World's Greatest Country:
Do the Facts Lie?
Prophet Muhammad said, “He is not one of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship…” When asked, what is
“tribal partisanship,” he answered, “[It means] your helping your own people in an unjust cause.” [1]
“I choose to live in what I think is the greatest country in the world, which is committing horrendous terrorist acts
and should stop.” Noam Chomsky [2]
Interviewer to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died [because
of sanctions against Iraq]. I mean that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And – you know, is the price worth it?"
Secretary Albright an-swered: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.” [3]
On March 21, 2003, as I headed home, a day after the United States for-mally invaded Iraq, I ran into a colleague from
Northeastern University – a professor of the humanities – at the Ruggles train station in Boston. I was aware of his
political inclinations, and he of mine, from previous encoun-ters. Still, I thought we were on friendly terms.
“I bet you oppose the war,” he greeted me, as I approached him.
“Not at all,” I shot back, “ I wish to see Iraq liberated as much as you.”
Although, it was only the second day of the war, and the bombs and missiles were accurately on target, it appeared that
the tension leading up to the war had taken their toll on our colleague’s nerve. He snapped at my banter. Agitated, he
began to poke his finger in my face, while lecturing me about how “thankful” I should be about living in “the world’s
greatest country ever.” Luckily, my train arrived on time – for which I am thankful – saving me from an unhinged
patriot’s harangue.
This was not my first encounter with the overzealous patriotism that often dominates political discourse in the United
States; and not only among members of the zany right. All too often, politicians rally their audi-ence with inflated
claims of American greatness. The United States is “the greatest country in the world.” At other times, it is “the
greatest country ever,” “the greatest country ever conceived,” or “the greatest country in the history of mankind.” When
the exuberance soars, America also “kicks ass!”
Nearly as often, one hears of the United States as the great Samaritan: second to none at ‘civilizing’ half-breed races.
In the words of Abraham Lincoln, the United States is the “the last best hope of mankind,” no less. More frequently, it
is “the shining beacon on the hill.” Recently, John Kerry, Democratic Presidential candidate, roused students at UCLA,
“I be-lieve we can bring a real victory in the War on Terror. I believe we must, not only for ourselves but for all who
look to America as the last best hope of earth.” I have to wonder if the Vietnamese civilians killed by Kerry and his
crew also looked upon them as “the last best hope of earth.” [4]
Judging from results from polls, quite a few Americans are persuaded by this rhetoric of American greatness and
munificence; though my colleague from Northeastern would go into a fit over their ‘fewness.’ In 1955, ac-cording to a
Gallup Survey, 66 percent Americans polled believed that “The United States is the greatest country in the world, better
than all other countries in every possible way (emphasis added).” In 1991, merci-fully, this percentage had declined to 37 percent; five years later, it held steady
at 37 percent. (This looks like the proportion of steady Republicans in this country.) But there is a fly in the
ointment. In response to a slightly altered question, 55 percent Americans agree that “the United States is the greatest
country in the world, better than all others.” On the worse reading, then, a clear majority of Americans still subscribe
to the thesis of American uniqueness; though that majority is down to 55 percent from 66 percent. Shall we take comfort
from this decline in the proportion of hyper-patriots in the US since 1955? [5]
In the absence of polls on the issue, I will report results from my own unrepresentative annual surveys on America’s
civilizing mission. For several years, I have passed out a questionnaire to assess my students’ preparation for my
undergraduate courses in Development Economics and the Global Economy. One perennial question I ask is about US ‘foreign
aid.’ What percentage of its gross domestic product does the United States annually allocate as foreign aid to Third
World countries? I offer my students five choices: (A) One-tenth of one percent, (B) One percent, (C) Five percent, (D)
Ten percent, and (E) Twenty-five percent. Incredibly, about half the class chooses C, and most of the remaining half
pick D and E. Two or three ‘unpatriotic’ students in each class pick A or B. The correct answer is A. Perhaps, my students think it proper and patriotic to pick a per-centage that makes their country look generous.
In a sense, this talk of national greatness is unsurprising. It is the staple of a world organized – as it has been
these last few hundred years – into nation states that must compete to survive and stay ahead of the pack. They compete
economically, politically and militarily. Often, this competition re-quires sacrifices – of rights, of leisure, of
safety, of lives. The ideological weapon in this competition is nationalism – creating pride and unity grounded in claims of national greatness, and matched by an equal contempt for the low or
lower standing of other nations.
