You have to let stuff like that slide, whoever's at the top of the heap always gets static from the groundlings. You should see what we said about England during most of the 19th century, in fact, til just before WWII! And of course, our own record of bad behavior didn't begin with or suddenly end after our "official" period of turn-of-the-century imperialism in the Caribbean and the Phillipines. The Indians, slavery, the Mexican War, Manifest Destiny, Monroe Doctrine--we think of anything that happened before our lifetimes as "history". Europeans have a longer memory, and Asians never forget.

I think what has scared the rest of the world, including our friends, is that American behavior has seemed more aggressive and self-interested since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the beginning of the current administration. Even nations that have absolutely nothing to fear from us suddenly realize we are an unopposed superpower, and even if we are benign now, we could turn at any moment. It's like having a tiger in the house. He may be friendly now...but he's always hungry.

And we would be fools if we thought our enemies wouldn't exploit that perception in any and every way they could.