09 ISSUE I
DECEMBER 2024
DECEMBER 2024
Exposing the American Mind
Americans are surprised by the link between their country’s development and others’ misfortune because they don’t recognize the US as an empire. US media reinforces this ignorance.
By Mariana Giacobbe Goldberg
What does it mean to be a spy? Suzy Hansen opens her book, Notes from a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World (first published in 2017), by questioning whether she might be a “postmodern spy – a spy who didn’t know she was a spy.” By definition, a spy secretly gathers and reports information about another country. In Hansen’s case, she spies not on foreign powers but on the American mind, exposing its worldview for examination.
Hansen’s book is a memoir chronicling her decade as a foreign correspondent based in Istanbul, Turkey, and reporting from Greece, parts of the Middle East, and North Africa. The book was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and won the Overseas Press Club’s Cornelius Ryan Award. Notes from a Foreign Country is more than a travel journal or a history of American foreign policy. It’s a book about education and the power dynamics that interplay behind what we believe is knowledge: who are the subject and the object of knowledge? And, crucially, which worldview is deemed objective?
Even four years later, Suzy Hansen’s work still cuts through the clichés that often circulate about Americans, delving into their minds to reveal the privilege behind that American ignorance that, far from being funny, is a facilitating condition to not bear with the consequences of their actions. It captures that truth with remarkable clarity.
The book opens in 2014 in Soma, the scene of Turkey’s worst mine disaster. A fire killed at least 301 miners. The fire was a symptom of a complex weave of negligence and corruption that had a long history enveloped by the Cold War and the US’s role in Turkey: “I expected the reasons to be specific to Turkey, specific to that company and to that coal mine. I had in mind a scientific excavation, and instead, … the excavation I ended up with was historical.” Trade unions in Turkey had been modeled after American ones, favoring bosses and leaving Turkish workers virtually powerless. They were part of US tactics in the region–ranging from psychological operations and subtle interventions to outright attacks–that had gnawed at the social fabric of Turkey over the years, leaving behind a threadbare society. It wasn’t always this way. The reason Hansen chose Turkey as a place to take up a journalism fellowship, was because her favorite writer, James Baldwin, had lived in Istanbul, on and off, during the 1960s. Baldwin argued that he could live more comfortably as a black, gay man in Istanbul than in New York or Paris. Through her engagement with Baldwin’s writings and with her Turkish interlocutors, she tells the story of the U.S. involvement in the totality of the “third world,” a “ready-made empire of formerly colonized peoples” that the U.S. would profit from after World War Two.
Under the guise of modernization and freedom, U.S. foreign policy relied on a network of military dictators to undermine democracy and local economic and political independence. Those legacies still resonate today in those places. Hansen examines the histories of Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and Greece to uncover parallel patterns of authoritarian regimes and orchestrated chaos, often facilitated by local U.S. representatives, including its embassies, to mainly benefit American interests. Perhaps the most revealing chapter of the book focuses on the American occupation of Afghanistan, offering a stark and contemporary view of how ordinary people—rather than an elusive, faceless establishment—profit from war. As Hansen reflects: “The Dubai waiting area for the flight to Kabul was as exotic as Columbus, Ohio. The whole room was filled with people who made money off the war, which I couldn’t help but acknowledge, including me as well.”
By the end of the book, Hansen returns to the U.S. after living abroad for ten years—the same amount of time Baldwin spent overseas. She arrives in Mississippi, in the American South, where the lack of the US’s commitment to social justice is painfully evident, if not already a given. Political corruption, economic decay, and widespread indifference have left America’s lower-income classes, both the black and white poor, trapped in a form of social segregation, with life expectancy plummeting due to food-related illnesses, unemployment, and drug abuse.
Despite the US’s claims as a place of free thinking and objectivity, Hansen discovers that its politics are shaped by deeply ingrained beliefs that influence how Americans view themselves and the world. As a result, being an American abroad, rather than an advantage, becomes a limitation: “I looked down at Istanbul with nothing but admiration, the gentle surprise of the Western tourist who hadn’t suspected the world had gone on without her.” On the face of it, this ignorance may seem innocent, but it is the foundation that lies under America's war crimes across the Middle East and Latin America.
Hansen first notices Turkey’s “dual nature,” a colonial inheritance where competing historical narratives coexist. This is common in so-called Third World countries, where institutions are weak, and multiple interpretations of history emerge. Such fragmentation is the result of societies built on deep social inequality. For much of the 20th century, this was not the case in the United States, where economic stability and a degree of prosperity were achieved, while the burden of instability and inequality was exported to countries subjected to American imperialism.
Yet, in the twenty-first century, America’s position has shifted. “Americans have in recent years been stumbling through the twilight of the American century.” For the first time since World War Two, Americans are no longer self-sufficient and self-determined; their fates are now tied to their nation’s trajectory. Americans now experience a powerlessness the rest of the world has always known.
This opens a window for unraveling the myth of American modernity and neutrality. Hansen has to confront the belief that America is an objective, free-thinking nation where thought is supposedly free from governmental influence. She calls this illusion the “zone of miraculous neutrality.” Instead, behind this façade lies a web of psychological operations and crafted rhetoric, where the state acts as a gatekeeper of information. Governments, American media scholar Monroe Price has argued, regulate the flow of images and ideas within their borders. Hansen experienced this growing up in New Jersey. As a result, she had to do some hard work, discarding what she had always thought of as an objective, neutral knowledge that was at the heart of and key to modernity as a value and institution. The truth is that the US is an empire. She writes: “Americans are surprised by the direct relationship between their country and foreign ones because we don’t acknowledge that America is an empire; it is impossible to understand a relationship if you are not aware you are in one.” This also means questioning the idea of American journalism as the only objective voice.
Her vulnerability and introspection are a refreshing departure from the polished, commodified narratives we often see. “My years as an American abroad in the twenty-first century were not a joyous romp of self-discovery... mine were more of a shattering and shame.” This honesty is refreshing and a possible model for a more thoughtful form of journalism.
There is a short section in the book about Latin America. As someone from that region, I found myself wanting more. For example, the book could have delved deeper into the relationship between Catholicism and American imperialism, a potentially revealing thread. I am intrigued to see how this book would interact with Latin American audiences, where it could have a potential twofold impact. First, it could offer the chance to reflect on the Cold War through a post-colonial lens, where clear parallels can be drawn between Turkey’s and Latin America’s history of imperialism. Second, Hansen’s book provides insight into the North American psyche, revealing the privilege behind American ignorance, which facilitates the US’s disregard for the consequences of its actions elsewhere. Hansen’s book confirms again that Americans are an unavoidable presence in the lives of the rest of the world, the weight of their influence like an unwelcome cousin whose achievements are equally admired and envied.
Marianna Giacobbe Goldberg is completing an MA in International Affairs at The New School.