Why Don't We Listen Anymore?

"T he way things are going, it will soon be the United States against the world."

That comment, by a top political leader in Kuala Lumpur, was just one of hundreds of expressions of a new and disturbing alienation from America that I heard during a recent swing through 14 Asian, European and Latin American capitals.

What a contrast to the supportive attitudes abroad immediately after Sept. 11. Then, the sometimes anti-American French journal Le Monde captured the world's sentiment with a headline proclaiming: "We are all Americans." Ten months later, sympathy for the victims of the terror attacks remains. But the American image is increasingly perceived as ugly, and support abroad for U.S. policies is plummeting -- in response to such U.S. actions as the threat last week to withdraw its peacekeepers from Bosnia unless Americans are exempted from jurisdiction of the new International Criminal Court.

Of course, anti-Americanism is not new, but what I found disturbing after 35 years of visiting these cities was that foreign leaders who have been longtime friends of the United States are the ones voicing dismay.