Perhaps the United States is distinct because of the intensity of its na-tionalist claims. The standard political
rhetoric maintains that the US is the “greatest in the world,” “the greatest ever,” or “the greatest in the history of
mankind.” It stands at the top of the food chain. Some older nations – that have survived many cycles of history – might
think this strange. Is this up-start trying to compensate for its late arrival on history’s stage? Arguably, older
nations have the self-assurance of a long and often distinguished his-tory behind them and, therefore, do not feel
compelled to stake out exag-gerated claims of national greatness. But there is more to it.
Nationalism is for the most part a modern phenomenon, a product of the competition among new nation states operating in a capitalist world economy. In this competition, success and nationalist obsessions work in
tandem. A nation fired with its own greatness is more willing to endure greater sacrifices; conversely, it is also more
willing to inflict pain on Others. In the case of the United States, there was no shortage of successes – economic,
technological and military – to fuel notions of national great-ness. As these successes grew, the American establishment
found it con-venient to ratchet claims of American greatness. Most likely, by the turn of the twentieth century, if not
before, the United States was declared to be unique among nations: the greatest country ever, populated by the noblest
breed of humans, the instrument of God, and the greatest civilizing force on earth. Today, no Congressman can disavow
American uniqueness and survive an election.
I could explore the sinister objectives served by these visions of Ameri-can uniqueness – how corporate capital has used
it to rally Americans be-hind imperialist wars, to incite fears of white America against Americans of color (and, hence,
divide America’s working poor), or to dupe American workers into surrendering their rights to corporate capital. Since
all this has been done before, I will attempt something a bit pedantic, but I hope still useful. I will examine whether
the United States is indeed “the greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in every possible way?”
I suspect this is a thankless task, but my work will be amply rewarded if it deflates even a little some of the
illusions of American grandeur.
By the most widely accepted criterion, America’s economic lead looks quite secure. Measured in terms of dollars with
comparable purchasing power, the US had a per capita income of $35,080 in 2002, one of the high-est in the world. Only
two other countries had higher per capita incomes; Luxembourg at $51,060 and Norway at $37,850. But these are small
coun-tries, with 444,000 and 5 million people respectively; and the per capita in-come of the richest 444,000 or 5
million Americans would easily exceed the per capita income of Luxembourg and Norway respectively. In other words,
Americans can take just pride in their country’s economic preemi-nence: the United States is the world’s richest
country.
The United States also commands the world’s largest economy, though only by a narrow margin. Measured in terms of
dollars with comparable purchasing power, the US gross national income adds up to $10,110 billion, a little more than a
fifth of the global income. The European Union comes a very close second with a combined gross national income of $9,520
bil-lion. With its rapidly expanding membership, the European Union may soon outpace the US as the world’s largest
economy. China places third in the world league of major economies, with a gross national income of $5,807 billion. At
its present stellar growth rate, China could outstrip both the US and the European Union within two decades if not
sooner. [6]
Surely the US lead in technological capacity must be larger and more se-cure. In its 2001 Report, the UNDP published for
the first time a Technol-ogy Achievement Index (TAI) “which aims to capture how well a country is creating and diffusing
technology and building a human skill base – reflect-ing capacity to participate in the technological innovations of the
network age. This composite index measures achievements, not potential, efforts or inputs.” According to this measure,
the US ranks second – with a TAI value of 0.733 – finishing behind Finland with a TAI of 0.744. Perhaps this makes
Finland a threat to America’s national security; no country that lags in technology can lead the world for long.
Conceivably, the likes of Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly might urge President Bush do something about it. After all,
Finland is a small country; knocking down its TAI a few places will be much less of a challenge than occupying Iraq. [7]
Perhaps the United States might regain the lead when judged against in-dicators of technological effort, such as R spending as percent-age of a country’s GDP, or R personnel per million in the country. However, this only makes matters worse. On the first measure, the United States
ranks seventh, behind Togo, Sweden, Israel, Japan, Korea and Swit-zerland. (Yes, I too am wondering about Togo.) On the
second criterion, the United States improves its rank to fourth place, still lagging behind Ice-land, Japan and Sweden. [8] (Now what does Ice-land do with all those scientists?)
