These documents offer yet another demonstration that although the explosive growth of the government’s intelligence apparatus after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was justified largely on the grounds of stopping terrorism, much of what that apparatus does has nothing to do with al-Qaeda. Which is fine — the United States faces many different kinds of challenges, and the threat of terrorism is only one (and, truth be told, a relatively minor one, but that’s a topic for another day). What we should be aware of, however, is that the global scope of our intelligence activities can create serious problems for us around the world when we want to build trust or tamp down anti-Americanism, even when we aren’t invading anybody.

I suspect that when most Americans hear that we’re spying on people’s phone and e-mail conversations in almost every country in the world, they think, well, that’s just what we have to do — we’re the United States. As citizens of the global hegemon, we take certain things for granted, like the fact that our soldiers will be stationed in dozens of countries around the globe, or that everyone everywhere should speak English. Even in the World Cup, where the United States is usually an afterthought, all referees are required to pass an English test. (In advance of today’s match with Belgium, U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann has complained that an Algerian ref working the game might be able to talk to the Belgian players in French. Sacre bleu!)

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But we should be aware that if you live in another country and you hear that the United States might be reading your e-mails — or that, in what seems to be a test run for later application in other places, the NSA is recording the audio of literally every cellphone conversation in the Bahamas — you’re going to be uncomfortable, to say the least, about the reach of U.S. power. I’m not talking about violent, flag-burning anti-Americanism, but about a far more common feeling, widespread even among people who like American music and movies and share many of our values. It’s the feeling that the United States treats the rest of the world like its subjects, people whose liberties and sometimes even lives can be swept aside whenever we find it in our interest.