A passing incident can often be revealing of something deeper. An example is the encounter of the United States treasury director and a group of European finance ministers on 16 September 2011. Timothy Geithner, having invited himself to the Europeans' meeting, proceeded to lecture them on what he thought they needed to do to clear up the continent’s messy financial affairs. Maria Fekter, the finance minister of Austria, responded (to general surprise) by remarking on Geithner's manners. You have lectured us, she said in effect, but not listened to our own ideas....
Yet what was striking is that Fekter didn't say (as she might have done) that Geithner had a nerve in condemning European politicians for evading tough decisions when he had just flown out of a Washington in which the US president, Democrats and Republicans had embarrassingly failed to agree on a debt-reduction package. ....
A trivial moment in itself, but it confirmed that a time has arrived when American foreign policy is now pushing against the grain of history.
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