In a last ditch effort, to salvage America’s position, I decided to extend the technology comparisons to three
indicators of educational performance. But this only produced more disappointments. Judged in terms of school life
expectancy (the number of years a child is expected to spend in the educational system), the US ranked fifteenth in the
late 1990s. In mathe-matical literacy for fifteen year olds, it ranked eighteenth out of 27 coun-tries. It’s performance
was only marginally better in scientific literacy, moving up to the fourteenth place in the same group of countries.[9]
The United States commands the largest lead where it matters most – in military power. At $396.1 billion in fiscal year
2003, US military spending exceeds the combined military budget of the next twenty countries. In 2002, the US outspent
the seven “rogue” states (Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Cuba) by a factor of thirty-seven. [10] With Iraq under occupation since April 2003, and Libya air-freighting the components of its would-be WMDs to the United
States, the ratio by which the US outspends the remaining “rogue” states must have risen still higher. Given these gaps
in destructive capabilities, the United States should feel safer than any empire in recent memory. So why doesn’t it?
In personal freedom, most Americans confidently place their country at the top. In a Gallup Poll taken in August 1995,
Americans were asked, “how far up or down on a 10-point scale [10 being highest] would you rate each of the following
nations in terms of the individual freedom granted to its citizens?” The US came out first, with 74 percent of the
respondents giving it a ‘high’ rating (10-9-8). Canada and Britain ranked a distant second and third, with only 63 and
46 percent giving it a ‘high’ rating. [11]
Experts view the freedom rankings a bit differently. The Freedom House, a conservative organization based in New York,
publishes an annual report, Freedom in the World, that relies on opinions of experts to rank countries by various indicators of freedom. According to their index of
civil and political liberties compiled for 2000-2001, the United States re-ceived the highest score of six (on a scale
of one to seven), but this was an honor that it shared with fourteen other countries, including Portugal and Uruguay.
Britain ranked 34th, well after Poland and Panama. Israel, the world’s most touted ‘democracy,’ ranked 41st, after
Bolivia and Benin. [12]
Is the United States the world leader, then, in press freedom? That too is misconception. In October 2003, Reporters
Without Borders published its Second World Press Freedom Ranking; compiled from a questionnaire with “53 criteria for assessing the state of press freedom in each country.” The United
States ranked 32nd, behind Hungary, Jamaica, Benin and East Timor. To make matters worse, American-occupied Iraq, only
recently ‘lib-erated’ from the grip of a tyrant, ranked 135th. There is one consolation: US-occupied Iraq is ahead of
Saudi Arabia, our closest ally in the Islamicate world. [13]
In many situations, it may be useful to look upon the rates of incarcera-tion as an important indicator of un-freedom
and racism in a country. For many years, USSR, ‘the Evil Empire,” led the world in this field with its Si-berian gulags.
More recently, the United States has taken the lead with the highest rate of incarceration per capita: 6.41 per thousand
in 1999. Russia, the successor to USSR, remains in hot contest, with an incarceration rate of 6.37 per thousand. [14] If
we add the prisoners the Bush-Ashcroft regime has taken recently under the Patriot Act inside the United States, those
held in Guantanamo Bay, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those captured at our be-hest (under ‘extraordinary rendition’) by
torture-friendly regimes, our lead-ing position looks quite secure. The racial composition of those incarcer-ated tell
their own story. Consider the percentage shares, in the table below, of African-Americans in the prison and total
populations of four US states in 1996. This disproportion is common to many states. [15]
Table One
Share of African-Americans in:
States Prison population (%) State population (%)
Nebraska 31 4
Connecticut 46 9
Wisconsin 49 6
Massachusetts 37 6
In his first inaugural address in 1993, President Clinton spoke of the United States as the “world’s oldest democracy.” [16] Is it? Presumably, this history starts the clock of democracy in 1787 when the Constitution was ratified. But many
would consider this problematic, since this Constitution excluded as much as a sixth of the country’s population – its
slave population – from any of the rights of citizenship. Can we then start the clock of democracy in 1865 when slavery
was abolished, or in 1868 when the Confederate states re-entered the Union with a commitment (in their state
constitutions) to equal rights for all citizens? That too is dubious.
