May 1958: Latin American resentment at the power of the colossus of the north has a long pedigree. In Caracas, Venezuela, demonstrators mobbed the car of Vice President Richard Nixon, breaking the side windows.
June 1969: Japan may have learned much from its postwar occupation by Americans. But in Okinawa, there have long been protests at the presence of American military power. In the 1960s the focus was on B-52 bombers; in the 1990s on the alleged transgressions of U.S. military personnel.
October 1972: The Vietnam War was as much a source of protest outside America as in it. In France, Britain and Germany, it fueled a genuine anti-Americanism among students–some of whom are now in the governments of those three countries, where they admire American economic success.
November 1979: The storming of the American Embassy in Tehran, and the hostage crisis that followed, was the apotheosis of a postwar phenomenon: Uncle Sam supported unpopular regimes, like that of the shah, and paid the price when they fell.
June 1987: Throughout the 1980s–the Reagan years–crowds in Europe gathered to protest against what they saw as a dangerous escalation of nuclear tension. From Greenham Common in Britain to Bonn and Berlin, Reagan–and the American power structure–was demonized.
January 1991: Saddam Hussein may have been a brutal dictator, but that didn’t stop those who opposed the U.S.-led coalition that went to war with him. And not all the demos were in Arab lands.
April 1999: As NATO troops, led by Americans, waged war in Kosovo, supporters of Serbia–including these in Macedonia–had their own take on the Stars and Stripes.
May 1999: Who’d be an ambassador? After NATO’s bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Washington’s envoy in Beijing became a member of an old and distinguished club: he saw his own embassy trashed.
