Pew poll of June 2007<\/a>\u00a0purports to offer a comprehensive survey of what the world thinks of the United States. Polls, of course, can be unreliable; and much of the commonly expressed anti-Americanism seems to be a mere reflection of disdain shown by our own intellectuals and academics, Hollywood, and the media. While it is hard to separate what foreigners feel about Americans in general from their opinions about the United States government in particular, the results of this latest survey are both predictable and astonishing.<\/p>\nThe nations of the Middle East and other Islamic countries, of course, poll anti-United States across the board, from Palestine to Morocco. And therein arise some interesting paradoxes. Kuwait, once extinguished until the American military restored it, is the most pro-American nation of the Arab Middle East. Yet, even there, as many Kuwaitis have an unfavorable opinion of America as a favorable one.<\/p>\n
Turkey is democratic, a NATO ally, and a recipient of substantial American military aid. Yet it reveals the highest level of anti-Americanism of any country polled \u2014 83 percent express an unfavorable view of the U. S. Perhaps that enmity is due to our support for Kurdistan and the resentments of Ankara\u2019s own Islamist government. In any case, so much for the ballyhooed American efforts to bolster Turkey\u2019s bid to join the E.U. In theory, if we opposed Turkish membership, or suggested that Ankara leave NATO, would our image then improve? Again, something is terribly wrong when four out of five \u201callied\u201d Turks feel so unfavorably toward the United States.<\/p>\n
Egypt has received collectively well over $50 billion in American help, but only 21 percent of its population seems to like the United States. In fact, whether we save countries like Kuwait, or lavish money on Palestine, Egypt, and Jordan (20-percent approval rating), or send billions to rebuild Afghanistan, or try to help Muslim Turkey get into the E.U., or buck up Pakistan (15-percent approval), or feed poor Muslims in Somalia, or chastise the Russians about Chechnya, or bomb the Muslim-killing Serbians, or lead the effort to save Muslim Indonesians after the Tsunami, it all apparently matters very little. It may sound counterintuitive, but Russia (the country that leveled Grozny and exterminated Chechen Islamic rebels) seems to be better thought of in the Middle East than we are \u2014 or perhaps more feared, which in the region is apparently the same thing.<\/p>\n
Apologists, of course, will cite our policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel as catalysts for Middle East hatred. But clearly there is some preexisting venom involved that makes the Muslim Street ignore all the good we have done, and focus only on what is considered bad. It is most likely modern Islam\u2019s inability to confront Western-inspired modernism, particularly the hypocritical desire for practices and things American, combined with the concomitant religious embarrassment over those only partially fulfilled appetites. The mindset of the Middle East is best summed up as something like \u201cI deserve what you Americans have, but won\u2019t ever become like you to get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In turn, what enrages America about the petulant Islamic world\u2019s dislike is mostly the unwillingness of these nations to translate their popular anger into any concrete action. We would expect these belligerents to refuse U.S. aid, cease immigrating to the United States, keep their students from visiting the Great Satan, or kick the U.S. military out of the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n
In response, while the Arab masses seethe, thousands of American scientists are working overtime on remedies for their anger \u2014 namely how not to import any oil from this dysfunctional region that makes us vulnerable to its blackmail while enriching unstable regimes that do real harm to the world at large.<\/p>\n
Even more perplexing are the attitudes voiced by some key European countries \u2014 France (60 percent unfavorable to the U.S.), Germany (66 percent unfavorable), and Spain (60 percent). Millions of Europeans in these countries express a much more negative view of the United States than do Hugo Chavez\u2019s Venezuelans. So much for the supposedly sweeping changes in France and Germany that brought the Sarkozy and Merkel governments to power.<\/p>\n
For this unspoken implosion of the Atlantic Alliance, we can fault the usual suspects \u2014 Iraq, the war on terror, George Bush\u2019s 2002 unilateralism, America\u2019s failure to ratify Kyoto, or the envy that these erstwhile imperial powers feel about being upstaged by a mongrel democracy.<\/p>\n
But who really cares to calibrate all the reasons why the Germans hated us when Ronald Reagan deployed Pershing missiles to protect them, or why the Greeks hated us when Madeline Albright tried to stop Balkan genocide, or why the French hated us for ending the once lucrative Baathist regime in Iraq? Instead, at some point Americans should ask themselves how they can continue to be allied militarily with countries whose populations have a more negative view of us than do our supposed rivals in Russia (48 percent unfavorable) and China (57 percent).<\/p>\n
C<\/span>ontrast all that dislike with those nations who appreciate the United States, which tells us something much different about America\u2019s role in the world. The Kenyans and Ghanaians, for example, reveal more admiration for the United States (87 and 80 percent, respectively) than do we Americans ourselves.<\/p>\nIn fact, all of sub-Saharan Africa \u2014 poor and with a past of exploitation \u2014 has an unbelievably high regard for the U.S. Perhaps black Africans appreciate our support for democracy, realize that we were not colonialists, see that blacks are succeeding in the U.S. in a way unthinkable elsewhere, know that we spearhead the global effort to bring AIDS relief and stop the genocide in Darfur, and sympathize with their own long struggle against radical Islam.<\/p>\n
Much of Eastern Europe is similarly well-inclined. Poland, for example (61 percent approval rating), does not trust Russia \u2014 and does not trust Europe to offer any help in a future hour of crisis.<\/p>\n
Likewise, many countries of Latin America \u2014 Mexico, Chile, Peru \u2014 poll staunchly pro-American. We have tried to support these shaky Latin American democracies, welcomed their immigrants, and allowed billions of dollars to be sent back as worker remittances. And unlike a Spain, France, Germany, the Muslim Middle East, Russia, or China, such confident emerging nations also are not hung up on perceived past grandeur, blame-gaming the new superpower for their own subordinate roles.<\/p>\n
Indeed, how strange that these poor countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America are more favorable to America than are oil-rich sheikdoms, rich European socialist republics, and Middle East recipients of massive U.S. aid.<\/p>\n
Or perhaps it\u2019s not so strange at all.<\/p>\n
The more confident a nation is, even when poor, the more likely it seems to admire America. Some of our best supporters turn out to be one-billion person India (59 percent favorable rating), Japan (61 percent), and South Korea (58 percent) \u2014 all democratic, capitalist juggernauts, and appreciative of liberal American trade policy and U.S. military support. Again, should we Americans value the friendship of such democracies \u2014 or that of a China that cheats on international trade accords and intimidates its neighbors?<\/p>\n
