A recent issue of the journal Policy Review has a brillian essay by Peter Katzenstein and Robert Keohane: Anti-Americanisms. For those who view anti-Americanism as a single philosophy, hell-bent on destroying America, this essay will help clear things up a little. Is anti-Americanism a reaction against what the United States does, or what the United States is? The answer: it depends on the particular form of anti-Americanism.

Katzenstein and Keohane are careful to note that part of their argument involves a distinction between opinion and bias:

Some expressions of unfavorable attitudes merely reflect opinion: unfavorable judgments about the United States or its policies. Others, however, reflect bias: a predisposition to believe negative reports about the United States and to discount positive ones. Bias implies a distortion of information processing, while adverse opinion is consistent with maintaining openness to new information that will change one’s views.

As Jeff Stein recently noted in his New York Times article, Can You Tell a Sunni from a Shiite, it helps a great deal to know your enemy, and many of our top foreign policy lawmakers don’t. How much Middle Eastern anti-Americanism is rooted in bias (and, therefore, a much more complex problem to deal with), and how much is rooted in opinion (and, therefore, open to change)?

Anti-Americanism is not the story that the cultural warriors on the Right would like you to believe. With a few extremely rare exceptions, it turns out not to be a threat toward the United States. To deal with the issue with any bit of effectiveness, it helps to understand that there are different policy implications for each type of anti-Americanism.