Atlantic Review

It won't be long before they start burning German flags. But wait, they're already doing that. Previously we had only known that from Arab countries, where the youth would take every opportunity to run through the streets to rage against that great Satan, the USA. But that's how things go when others consider a country to be too successful, too self-confident and too strong. We've now become the Americans of Europe. (...)

But before we complain too much about all this ingratitude, we should remind ourselves that we ourselves spent years passing the buck. As long as the global villain was America, the Germans joined in when it came to feeling good at the expense of others. The Americans also had every reason to expect a little more gratitude -- after all, it was their soldiers who had to intervene when a dictator somewhere lived out his bloody fantasies while the international community stood by wringing its hands. People came to secretly rely on the USA as a global cop in the same way that Germany's neighbors are now expecting the Germans to save the euro.