Any commentators on both sides of the Atlantic suggest that the American public has become resolutely unilateralist since the terror attacks of September 11 2001, and thus supports the supposed unilateralist turn in American foreign policy under President George Bush’s administration.
For example, Quentin Peel observed in the Financial Times last December that ‘the shock of those terrorist attacks appears to have shifted the centre of gravity away from any residual multilateralism and towards an absolute reliance on national power and resources.’ Similarly, Charles Kupchan suggested in last summer’s Political Science Quarterly that, under the Bush administration, and with public support, ‘America is veering toward unilateralist and neo-isolationalist extremes.’
