World Public Reject US Role as the World Leader: Majorities Still Want US to Do Its Share in Multilateral Efforts, Not Withdraw

America's Image in the World

Testimony of Dr. Steven Kull

Director, Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)
Editor, WorldPublicOpinion.org

March 6, 2007 – 10:00 AM

Before House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight

House Foreign Affairs Committee Transcript
Video Webcast

I
would like to thank the chairman for inviting me speak today on world
public opinion on the United States. For some years now, the Program on
International Policy Attitudes has been studying world public opinion.
We conduct focus groups and carry out large multi-country polls as well
as in-depth polls in specific countries, especially Muslim countries.

As
often happens in life I have some bad news and some good news. And as
is often a good idea, I will start with the bad news.

You have
probably heard that America’s image in the world is not particularly
good these days. The most recent evidence of this was a poll that we
conducted for BBC World Service together with GlobeScan in 26 countries
around the world. Polling was conducted last November through January.
The question asked was whether the United States is having a positive
or negative influence in the world.

On average across the 26
countries polled, 30 percent say the US is having a mostly positive
influence in the world while 51 percent say the US is having a mostly
negative influence.

In 20 of the 26 countries polled, the most
common view is that the US is having a mostly negative influence in the
world. In four countries, the most common view is that the US is having
a mostly positive influence and in two of them, views are evenly
divided.

Views of US influence are consistently negative in
Canada, Latin America and the Middle East. They are mostly negative in
Europe, with the exception of Poland, which leans positive, and
Hungary, which is divided. Africans in this poll and in others have the
most consistently positive views of the US. Asian views are more mixed,
but lean negative. Filipinos are very positive and Indians are divided,
but all others are clearly negative.

It should be noted that
this reaction cannot simply be dismissed as something necessarily
engendered by a powerful and rich country. The numbers we are seeing
today are the lowest numbers that have ever been recorded.

During
the 1990s, views of the US were predominantly positive. Comparing 1999
State Department data and recent Pew data, favorable views of the
United States have dropped in the UK from 83 percent to 56 percent, in
Germany from 78 percent to 37 percent, in Morocco from 77 percent to 49
percent, in Indonesia from 75 to 30 percent, in France from 62 to 39
percent, from Turkey from 62 to 12 percent and in Spain from 50 to 23
percent. Only Russia has held steady.

These
numbers are also not simply a reaction to the US decision to go to war
in Iraq. Views of the US did go down sharply after the beginning of the
Iraq war in 2003. But now, nearly four years later, they continue to
move downward.

As part of the BBC poll, we have asked the same
question about US influence over the last three years to a set of 18
major countries and have found that evaluations continue to move
downward. On average, across the 18 countries, positive views of the US
have slipped from 40 percent in 2005 to 36 percent in 2006 to 29
percent in 2007. Negative views have risen from 46 percent in 2005 to
52 percent in 2007.

There are a few countries that get lower
ratings than the US. In a BBC poll that we just released this morning,
Israel, Iran, and by some measures, North Korea, received lower
ratings. However the US is rated far lower than France, Japan, Canada,
China, India and Russia.

Overall these findings are largely
consistent with other polls that have asked different questions. Some
polls suggest more positive attitudes toward the United States per se.
Polls that have asked respondents to rate their feelings toward the US
as warm or cold on a 0-100 thermometer-like scale, find relatively more
positive ratings. For example, 62 percent of Australians say the US is
having a negative influence in the world, but their average thermometer
rating is a relatively warm 60 degrees.

Views of the American
people are also somewhat more positive than for the country as a whole.
Europeans, Russians, Indians and Japanese all express quite positive
feelings toward the American people. Views in Muslim countries are
mixed but still noticeably warmer toward the American people than
toward the US itself.

American
movies and television programs get mixed reviews while American science
and technology engender substantial respect around the world.

The
aspect of US behavior that elicits the strongest negative feeling is
how the US government deals with other countries. In a recent
14-country poll that we did with the Chicago Council, large majorities
in 12 of them said that “the US is playing the role of world policeman
more than it should be.” In a recent Pew poll of 16 countries, 12 said
that the US does not take the interests of their country into account
when making foreign policy decisions.

The BBC poll asked about
six specific areas and found that majorities or pluralities in most
countries disapprove of US foreign policy in all of them.

