Polls and Popularity
The 16-nation Global Attitudes Survey that the Pew Research Center released last month came and went without attracting much notice. That’s too bad. It actually contained some good news.
The coverage of the report’s release noted that we remain a poor bet to win Miss Congeniality. The United States is broadly disliked in a majority of the countries surveyed. U.S. favorability ratings in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain all sit below 50 percent. (China actually enjoys higher favorability ratings than the United States does in Europe.) As for the U.S. image in the Middle East, well, let’s not go there.
So what’s the good news? Several things. First, the Pew data suggest that in Europe at least our low favorability ratings have far more to with anger at the Bush White House than with a general disenchantment with the United States. This is not to say that the rest of the world isn’t eager to point out our shortcomings, whether real or perceived. But Europeans certainly aren’t rejecting the idea of America or what it stands for.
Second, in some parts of the world the U.S. image is faring well. Seven out of ten Indians have a positive view of the United States, not an insignificant thing given historically cool U.S.-Indian relations and the fact that India is home to nearly 1.1 billion people. Polls in Japan, Iran, and several of the former Soviet bloc countries would probably show similar pro-American sentiment.
Third, what goes down can go back up. The percentage of Indonesians with a positive view of the United States jumped 23 percentage points from 2003 to 2005 and the percentage who thought that Washington took their interests into account when making foreign policy more than doubled over the same period. The U.S. tsunami relief effort clearly changed some minds. Likewise, the Bush administration’s concerted effort to make nice with Europe earlier this year probably contributed to the easing of anti-U.S. sentiment from 2004 to 2005. And America’s growing popularity in India almost certainly reflects the fact that the Bush administration has (for good reason) been wooing New Delhi for four years. In short, we can change how people view us, especially if we treat them with respect and show interest in their problems.
Fourth, Europeans resentment of the Bush administration and American hegemony has real limits. Much has been made of the fact that Europeans say they would like to see another country or group of countries rival the United States militarily. (In France, 85 percent of respondents give that idea a “thumbs up.”) Very few Europeans, however, think that China’s emergence as a superpower would be a good thing. (Even in France only one in four people says “oui” to a Chinese superpower.) And last I checked, European publics were not clamoring for their governments to spend more on defense.
Fifth, Americans understand that the U.S. image abroad has been tarnished. Roughly seven out of ten say that the United States is “generally disliked.” The challenge to Democrats is to find a way to convince voters that that dislike (a) was not inevitable and (b) directly affects their well-being and security.
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Seven out of ten Indians have a positive view of the United States, not an insignificant thing given historically cool U.S.-Indian relations and the fact that India is home to nearly 1.1 billion people. Polls in Japan, Iran, and several of the former Soviet bloc countries would probably show similar pro-American sentiment
Good points. It's not at all clear in this Asian Century that French or German opinion is more important to us than Indian opinion.
Also, this survey is hardly "global." A 16-nation survey is inevitably going to be rather arbitrary, and the nations selected betray a distinct bias: Jordan (whose population is heavily Palestinian) instead of Israel or Iran; Germany but not Japan; Indonesia but not Australia, etc.
July 26, 2005 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
While I agree there was a lot of good news in the poll, there was also a significant amount of bad news we shouldn't avoid. A majority of Jordanians support Osama Bin Laden and can justify terrorism attacking civilians, and those numbers are not really moving. A large percentage of Pakistan also supports UBL.
I'm glad to see numbers trending positive in Lebanon and Indonesia, and it really is a significant development, but we're still failing to win over what should be the center of our battle of hearts and minds, the greater Middle East and Southwest Asia.
The Pentagon will soon be releasing a report on metrics for the war on terror which will include questions of whether we can take out terrorists militarily faster than they are recruited. While I don't know whether that can be defined by a single group of numbers, the fact we're looking at that problem will be a good start towards changing some of the surveyed countries whose opinion hasn't really moved.
July 26, 2005 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink