This is hardly new. After his stint as the Latin America guy in Jimmy Carter's NSC, Robert Pastor had a cover story in the Atlantic saying (among other things) that people in Latin America thought the United States was behind everything, so the American government should tone down its rhetoric and be seen to be making concessions to the local governments.

As I recall, the Reagan administration did not take his advice. Perhaps they thought, "If people think we have more power than we really do, that itself will bring us power. Why not use that to our advantage?" I suspect people in government do this all the time. They like to appear powerful.

It could be argued that, from the point of view of the U.S. government, one of the worst results of the Iraq war was that it exposed how limited U.S. power sometimes is.

As a European I find I have the opposite problem, that is that when I mention to Americans that their power might be on the wane, albeit gradually, I get treated like a mouthy farmhand who really should know better than to question US power.

So it's nice to see someone recognising that the US might need to scale back its global ambitions.

With no cynism whatsoever, History Channel is full of conspiracy tails from the (real?) history of US foreign policy. So, are those false or is it that conspiracies become true and unharmful once you can watch them on B&W?

Just wait until we start fighting our wars with robots instead of human soldiers...

And a European telling an American about waning power...I'm not surprised that gets greeted with derision. I mean, it's like a kid telling their parent that the parent's career's waning.

The short answer to how the United States can deflate exaggerated perceptions of power is through respect.

The United States has a long history of difficulty listening to its allies. As an action oriented nation, we tend to know what we want and go about the business of accomplishing those goals. We do not always show sufficient respect for the views and inputs of our allies.

The best example of this was the lead up to the Iraq War. The Bush administration made the assumption that Turkey would simply allow the use of the Incirlik base for a Northern front. They did not appreciate the fact that the Gulf war had cost their economy dearly and they were reticent to repeat that pain. As Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup) aptly put it in A Few Good Men "you have to ask me nice"!!! It should not have come as a surprise that the Turkish parliament voted not to allow U.S. troops to stage from Turkey.

While public diplomacy is an important part of U.S. Foreign Policy it is incumbent upon the Foreign Service Officers, U.S. Ambassadors and the Department of Defense to heed the words of Jack Nicholson (Col. Jessup) when dealing with foreign nations and "extend me some #*@*ing courtesy"!!

Over time that should ameliorate the problem...

you may find the answer in: http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/13/ten_lessons_on_empire

Most of the world sees politics as a mash of conspiracies, and the US, as the biggest, richest, and most active country internationally, will be a conspiracy magnet as long as it's powerful.

This won't change until the US ceases to be powerful.

There was a GQ profile of "Sir" Robert Allen Stanford that actually helps to answer this question. While Stanford was trying to gain control of most regulatory devices on Antigua (which made him unpopular with certain non-corrupt segments of the country), he regularly flew in US Congressmen and Senators on trips (these sorts trips may now be illegal after the whole Abramoff affair, I don't know). This served two purposes - it allowed him to cozy up to Washington power brokers, but more importantly it implied to everyone in Antigua that he had the backing of the US government. One thing that the US could do to limit the appearance of the US being behind every political scheme across the globe would be figure out how to better control US politicians' meetings (with whom, etc) when abroad. Regulation would unconstitutional, but maybe creating some sort of advisory guidelines...?

So anti-americanism had little to do with Bush after all! Bush was really taking heat for globalization, which non-Americans believe the US has complete control of.

Some of the conspiracy mongering is no doubt fomented by inept governments to deflect blame for their own shortcomings. The rest of it, as someone above has aptly stated, is because the US is the most advanced nation in the world, capable of amazing feats and machinations. The students of a Pakistani madrassah once told a Wall Street Journal reporter that Americans were creating Muslim eating dinosaurs.

Short of shutting down our dinosaur factories, little can be done for the gullible and naive.

I truly wish that the United States had that kind of power, it certainly would make life much more interesting. To be honest I'm actually a bit sad that we have to give up the image sooner or later, it's been part of our routine to have angry mobs burning effigies and chanting slogans outside an embassy for so long.