On average:
• 75% disapprove of the how the US is handing the Iraq war,
• 69% disapprove of US treatment of detainees in Guantanamo and other prisons,
• 68% disapprove of how the US handled the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon,
• 61% disapprove of US handling of Iran’s nuclear program,
• 58% disapprove of US handling of global warming or climate change
• 55% disapprove of US handling of North Korea’s nuclear program

The
US military presence in the Middle East is exceedingly unpopular in
virtually all countries. On average 69 percent believe the US military
presence there “provokes more conflict than it prevents” while just 16
percent see it as a stabilizing force.

So what is the good news?

The
good news is that there is an abundance of evidence that the
unhappiness with the US is not a rejection of US values. People around
the world say that the problems they have with the US concern its
policies, not its values.

Large majorities of Muslims also say
this in polls that we conducted for the University of Maryland’s START
center. Most Muslims reject the idea that there is a fundamental clash
of civilizations between Islam and the West. Values such as democracy
and international law are more popular than the ideas of al Qaeda.

In
focus groups that I have conducted throughout the world, the most
common complaint I hear is not about American values but that the US is
being hypocritical; that it is not living up to its values. Complaining
that the US is hypocritical is a backhanded compliment. The implicit
statement is that if the US were to live up to its values this would be
something positive.

This support for American values has deep
roots that go back to the period immediately after World War II. At
that time US was so overwhelmingly powerful relative to the rest of the
world that it would have been able to impose an American empire.

But
it did not do that. Instead the US championed a world order based on
international law and said that it too would be constrained by this
system. It endorsed a system built around the United Nations that
prohibited the unilateral use of force except in self defense, and
respected national sovereignty. It promoted democracy. It promoted
respect for human rights within countries and in dealings between
countries. It promoted an equitable and open system of trade and free
enterprise that did not favor the strong over the weak. And through its
aid programs it sought to integrate poor countries into the
international economy.

There
is substantial evidence that the values and the ideas for world order
that the US promoted have become widely accepted. In 66 out of 67
countries polled for the World Values Survey, most agreed that
“Democracy may have its problems but it is still better than any other
form of government.” In 30 out of 32 countries polled for BBC, most
people said that the UN is having a positive influence in the world. In
19 out of 20 countries polled by GlobeScan, a majority agreed that “the
free enterprise system and free market economy is the best system on
which to base the future of the world.” And there is no significant
indication that support for these principles is in decline.

The
problem is that of late there has been a growing perception that the US
is not living up to its principles. In a recent poll we conducted we
found widespread perceptions that the US is violating international law
in its treatment of detainees at Guantanamo.

The US image as a
promoter of human rights has diminished. In 1998, USIA found that 59
percent of the British and 61 percent of Germans said the United States
was doing a good job promoting human rights. Today, 56 percent of the
British and 78 percent of Germans say the US is doing a bad job.

Contrary
to the United States’ history of largesse, a Pew poll found that in 38
out of 43 countries most felt that US policies were worsening the gap
between rich and poor, .

But perhaps the most fundamental
issue is whether the US is constrained in its use of force. This is why
there is so much concern about the US invasion of Iraq.
The
complaint about Iraq is not so much that US forces removed Saddam
Hussein. Rather it is that the US did so without getting UN approval;
that it did not follow the international rules that the US is perceived
as originally promoting.

This
has left many countries uneasy about whether the potential use of US
military power is constrained by the international system. While it may
sound strange to Americans, in many countries around the world people
express strong fears that the US will use military force against them.
In virtually every country asked about this in polls done by Pew in
2003 and 2005, majorities perceived the US as a military threat to
their country. This was even true of Turkey—our NATO ally— and Kuwait—a
country the US has defended. It may be hard for us to understand how
overwhelming US military power appears to other countries and how
easily they worry that the US might use it.

So in summary, the
challenge we face in dealing with the recent upsurge in negative
feelings about US foreign policy, is not that we need to convince
people of the value of the principles the US has tried to promote in
the world. The world is already pretty much convinced. This is a
tremendous asset for the US.

What the world is looking for is
reassurance that the US is constrained by the rules that the US itself
has promoted; that it is still committed to the rule of international
law, to limits on the use of military force, to respect for human
rights, and to fairness in the world economic system.

Were
people around the world to gain more confidence in US intentions and
perceive the US as having a renewed commitment to the values we have
successfully cultivated in the world, there are strong reasons to
believe that attitudes toward the US could shift rather quickly in a
positive direction.

Thank you very much for your attention.