Anti-Americanisms: Power, Principle and the End of American Foreign Policy

Provides a comprehensive analysis challenging the conventional wisdom about the United States, its foreign policy and international antipathies towards it.

In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks many Americans expressed incredulity at the hatred held towards their nation in some parts of the world, whilst many non-Americans expressed bemusement at naïve American reactions, the alleged insularity of the American people, and the nature of the Bush administration’s aggressive political, domestic, and international response.

Robert Singh challenges students to (re)examine their negative conceptions of America, international affairs, and national identities in the aftermath of the 9/11 atrocities, offering a theoretically informed and empirically rich comparative analysis of the sources and consequences of anti-Americanisms, organized thematically around central themes of Americanism, rival nationalisms, foreign policy, leftism, and culture. The text concludes by reconsidering the goal of US foreign policy and why those seeking to end its current character offer at best utopian, and at worst disastrously ill-informed prescriptions for feasible alternatives.

Anti-Americanisms will be of interest to students and scholars of politics and current affairs.