For the generation to which I belong, criticism of the USA is closely associated with the revolt of the left and the protests against the Vietnam War. At that time the then Swedish Conservative Party had a craze about the American ideal of liberty, and its leader Yngve Holmberg was launched as a Swedish equivalent of Kennedy. The democratic alliance grouping went furthest in praising the USA as the abode of liberty and in defending the Yanks’ putative missionary work in Indo-China and Latin-America. FNL (Front National de Liberté, or National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam) youngsters who had no history could even believe that it had always been like that.

But, if one looks back, one finds that anti-Americanism was espoused primarily by the political right, which between the wars was still the party of national self-esteem and traditional conservatism. No alliance had as yet been entered...