AFTER the US Congress agreed to a $7.5bn aid package for Pakistan this autumn, the Obama administration was taken aback by the seemingly ungrateful reaction of its intended recipients. But particular hostility was directed at US plans to spend more than $800m on building a new, heavily fortified, embassy in Islamabad, to be protected by private security contractor DynCorp.

The activities of contractors in Iraq, notably Blackwater, have become notorious in the Muslim world. Expanded US “bunker consulates” were also announced in Lahore and Peshawar. The US says the facilities are needed because old premises are insecure and it must accommodate the “civilian surge” of diplomats and officials into Pakistan and Afghanistan ordered by Barack Obama. But the American expansion in Islamabad mirrors similar developments in other Muslim and foreign capitals that are focal points for the Pentagon's “long war” against Islamist extremism.

Shocked by the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on its Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassies, the US has opened 68 new embassies and overseas facilities since 2001 and has 29 under design and construction, the State Department's bureau of overseas buildings operations says. Total worldwide spending on embassy replacement has been put at $17.5bn.

In Kabul, Baghdad, Jakarta, Cairo and beyond, in 'allied' cities such as London and Berlin, Washington is building, reinforcing or expanding slab-walled, fortress-like embassies that act as regional overseas HQs, centres of influence and intelligence-gathering, and problematic symbols of superpower.

Historically speaking, these formidable outposts are the 21st century equivalent of crusader castles, rising out of the plain, projecting superior force, and grimly dominating all they behold. As in Pakistan, the new strongholds attract plenty of criticism, acting almost as magnets for trouble.

The massively fortified $700m Baghdad embassy, the biggest US mission in the world with 1,200 employees, was dogged by construction delays and militant attacks before it finally opened in January. Now even the state department's own inspector-general has ruled that the 21-building, 41-hectare encampment, is too big.

The Kabul embassy, which is negotiating an $87m purchase of 12 to 16 hectares, encountered a different kind of trouble in September after photographs emerged of embassy guards engaging in sexual acts, pouring vodka on each other and dancing round a fire. The guards were employed by another private security firm, ArmorGroup.

Away from the frontline of America's wars, the unveiling last year of the US embassy in Berlin, close by the Brandenburg Gate, brought strong objections of an aesthetic nature. Architectural experts queued up to lambast the squat, custard-coloured but bomb-proof building, deriding it as a klotz (lump) built by barbarians.

On present trends, Londoners face being similarly shut out as the US embassy, now in Mayfair, prepares to move to a brand-new concrete citadel.

The way the new embassies tend to physically cut off America's diplomats from the countries they are supposed to connect with is one good reason, among many, why Washington might want to rethink its policy.

In July, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, stressed the US need to communicate directly with other countries from the bottom up “Reaching out directly to people will encourage them to embrace cooperation with us, making our partnerships with their governments and with them stronger and more durable.”

That's not the message citizens of Islamabad are hearing. When America speaks to Pakistanis and other Muslims, it too often sounds like it's shouting down from the battlements.

— The Guardian, London