Friendly Fire: Anti-Americanism Gone Global, and What to Do About it - Hardcover

Sweig, Julia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586483005 ISBN 13: 9781586483005

Publisher: PublicAffairs,U.S., 2006

Synopsis

This work offers a masterly and caustic examination of America's role in fostering anti-Americanism over fifty years. In 1945, the US 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 US 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 backyard. 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, the US 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 her success America convinced herself that pre-emptive anti-Americanism was a policy that could be shipped worldwide. This proved to be a big misjudgement. The world notice, 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.

About this title

About the Author

Julia Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockerfeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies, and Director of Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her most recent book, Inside the Cuban Revolution won the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar. She lives near Washington DC.

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs,U.S.
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586483005
• ISBN 13: 9781586483005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272