For another hundred years, the United States was not a democracy for all its citizens. At first through terrorist
methods, and, later, starting in the 1890s, through amendments in the state constitution, the Southern states pressed
ahead in their effort to exclude blacks from the political process. This resulted in “the disfranchisement of nearly all
black citizens and the removal from office of nearly all black legislators in the former Confederate states by 1910.” [17] Arguably, we might start the clock in the 1960s, when the blacks launched the Civil Rights Movement to regain their
political rights. However, this process is far from complete. Under felony disenfranchisement laws, still on the books
since the days of segregation, some 4.7 million Americans are denied their voting rights. Un-der these laws black men
are disenfranchised at seven times the rate for all Americans. [18]
Considering the salience of sports and athletics in American culture, I would be remiss if I did not document America’s
ranking in this important field. Since few countries in the world have taken up America’s favorite sports (surely a
disappointment for a hegemonic power), we will have to ex-amine America’s standing at the Summer Olympic games. At first
blush, the US appears to live up to its reputation at the Sydney Olympics of 2000, leading the world with a points total
of 201, well ahead of Russia (180) and China (131). But is the points total an appropriate criterion? A fair compari-son
would look at points total per capita. On a per capita basis, the US po-sition slips to 41st. [19]
We arrive finally at the compassion derby. In a recent speech, President Bush declared, “We are a compassionate country,
and we are generous to-ward our fellow citizens.” It is a favorite pitch with American politicians in both parties. But
this just won’t wash. In its Human Development Report, 2003, the UNDP measures a Human Poverty Index (HPI) for seven-teen developed countries; it measures deprivations in four dimen-sions. On this index of human poverty, the US ranked dead last out of sev-enteen countries. [20] If we measure compassion “toward fellow citizens” in terms of income inequality – conventionally measured by the Gini
index – we get the same result. The US has the largest value for the Gini index amongst developed countries. [21] By what available metric is the American political system “generous” to weaker segments of its own society?
In measuring US compassion towards other countries, I will take the more lenient view, not listing the invasions launched, regimes changed, the bombs dropped,
coups instigated or sanctions imposed against the ‘salt of the earth.’ [22] Instead, I will compare the funds allocated to ‘foreign aid,’ the index by which Americans most of-ten measure their
generosity towards poor countries. The total funds allo-cated by the United States to ‘foreign aid” amounted to 0.11
percent (note the position of the decimal) of its gross national income. That is easily the lowest ratio for the
twenty-four members of Development Assistance Committee of the OECD. [23] On the ground, matters are much worse. Nearly one-third of this aid goes as grants (no ob-ligation to pay back) to
another developed country, Israel, to buy the most advanced weaponry in the US arsenal.
So the United States is not the greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in every possible way. Why have I la-bored to establish this rather obvious result? There is a deep, two-way con-nection between these claims
of superiority, of uniqueness, and the efforts by the American establishment to obfuscate the inequities inside the
United States and to justify the inequities it helps to create and sustain outside its borders.
Every time America’s ‘leaders’ speak of the “world’s greatest country,” behind the backs of their constituents, many,
perhaps most of them are scheming to build more prisons and fewer schools, to hire more policemen and fewer teachers, to
train more secret agents and fewer scientists, to fund more WMDs and fewer life-saving drugs; they are being wined and
dined by Corporations who are monopolizing the media, denuding our rights, placing their profits before our lives, our
children, our safety, and the natu-ral beauty of the world we live in. In their myopic pursuit of power, these
politicians would rather build the “world’s greatest country” (if only they could) but populated with an impoverished,
uneducated and unhealthy population, supine and undemanding of their rights.
Every time America’s ‘leaders’ boast of the “world’s oldest democracy,” and of exporting democracy to the world, I can
see peasants expropriated; workers shot, tortured and jailed; people’s revolutions overthrown, crushed by American
force, guile and lucre all across the Periphery; all to protect the unrestrained right of American Corporations to make
money. Every time these mandarins proclaim that the United States is the “last great hope of earth,” people all across
the Periphery take cover, for they know that these words will be followed, as they have been in the past, by napalm
bombs, by landmines, by cruise missiles, by daisy cutters, by shards of steel planted in their children’s eyes. The
people of the Periphery are all too familiar with the rhetoric of the “world’s oldest democracy.” They will not be
deceived.
So the United States is not the greatest country in the world, better than all other countries in every possible way. What if this carefully guarded secret were to spill out? What if Dan Rather, America’s favorite news anchor, were to
open the CBS Evening News tonight with the announcement that some great think tank in Washington, preferably a
conservative think tank, after years of carefully investigation, involving the best brains in the social sciences, had
discovered that the United States “isn’t after all the greatest country in the world, better than all other coun-tries in every possible way?” Would this be another devastating blow to America’s self-confidence, greater than that caused by the carnage of 9-11?
