"What the caterpillar calls the end of life, wise men call a butterfly."

AMANPOUR: You brought it up, I was going to ask you later: America has become very much feared and loathed in many parts of the world, not among the usual suspects but among people who are usually America's friends and who want to like America. What needs to be done to stop that very dangerous state of affairs?

CLINTON: Well, in our country the popular assumption is that it's all about Iraq. And it's not all about Iraq. I think most everybody in the world understands that most Americans were more hawkish on Iraq than they were. Including me -- I mean we bombed them two or three times. We always worried more about Saddam Hussein than they did.

But what made the Iraq thing so bitterly controversial was that it occurred in the aftermath of 9/11, when the whole world wanted to be with us. And they wanted America to lead a more united world in a united front against terror and a united front to make a world with more partners and fewer terrorists. It was a phenomenal opportunity. And instead we chose the path of unilateralism, not just in Iraq.

We got out of the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty, the antiballistic-missile treaty, before we knew our missile defenses would work. We got out of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty regime, which every Republican president since Eisenhower was for. Every president, both parties.

Something almost no Americans know: we changed the nuclear doctrine of the United States. Ever since World War II we had never said we might use nuclear weapons first. Now the new nuclear doctrine is we are trying to develop two small nuclear weapons, one for battle, one to break underground bunkers. And we might use them first. Even though it's already been conceded that if we had dropped such a bunker buster on Baghdad it would have taken out half the city.

So Americans need to understand that it's not just about Iraq, it's about an attitude. They think now, the rest of the world thinks that we are gonna act and do whatever we want, whatever we can, and cooperate only when we have to, when we have tried every other alternative. And that's what has got us in trouble.

We would have been treated, I think, much more differently on Iraq if it hadn't been for all the rest of this unilateralism. It's the cumulative impact that's alienated a lot of the world.