Letters | 18 February 2012

America the saviour

Sir: Andrew Alexander’s book America and the Imperialism of Ignorance (Books, 11 February) alleges that since 1945 ‘the world is a much more dangerous place, as a result of America’s determination to save it’.
With respect to Mr Alexander, a distinguished journalist who has often been right, this analysis is very wrong.
First of all, we would never have achieved victory over fascism in 1945 without the sacrifice of American troops, many thousands of whom lie in cemeteries across the world.
Secondly, the idea that the USSR, a brutal occupier of whatever lands it controlled, wished to be a benign postwar force in Europe, or anywhere else, is, to put it mildly, ahistorical. International communism was self-evidently an aggressive and destructive force; in Europe, Nato succeeded as a defensive alliance against the USSR above all because America, its centre, always held.
Anti-Americanism is easy and fashionable, and of course the United States, like any power, makes mistakes.