A fraudulent account of American foreign policy has been gaining momentum throughout the 1990s and has now acquired unwarranted credibility. Those who propound it do not (in most cases) condone the attacks on New York and Washington. They do claim that America?s support for injustice and oppression explains the motives of the terrorists and the support for their actions in the third world. This explanation is usually connected to a litany of US misbehaviour which alleges: uncritical military and financial backing for Israel; responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thanks to a savage sanctions regime; and support for archaic, feudal regimes in the Arabian gulf for purely selfish reasons. This litany requires refutation, although it is important not to fall into the opposing trap of casting US foreign policy in an idealistic light or denying the many mistakes for which it is plainly responsible.

The origins of the critique of contemporary US foreign policy, as with so much of the policy itself, lie in Vietnam. As the war?s opponents looked back at the cold war, many of them became convinced that, contrary to the orthodox view that America had responded to Soviet aggression, the reverse was true. A picture was painted of an anti-communist crusade, conducted with US business in mind, relentlessly crushing progressive movements, often by brutal or underhand means. More recent historiography, with the benefit of archive material from the communist bloc, has challenged the revisionist thesis and is less willing to grant Soviet policy such a passive role. Consideration of life in the two halves of Europe during those years has provided retrospective justification, if any were needed, for a cold war stance.

By contrast, much of the conduct of the cold war in the third world still looks unimpressive and counterproductive. In the name of anti-communism, the US found itself first supporting old European powers trying to cling on to their empires and then newly independent states led by repressive autocrats. Even when it encouraged decolonisation and urged reform on the autocrats, in the end the imperatives of the cold war and the principle of ?my enemy?s enemy is my friend? led anti-communism to triumph over liberalism. Some anti-communist regimes did gain legitimacy, but the attempt to shore up those that failed to do so cost the US dear. The comment of a US officer that a Vietnamese village had to be destroyed in order to be saved summed up the moral as well as the military quagmire into which America had sunk.

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