BRONWEN MADDOX'S column on international policy in The Times is essential reading. Unlike many such columns that are written by men who rarely if ever read a foreign paper or have lived and worked abroad, Maddox's column is infused with knowledge, research and balance.

Now she has taken on the infantile malady of the anti-Americanism fashionable in London and other European capitals. The challenge to Europe is not the US nor vice versa. Instead both world regions of democracy, rule of law and freedom of expression face the rise of new nation states that put nationalism ahead of the rights won by Americans and Europeans.

Maddox is prescient on Russia, which she describes as “belligerent and delusional”. The Kremlin wants to divide the US from Europe and drive wedges between EU member states, because Moscow wants a weak EU with national interests trumping common Euro-atlantic politics.

But this is not pro-US pap. George W. Bush, she writes, “has presided over an administration of breathtaking arrogance and misjudgment”, and she chides the US over Guantanamo Bay. But she rightly cautions that “Europe is setting itself up for enormous disappointment if it expects mildness from his successors”. None of the rising powers or ideologies in the world cares to the same extent about the values that gave birth to the US and modern Europe - separation of Church and state, separation of powers, freedom of expression, as well as the rights of women to live their lives free of patriarchical control.

A new relativism says that these values can be shelved in the name of economic growth in China and India, in the name of a re-assertion of national pride in Russia, or in the name of respect for religion as defined by Islamist ideologues or Bible fundamentalists. Maddox wishes for a US that accepted more international rule of law, but as we know in Britain, persuading people to share power and sovereignty with other nations is not easy.

This book is not just about foreign policy. For those who want to know how the US can nationalise building societies and mortgage companies by taking over the Federal Nat-ional Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, Maddox provides a guide to the complexities and diversity of US economics and society.

Anti-Americanism and anti-Europeanism are twin sides of the same coin. Maddox has written an easy-to-read guide as to why the former is foolish and dangerous. If only she could persuade more of those who opine on these matters that the latter was also a dead-end. This is a must-read tograsp why the US matters and why anti-Americanism is the modern socialism of fools.

In Defence of America by Bronwen Maddox
Duckworth, £14.99; 240pp Buy the book

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