Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century
by By Sweig, Julia
Category: Political Science , International Relations , General

In 1945 the U.S. was the founding impulse behind the cornerstones   of the International Community: the World   Bank, International Monetary Fund and most of all the   United Nations. Untainted by colonialism or fascism,   heroic in warfare and idealistic at home, the U.S. presented   itself as a paragon to inspire a less noble and   divided world. Sixty years later, that perception had been   almost completely reversed.   America had, in fact, quietly sowed the seeds of its   own decline in the eyes of the world in its own back yard.   Anti-Americanism, now a global phenomenon, was road   tested in South America when most of the rest of the world   was too distracted to notice or care. There, under the guise   of anti-communism, we sponsored dictatorships, turned a   blind eye to killing squads and tolerated the subversion of   democracy. Almost nobody knew, so it didn't matter, right?   Wrong. On two counts. First, South America remembered.   And second, encouraged by our success, we convinced   ourselves that pre-emptive Americanism was a   policy that could be shipped worldwide. This proved to be   a big misjudgment. The world noticed and, helped by better   scrutiny and faster technology, anti-Americanism   flourished among America's closest allies beyond the   Americas in a way and to a depth not seen before. As this   reaches a crucial tipping point, Julia Sweig offers a brilliant   and blistering history of what went wrong, and a   feisty and compelling prescription for how to sort it out.