and behavioral science for public policy and public law. The campus is a checkerboard of huge sandstone-colored cubes that house classrooms, offices, amphitheaters, laboratories, and hotels. Palm tree-lined promenades are shaded by giant metal canopies that rise nearly 50 meters into the air.

It’s mid-week when we gather for dialogue and exchange. Although it is late afternoon and warm out, the mood in the room is anything but drowsy. Faculty fill the chairs at the long rectangular conference table, and students with backpacks and water bottles pack in—filling every seat along the wall, crowding into the back and spilling out into an overflow room.

Morocco is a key strategic player in a fast-evolving region at the crossroads of North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. With interest in China growing, the guest scholars—longtime experts in China’s economy, defense-industrial base, and technology sectors—are there to share what they see as a thoughtful, nuanced picture of China’s evolving global agenda. What is China doing in its domestic economy, how is its industrial policy changing, in what ways is it making progress, in what ways is it failing? They acknowledge the opportunities for countries like Morocco to benefit from China’s enormous investments around the world, while also sharing their views on the risks of engagement. (You can read the report out from the conference here.)

The global context is lost on no one: China is rising. Great power rivalry is intensifying. And the global balance of power is shifting. China is aggressively, confidently, patiently courting countries across Africa and beyond, offering much-needed investment. Morocco is one of many countries looking to expand and diversify its economic partnerships with China, while also maintaining ties with Europe and the United States. But the subtext is clear: as China rises, the United States is scrambling to reclaim an influence that seems to be waning or is already lost.

Our experts each speak in turn, and then the host opens the session up for questions. One person asks if China’s economy is in a recession. Another wants to understand the role of the European Union in U.S.-China competition.

Then a student in the back of the room raises his hand and is given the floor. Dressed in blue jeans and a green polo shirt, the young man says he understands China’s global strategy. But the real issue is that the United States is failing in Africa. A few eyebrows raise. A low murmur ricochets across the room.

The United States, he goes on, is weak. China is strong. More smiles from students and faculty. He says: China treats Africa with respect.

While the crowd sizzles, the young student expands beyond Africa—citing a string of what he views as stinging American failures: Israel, Ukraine, domestic issues. He predicts a failure to back Taiwan in some future war-time scenario.

The student and his peers were clearly relishing the moment. And why not? With charisma and defiance, he’d temporarily turned the power and authority in the room upside down.

Later, at dinner, I asked a faculty colleague from the university about the encounter. What did she think of his remarks?

Maybe I thought—or hoped—that she would say something to temper what I saw as an incomplete critique of my country.

She didn’t. Without cracking a smile, she said: “the feeling is widespread.”

* * *

It’s a mistake to draw generalizations from a handful of scattered encounters and conversations over the course of a heady week in a country you are visiting for the first time. The views we encountered in Morocco were as varied as people are, and I suspect that, just like everywhere, they shift and evolve.

But having traveled and worked over many years in countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Europe, it’s clear to me that the longtime critiques of the United States and the West more generally are growing louder and bolder—and, yes, more widespread.

While we see ourselves as protectors of democracy and human rights, the world sees the way we make exceptions over and over again when it suits our interests.

In the case of that session in Morocco, those critiques were packaged as part of a comparison with China.

China not only offers eye-watering sums of finance in sectors that the United States and its partners have been slow to support. It does so on terms that are cast as a win for the China model: respecting countries’ sovereignty.

It’s not political, says China—you can be you, and we’ll be us. We won’t force (inconsistently, as the West does) good governance standards and fair labor practices and human rights down your throat. We won’t tell you how to govern yourselves. And we don’t show up with a toxic colonial legacy in tow.

It’s not hard to see why that resonates.

But take China out of it and I suspect the criticisms still stand. And what strings together the long litany of reproval against the United States is outrage at our failure to practice—consistently—the values we so loudly espouse. It’s our attentiveness to the suffering of some over others. It’s acting as if we have everything to teach the world and nothing to learn. It’s denying for other countries and communities the things we demand for ourselves.

These practices, lived out over decades and across issues, have a way of highlighting greater and greater contradictions about who we are. They may not be what we see when we look in the mirror, but the rest of the world can hardly see anything else.

In Rabat, one of the Moroccan faculty members suggested that the United States and Europe need to reassess what they are offering to the rest of the world.

It’s a critique I’ve left Morocco reflecting upon. The inconsistency with which we have practiced the values which shape our self-perceived role in the world has done much to degrade how the United States is perceived by others.

But that doesn’t mean those values are wrong. Amid a growing contest between democratic and autocratic political models, the West must acknowledge its failures and engage with other countries as peers.

We must offer a vision of political and social life within and among countries based on values that are consistently practiced. To resolve the discrepancy between how others view us and how we view ourselves, we have to align our ideals with our actions.

Lindsay Shingler is the associate director of the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC). The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Institute or its funders.