America's Image Posted by Suzanne Nossel

Today the Pew Center on Global Attitudes published its 2005 poll, which is basically an international popularity contest.   The good news is that the U.S.'s favorability ratings are up just a tad.  But there's plenty of bad news too.  The full report is available at Pew's website, but a few highlights are:

• The U.S.'s image is recovering in Indonesia, Lebanon and Jordan.  It is up slightly in most of Western Europe , but down sharply in Turkey.  Pew logically attributes the Indonesia numbers (a jump from 15-38% favorable) to the tsunami relief effort, which demonstrates the impact compassion and generosity can have even in places where we're deeply unpopular.


• China's image is a helluva lot better than ours – of 16 countries surveyed, only Canada, India and Poland rated the U.S. higher than China.   All of Western Europe prefers China to the U.S. by a margin of 10% or more.  The same is true in Arab and most Asian countries surveyed.  This supports the theme of China's mounting influence and the success of their diplomatic offensive.  While Europeans do not want to see China becoming a rival to U.S. military might, people in Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey and Jordan do.


• Americans are coming to grips with how unpopular we are.  Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe our country is generally disliked around the world, a higher percentage than in any other nation.  But Pew apparently did not ask how concerned Americans were about this ill-feeling.  Is the concern strong enough to influence policy?


• As for the reasons why America is disliked, President Bush himself tops the list, followed by the perception that we act unilaterally.  Of note, though, we've gained some ground in terms of international views on how likely we are to take others' interests into account in determining our foreign policy. Again, Pew says this may be in part the tsunami affect.   


• One interesting finding is that America is waning in terms of being perceived as the world's leading "land of opportunity" with Australia, Britain, and Canada edging us out.   It's hard not to link this to negative perceptions of the U.S. and our crackdown on immigrants.   One question is what long-term economic implications this may have.


• One surprising finding is that in several places like Indonesia and Pakistan, while America's image has improved, American people are held in lower regard than in previous surveys.  We've always held to the notion that people around the world separate their views of the U.S. government and policies from their attitudes toward Americans; is this no longer true?  is U.S. public support for policies that are unpopular around the world narrowing the gap?  Will that make anti-U.S. feelings more durable?


• Most of the world continues to view the Iraq war as a disaster, though views are mixed on the U.S.'s role in promoting democracy in the Middle East, with credit going to Bush in some places. 


• Support for the war on terror is stronger, but slipping almost everywhere except for Indonesia.  So the tsunami affect carries over to the GWOT.  This suggests to me that the sort of grand bargain that Kofi Annan's been trying to push (we support the developing world on their priorities, and they us on ours) may have some potential. 

Lots more interesting stuff, so check it out.

Comments

[MNPundit]

I think people percieve the government of the US as being supported by its people. And when you have the regular crew (DeLay, Rove etc.) making crazy statements day in and day out and fundies on the media well... I guess you get the picture.

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