It has been almost 20 years since Francis Fukuyama published an essay in The National Interest with the title "The End of History?" In a post at Comment Is Free, the blog of the British newspaper The Guardian, Fukuyama says that back then he never anticipated the extent to which anti-Americanism would become "one of the chief fault lines of global politics."

The professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins University attributes the rise of anti-Americanism to four factors:1. The doctrine of pre-emption is too costly and provocative to become the core of America's nonproliferation strategy.2. Policy makers have traditionally underestimated how American "leadership" (or "unilateralism") fosters resentment in the rest of the world at the overwhelming power advantage enjoyed by the United States. In essence, America suffers from a crisis of legitimacy.

3. Americans overestimate the efficacy of military power. "It is worth pondering," Fukuyama writes, "why a country with more military power than any other in human history, and that spends as much on its military as virtually the rest of the world combined, cannot bring security to a small country of 24 million people after more than three years of occupation."4. The Bush administration has shown itself to be incompetent in the implementation of its policies. "But the fundamental problem remains the lopsided distribution of power in the international system," Fukuyama concludes. "Any country in the same position as the U.S., even a democracy, would be tempted to exercise its hegemonic power with less and less restraint. ... A smoother international distribution of power, even in a global system that is less than fully democratic, would pose fewer temptations to abandon the prudent exercise of power."