Would Americans show up for work the next day or the day after? Why bother if you are not living in the “world’s
greatest country?” How would the President respond to this national catastrophe? What would he do to re-store American
confidence in their greatness? Invade Canada? Colonize Antartica? Or perhaps, ship the entire population of the
Northeast to Mars?
Most Americans may well be relieved at this revelation. It was what they had suspected all along, but could never gather
the pluck to tell the corpo-rate lackeys – masquerading as leaders – who kept telling them otherwise. And now that this
ruse had been exposed, perhaps, Americans will start asking the tough questions, start reclaiming their lost rights, and
start re-building a democracy of all the people, for all the people and by all the peo-ple. Once this questioning
starts, perhaps Americans will also start looking into all the ways in which their country – especially their government
and corporations – impoverish their neighbors around the world, neighbors they, as Christians, should love, not reduce
to poverty, dependency and misery.
When the United States, an admirable country in many respects, collec-tively aspires to inclusiveness, both inside and
outside its borders; when the United States places people – people everywhere – before the profits of its corporations;
when the United States aspires to be the best country – under a scale of humane values – not merely the greatest; when
the people of the United States want for the world what they want for themselves; then, and only then, will the world
embrace Americans as their own, a good people, humanly struggling to make our world a better place for everyone.
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References:
[1] Muhammad Asad, The principles of state and government in Islam (Gibraltar: Dar Al-Andalus, 1993).
[2] “CNN debate on terrorism: Chomsky v. Bennet,” Counterpunch.org, May 30, 2002.
[3] Rahul Mahajan, “We think the price is worth it,” Fair, November/December 2001.
[4] “Full text of Kerry’s speech to UCLA,” Sacbee, February 27, 2004:
http://www.sacbee.com/content/politics/story/8344711p-9274542c.html
[5] Everett Carll Ladd and Karlyn H. Bowman, What’s wrong: A survey of American satisfaction and complaint (Storrs, CT.:
The AEI Press, 1998).
[6] Data in this and the previous paragraph are from World Bank, World development report, 2004 (Washington, D.C.:
Oxford University Press, 2003).
[7] United Nations Development Programme, Human development report, 2001 (Washington, D.C.: Oxford University Press,
2000): 46, 48. The TAI is a composite of eight indicators, lumped into four categories: technology creation, diffusion
of recent innovations, diffusion of old innovations, and human skills.
[8] World Bank, World development indicators, 2002, CD-ROM: http://www.nationmaster.com.
[9] The first indicator is tabulated by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics; the sec-ond and third indicators are
provided by OECD. All three are reported in: http://www.nationmaster.com
[10] Aniup Shah, “High military expenditure in some places,” June 11, 2003:
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp
[11] Ladd and Bowman (1998): 16.
[12] Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2000-2001 (New York: 2001), reported in:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/dem_civ_and_ pol_lib
[13] Reporters Without Borders, Second world press freedom ranking (October 20, 2003):
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=8247
[14] UN, Office on Drugs and Crime, Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice
Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (UN, Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention,
December 2002). Reported in: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_pri_cap
[15] Human Rights Watch, “United States: Punishment and prejudice,” May 2000, 12, 2(G):
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/usa/
[16] Bill Clinton, Inaugural address, January 21, 1993: http://www.seattleu.edu/artsci/history/us1945/docs/pres64.htm
[17] United States Department of Justice, Introduction to Federal voting rights (February 11, 2001):
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/voting/intro/intro_a.htm
[18] The Sentencing Project, Felony disenfranchisement laws in the United States (Wash-ington, DC: March 2004):
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/1046.pdf
[19] http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php
[20] United Nations Development Programme, Human development report, 2003 (Washington, D.C.: Oxford University Press,
2000): 248, 342.
[21] World Bank, World development report, 2003 (Washington, D.C.: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2002): 236-7.
[22] For the complete record on American ‘compassion,’ read William Blum, Killing Hope: US military and CIA
interventions since World War II (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004).
[23] World Bank, World development report, 2003 (Washington, D.C.: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 2002): 290.
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© M. Shahid Alam
M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. His last book, Poverty from the Wealth of Nations, was published by Palgrave in 2000. Visit his webpage at http://msalam.net.