So it is encouraging to be admired by idealistic populations in Africa and Eastern Europe, and shown friendship by India and Japan. But perhaps it is equally to our credit that a bullying China and Russia, a dictatorial and intolerant Middle East, and smug nations of Western Europe seem to resent us, especially our support for democratic change abroad.<\/p>\n
N<\/span>o doubt when the Bush administration leaves office, and should a Democratic one replace it, our approval ratings will rise with our present detractors. But they may also decline among our friends who will learn that U.S. open markets, free trade, and reliable military support in times of crisis are now objects of left-wing criticism. Note in this regard that world opinion toward both China and Russia is turning unfavorable. That distrust will only increase as both begin to flex their muscles \u2014 the former gobbling up oil contracts from the most murderous regimes, the latter selling the same rogues anything they need to foment unrest.<\/p>\nA number of British diplomats have expressed weariness over the old special relationship with America. Likewise, the British public now barely expresses a favorable impression of the United States (51 percent). But given the emerging world landscape, such a change in attitude would be suicidal for the United Kingdom. History would instead counsel the British people that Europe has nearly destroyed them twice in the twentieth century, while America sought to save them \u2014 and would again in the twentieth-first.<\/p>\n
Britain should tread carefully, since it is even more likely that a growing number of Americans is turned off by Europe, British anti-Americanism, NATO, and the Middle East. And in the long history of this country, isolationism, not intervention, has been the more natural American sentiment.<\/p>\n
If the British think their Tony Blair was George Bush\u2019s poodle, they may soon see a British prime minister reduced to a Chinese, Iranian, or Russian hamster \u2014 as we already have witnessed with the Russian assassination scandal and the even more embarrassing Iranian hijacking of a British boat.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Russia and China will only grow wealthier from oil and trade surpluses, while the chances improve of a petrol-rich dictatorship in the Middle East gaining nuclear weapons within missile range of Europe. What will keep the U.S. engaged as a powerful ally of a Britain and Europe in their coming hour of need will not be brilliant statesmen or Atlantic-minded Presidents, but only American public opinion and goodwill that are predicated on some notion of reciprocal friendship.<\/p>\n
In that regard, such polls continue to be mostly one-sided. What we need now are new comprehensive surveys of what Americans themselves think of the United Nations, the Islamic world, and Western Europe \u2014 so that they can try to square the results with our present foreign policy of aid, friendship, or military assistance to those who apparently don\u2019t want or appreciate what they receive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a92007 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Why they hate us, and like, us. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The latest\u00a0Pew poll of June 2007\u00a0purports to offer a comprehensive survey of what the world thinks of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[755],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Vx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3505,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/hardly-turkish-delight\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":0},"title":"Hardly Turkish Delight","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner I\u00a0thought (and wrote to that effect) that both the gratuitous and toothless Senate resolutions calling for the de facto trisection of Iraq, and condemnation of Turkey for the century-old Armenian holocaust were unnecessary barbs that would only inflame an already anti-American Turkey. BUT we\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2007"","block_context":{"text":"October 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/october-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3705,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/club-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":1},"title":"Club America","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman pulled up to Savannah, Ga., after his legendary March to the Sea in December 1864, he was savagely slandered in the Southern press as a renegade leader of a \"vandal horde.\" But at that same time, leading Confederate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Janurary 2007"","block_context":{"text":"Janurary 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/janurary-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3533,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/looking-for-a-scapegoat\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":2},"title":"Looking for a Scapegoat","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 17, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The world again turns to Jews. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Who recently said: \"These Jews started 19 Crusades. The 19th was World War I. Why? Only to build Israel.\" Some holdover Nazi? Hardly. It was former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of Turkey, a NATO ally. He went\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2007"","block_context":{"text":"September 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/september-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3681,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/democrats-disingenuous-in-their-anti-war-rhetoric\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":3},"title":"Democrats Disingenuous in Their Anti-war Rhetoric","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 27, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why did a majority of Democratic Senators \u2014 such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Harry Reid, Jay Rockefeller and Chuck Schumer \u2014 vote to authorize a war with Iraq on Oct. 11, 2002? And why is this war now\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2007"","block_context":{"text":"February 2007","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2007\/february-2007\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4348,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/american-zen\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":4},"title":"American Zen","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 1, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Finessing our supposed friends and enemies. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online While the world debated whether an American guard at Guantanamo really flushed a Koran down a toilet, Robert Mugabe may have bulldozed the homes of 1.5 million Zimbabweans. Few seem to have cared. To do so would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2005"","block_context":{"text":"July 2005","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2005\/july-2005\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3523,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/winning-ugly\/","url_meta":{"origin":3567,"position":5},"title":"Winning Ugly","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Iraq doesn't need to be a Kodak moment. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There is no need to review the now common judgment on the Iraqi war as a fiasco, quagmire, or \u201cworst\u201d something or other in American history. 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