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Ca fait déjà un petit moment que je me demande comment les Etasuniens peuvent percevoir les vagues d’hostilité européennes et mondiales à leur encontre. Etant plus sensible que de coutume au sujet, j’ai bloqué sur un édito de l’International Herald Tribune (IHT) : « Anti-Americanism is one ‘ism’ that thrives », by Roger Cohen.

Mon édition date du samedi-dimanche 26-27 novembre. Roger Cohen se penche sur les raisons de l’anti-américanisme ambiant. Je reproduis ici certains extraits, puisque l’IHT rend payant ses articles, même si ce n’est que de simples éditos.

Most political « isms » are dead or moribund or past their prime: « totalitarianism, » « communism, » « socialism, » « Marxism, » « fascism. » Humanity paid too high a price for them in the 20th centruy, or simply discarded them, and moved on.
[…]
Whit the demise of the other « isms, », another has gained prominence, to the point where it’s the most virutlent global political idea. I refer to « Anti-Americanism, » an idea espoused and pondered the world over, a kind of background drone from Brazil to Bahrain.
[…]
On the anti-Americanism register, there is also sovereign or nationalist or regional anti-Americanism[…]. « The big ‘O’, or the big other, can be very useful, » said Jan-Werner Mueller, a Princeton polical scientist. « There’s a school of thinking that says if we are building a European identity, we have to build it against something.
And what better to be agains today than America, the hyperposer, the elephant on the word stage, the inescapable country that some Americans call the indispensable nation?
[…]
Yes, there is a further category of anti-Amercianism that blends something of all others. Call it « catchall anti-americanism. »
If you don’t like the market, blame America. If you don’t like modernity, blame America. If you fear open borders, blame America, After all, it must be this restless country that has created such a restless world.
[…]
Research led by Robert Keohane, a professor of international affairs at Princeton, suggests that there is no real impact since 2001 on major U.S. corporations including Coca-Cola, Nike, Pepsi and McDonalds, whose European sales have continued to climb, often at a faster rate than their European competitors. He said « Mr. Big » was not suffering measurable damage.
Anti-Americanism, it seems, often stops where it might hurt: pealple like to inveigh against the United States but then go on buying the same brands and looking for means to send their kids to be educated here. This pervasive « ism » may be more affectation or attitude than ideology.
[…]
A lot of anti-Americanisms are inocuous enough. But some are not. Because if America withdrew from the world, as many people profess to wish, the result would be greater instability and danger – and perhaps a wave of another « ism, » revisionism.

Autant le dire tout de suite, je suis entièrement d’accord avec sa conclusion. Dans l’anti-américanisme ambiant, on perd de vue que l’isolationisme US est pire que tout. On est trop souvent allé chercher la grande nation américaine devant des catastrophes qu’on ne savait pas résoudre. Je ne pense pas aux marroniers que représentent les 1ère et 2nde Guerres Mondiales, mais à quantité d’autres situations où l’Europe était démunie : c’est, exemple parmi tant d’autres, le cas du Kosovo, où seule l’intervention US, via l’OTAN, a permis de stopper Milosevic.
(suite…)