Roots of recent anti-Americanism
Political scientist Walter Russell Mead traces the some of the roots of recent anti-Americanism to events in the 1990s, including a French strategic decision that U.S. power was too great, and the Clinton administration's response to the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, in an interview with Bernard Gwertzman of the Council of Foreign Relations:
"...the groundwork for a lot of the anti-Americanism that has flared in the last few years was laid in the 1990s.
I always assumed Bush's personality and policies were largely responsible for the anti-Americanism. [Gwertzman - Ben] The French had already made the decision in the 1990s that American power was too great and France needed to resist it. I think Bush gave them some opportunities. But the French strategic decision to reduce American power and build a multipolar world evolved from the foreign policy that was emerging in the 1990s. And in East Asia, the United States is blamed for not doing much to help those nations out after the 1997 financial crisis. A lot of the anti-Americanism in South Korea was really inflamed by that, and continues to be a factor to this day. The utter collapse of Indonesia and the new anti-Americanism that you see and the opportunity for radical Islamic groups to gain strength in Indonesia have their origins in the catastrophic consequences of both the collapse itself and the reaction to it. What was the Clinton administration's reaction to the East Asia crisis? It supported the International Monetary Fund in very tough adjustment programs. What people said at the time was that when Mexico collapsed in 1994, the Clinton administration proposed a very generous bailout. And then when it happened in East Asia, it was very tough. Most people would agree the Clinton bailouts did not help in Asia..."
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