INTERESTING SURVEY OF ANTI-AMERICANISM as a cultural force, in the Financial Times. The whole thing is a must-read, and indicates how little of the phenomenon is really policy-driven. Here’s a good excerpt:

Europe’s problem, as Bruckner sees it, is not that it has drifted too far to the left – for the left-right concept is one that he considers “totally discredited”. Nor is Europe’s problem simply anti-Americanism.

“Anti-Americanism can only be very ambivalent,” he says, “where American culture sets the tone. The French are voting for America – in the market place – all the time.” Rather, Bruckner says, “our great problem as Europeans is that we want to exit from history. Sometime after 1989, we developed the belief that barbarism could be refuted intellectually.” Here, he makes clear, he is speaking primarily of France and Germany, not the UK.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE: Some interesting further commentary here.