Why has anti-Americanism become a fact of life in Europe? How is this phenomenon related to the rise of neoconservatism in the United States? These are important questions, and this new volume, based on seminars held at the University of Trento in 2003 and 2004, provides—if not the definitive answer—certainly a richer understanding of transatlantic relations.

All of the contributors argue that European discontent is the product of the unilateral turn in American foreign policy since 2000. The rise since the 1970s of conservative nationalism (neoconservatism), and the victory of George W. Bush in 2000, represented a sharp break with the liberal multilateralism of the 1940s to 1970s. The result is an increasingly striking disparity between the neoconservative vision of a unilateral and hegemonic United States and the European vision of a post-Westphalian order. This argument veers close to Robert Kagan's belief that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus (so long as we define Venus generously as a Kantian paradise).

In an interesting and quite provocative opening, Sergio Fabbrini argues that the shift away from a multilateral American foreign policy is the product of a complex process whereby the epicenter of U.S. politics moved from the East Coast to the southern states—in particular Texas. Therefore, transatlantic differences reflect “radically divergent visions—nationalist, in the American case, and post- or supra-national in the European case” (p. 23).

Fabbrini's argument that the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 was a triumph for neoconservatism exaggerates the extent to which the Republican Party can be described as neoconservative in the 1990s. After all, many Republicans were deeply skeptical about using force to spread democracy or for nation building. At the same time, this argument neglects the role of unilateralism in historic American foreign policy. In many respects, Vietnam was a more unilateral war than the current conflict in Iraq. It is also problematic to argue that “America after September 11 is certainly a more conservative country than it has ever been in the past” (p. 26), not least because conservatives in America today accept many policies that would have been anathema to their conservative predecessors.

After the introduction, the book is divided into three parts. Part One focuses on the rise of neoconservatism in the United States. Mario Del Pero ably identifies the doctrine's historical and ideological roots, showing why neoconservatism or “crisis internationalism” was well placed to dominate the political landscape in the wake of 9/11. In an interesting and noteworthy argument, Douglas T. Stuart demonstrates that the radical neoconservative agenda represents a response to a recurrent dilemma in U.S. foreign policy: Should the United States adapt to or transform the international environment? Meanwhile, Richard Crockatt situates neoconservatism in the various models of international order that scholars and policymakers have put forth, from the new world order of George H. W. Bush, to the thesis that America is an imperial state.

In Part Two, the book shifts focus toward the European reaction to American neoconservatism. Rob Kroes offers a very personal cri de coeur against the unilateral turn of the Bush administration. The essay is thought provoking but occasionally veers into the polemical, by comparing the Super Bowl in the 1990s with “the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany,” (p. 96) or, alternatively, depicting the Republican Party's electoral strategy as having an “Orwellian 1984 quality” (p. 105). It is true that European protesters occasionally smash nearby McDonalds (p. 107). But they are far more likely to eat in such establishments—France is McDonald's most profitable European subsidiary. This fact alone captures the complexity of European attitudes toward the United States and its most symbolic products.

Using content analysis, Carlo Ruzza and Emanuela Bozzini consider how peace movements have utilized anti-Americanism as a resource, alongside other intellectual traditions such as Christian pacifism. The data reveal some fascinating national differences: Peace movements in the UK and Germany tend to focus on the illegality of U.S. foreign policy, while movements in France highlight the negative political effects of the American use of force, as well as the economic motives for U.S. hegemony, specifically the quest for oil.

In what is in some respects a standout essay, Pierangelo Isernia employs a sophisticated analysis of survey data to make a convincing case that anti-Americanism has been a minority view in Western Europe since World War II, though somewhat more prevalent in France. Upswings in anti-American sentiment are often brief and closely tied to transatlantic crises such as the Iraq war. However, disturbingly, the oscillations in anti-American sentiment have grown wider with each post–World War II crisis.

In Part Three, the contributors argue that the neoconservative agenda is unlikely to persist. Bruce E. Cain contends that the United States is closely divided, and Bush's electoral mandate is conditional on the success of the economy and the war in Iraq. In addition, Roberto Tamborini demonstrates that the ambitious and unilateral program of the neoconservatives is simply not affordable in the long run for a debtor nation such as the United States. Furthermore, employing the memetic theory of Rene Girard, Scott Thomas suggests that the United States faces deep-rooted cultural resistance from the Islamic world.

The book includes a thoughtful final chapter by Mark F. Gilbert, reflecting on the arguments in the volume. While sympathetic to the positions taken by the other contributors, Gilbert suggests a need for greater empathy with the neoconservative argument that the world is deeply threatening. Washington's unilateralism may be frustrating, but the United States remains an indispensable nation.

In many respects, the different chapters are well integrated and “talk to each other.” But displaying a classic problem for edited volumes, the contributors sometimes define key terms in quite different ways. Is a generally pro-American individual, who fiercely opposes the Bush administration, “anti-American”? Ruzza and Bozzini would probably say yes, given that anti-Americanism represents “discursive frames that blame the American people, American politicians or even generally aspects of the US polity for negative consequences resulting from intervention in world affairs” (p. 119). Isernia, in contrast, would probably say no, defining anti-Americanism as “the psychological tendency to evaluate negatively the US” (italics in original) (p. 130).

In focusing on the domestic roots of American unilateralism, the contributors sometimes neglect the rival argument that the end of the Cold War created a unipolar system that both encouraged American unilateralism and, by removing the Soviet threat, increased the likelihood of European resistance to the United States. Nevertheless, The United States Contested provides a thoughtful plea for American engagement and represents an important contribution to the critical literature on the unilateralist turn in American foreign policy.