The lesson about how to actually run an alliance, work within an alliance, and to some extend, learn from an alliance, which was certainly characteristic of a Truman or an Eisenhower, is clearly turning into contempt by Americans for their allies. I think that contempt is very much colored by economic comparisons. You get the feeling that here we are sitting in the most remarkable economy in the world, but its grown and grown and found the miracle of how to sustain growth without inflation, to bring down unemployment. All of that's true, but you shouldn't close one's eyes to things like poverty and inequality, which is much more marked in the United States, than say, Continental Europe. One can see it as an unbroken success.
More comparisons now are economic, because economics is now overwhelmingly the language of politics.
People don't any longer speak a language of politics that isn't a language of economics. If you go back to the nineteenth century, and even Kissinger was shaped by it, he speaks the language of diplomacy and power, which is very different and rarely used. The criteria that many intelligent Americans use to look at the world are economic criteria, and that is why you get people asking questions like, why does Russia matter, she has a GNP that is less than Switzerland. The attitude that you screwed us up. There's some in France, but not really in Europe, because of this schizophrenic sense and inconsistency.